Page:The Millbank Case - 1905 - Eldridge.djvu/259

 string to my bow. They thought I took an earlier train, but I met him by arrangement. I'd sent him to see Wing and met him to get the report."

"Then he was with Wing during the evening?"

"Did you not know it?" demanded Matthewson, turning cross-examiner.

"A question does not always imply ignorance," said Trafford, smiling, "but sometimes the bolstering up of knowledge not yet in the form we want it. I don't hesitate to tell you that I knew Wing had a visitor that evening. This man was with him till late?"

"He left him at eleven o'clock and met me. I parted with him in the shadow of Pettengill's potato storehouse, when I ran to jump on the train."

"You sent him to try to get those papers from Wing, and he failed."

"Miserably failed. It was a desperate chance I took, of course; but I could do no less than take it. In fact it was a desperate thing to use this man, but it was my last hope, and I had no choice."

"Yet he's square—if I'm rightly informed. No danger from him."