Page:The Mystery of a Hansom Cab.djvu/139

Rh lively Felix make this flippant remark, disagreed with it entirely, and preached a sermon to prove that good looks and crime were closely connected, and that both Judas Iscariot and Nero were beauty-men.

"Ah!" said Calton, when he heard the sermon, "if this unique theory is a true one, what a truly pious man that clergyman must be!" which allusion to the looks of the reverend gentleman was rather unkind, as he was by no means bad looking. But then Calton was one of those witty men who would rather lose a friend than suppress an epigram.

When the prisoner was brought in a murmur of sympathy ran through the crowded court, so ill and worn out he looked; but Calton was puzzled to account for the expression of his face, so different from that of a man whose life had been saved, or rather, was going to be saved, for in truth it was a foregone conclusion.

"You know who stole those papers," he thought, as he looked at Fitzgerald keenly, "and the man who did so is the murderer of Whyte."

The judge having entered and the court being opened, Calton arose to make his speech, and stated in a few words the line of defense he intended to take.

He would first call Albert Dendy, a watchmaker, to prove that on Thursday night at eight o'clock in the evening, he had called at the prisoner's lodgings while the landlady was out, and while there had put the kitchen clock right, and had regulated the same. He would also call Felix Rolleston, a friend of the prisoner's, to prove that the prisoner was not in the habit of wearing rings, and frequently expressed his detestation of such a custom. Sebastian Brown, a waiter at the Melbourne Club, would be called to prove that on Thursday night a letter was delivered to the prisoner at the Club by one Sarah Rawlins, and that the prisoner left the Club shortly before one o'clock on Friday morning. He would also call Sarah Rawlins, to prove that she had delivered a note to Sebastian Brown for the prisoner, at the Melbourne Club, at a quarter to twelve on Thursday night, and that a few minutes past one o'clock on Friday morning she had conducted the prisoner to a slum off Little Bourke Street, and that he was there between one and two on Friday morning, the