Page:Train - Tutt and Mr Tutt (Scribner, 1922).djvu/274

 burglar, had you made any personal inquiry as to the facts?"

"I didn't have him arrested!" protested the witness.

"You deny that you ordered Bibby to charge the defendant with burglary?" roared Mr. Tutt. "Take care! You know there is such a crime as perjury, do you not?"

"No—I mean yes," stuttered Mr. Hepplewhite abjectly. "That is, I've heard about perjury—but the police attended to everything for me."

"Aha!" cried Mr. Tutt, snorting angrily like the war horse depicted in the Book of Job. "The police 'attended' to my client for you, did they? What do you mean—for you? Did you pay them for their little attention?"

"I always send them something on Christmas," said Mr. Hepplewhite. "Just like the postmen."

Mr. Tutt looked significantly at the jury, while a titter ran round the court room.

"Well," he continued with patient irony, "what we wish to know is whether these friends of yours whom you so kindly remember at Christmas dragged the helpless man away from your house, threw him into jail and charged him with burglary by your authority?"

"I didn't think anything about it," asserted Hepplewhite "Really I didn't. I assumed that they