Mr. Colt jumped up again, and said, "My Lud, I was not aware the gentleman they accuse of insanity is just being examined for high honours in the University of Oxford." Aside to Compton, "And if he doesn't come you may give them the verdict.""Well," said the judge, "of course he will be here before you close your case."On this the three heads clashed again, and Serjeant Saunders, for the defendant, popped up and said with great politeness, and affectation of sympathy, "My Lud, I can quite understand my learned friend's hesitation to produce his, principal witness.""You understand nothing about the matter," said Colt cavalierly. "Call Mr. Harrington."Mr. Harrington was Alfred's tutor at Eton, and deposed to his sanity there; he was not cross-examined. After him they went on step by step with a fresh witness for every six months, till they brought him close to the date of his incarceration; then they put in one of Julia's witnesses, Peterson, who swore Alfred had talked to him like a sane person that very morning; and repeated what had passed. Cross-examination only elicited that he and Alfred were no longer good friends, which rather strengthened the evidence. Then Giles and Hannah, now man and wife, were called, and swore he was sane all the time he was at Silverton House. Mr. Saunders diminished the effect by eliciting that they had left on bad terms with Mr. Baker, and that Alfred had given them money since. But this was half cured on re-examination, by being set down to gratitude on Alfred's part.
And now the judge went to luncheon; and in came a telegraphic message to say Alfred was in the fast train coming up. This was good news and bad.
They had hoped he would drop in before. They were approaching that period of the case, when not to call the plaintiff must produce a vile impression. The judge--out of good nature, I suspect--was longer at luncheon than usual, and every minute was so much gained to Mr. Compton and Julia, who were in a miserable state of anxiety. Yet it was equalled by Richard Hardie's, who never entered the court but paced the hall the livelong day to intercept Noah Skinner. And, when I tell you that Julia had consulted Mr. Green, and that he had instantly pronounced Mr.
Barkington to be a man from Barkington who knew the truth about the fourteen thousand pounds, and that the said Green and his myrmidons were hunting Mr. Barkington like beagles, you will see that R. Hardie's was no vain terror. At last the judge returned, and Mr. Colt was obliged to put in his reserves; so called Dr. Sampson. Instantly a very dull trial became an amusing one; the scorn with which he treated the opinion of Dr.
Wycherley and Mr. Speers, and medical certificates in general, was so droll coming from a doctor, and so racily expressed, that the court was convulsed. Also in cross-examination by Saunders he sparred away in such gallant style with that accomplished advocate that it was mighty refreshing. The judge put in a few intelligent questions after counsel had done, and surprised all the doctors in court with these words: "I am aware, sir, that you were the main instrument in putting down bloodletting in this country."What made Sampson's evidence particularly strong was that he had seen the plaintiff the evening before his imprisonment.
At this moment three men, all of them known to the reader, entered the court; one was our old acquaintance Fullalove, another was of course Vespasian; and the third was the missing plaintiff.
A buzz announced his arrival; and expectation rose high. Mr. Colt called him with admirably feigned nonchalance; he stepped into the box, and there was a murmur of surprise and admiration at his bright countenance and manly bearing.
Of course to give his evidence would be to write "Hard Cash" over again.
It is enough to say that his examination in chief lasted all that day, and an hour of the next.
Colt took him into the asylum, and made him say what he had suffered there to swell the damages. The main points his examination in chief established were his sanity during his whole life, the money settled on him, the means the doctors took to irritate him, and then sign him excited, the subserviency of his uncle to his father, the double motive his father had in getting him imprisoned; the business of the L. 14,000.
When Colt sat down at eleven o'clock on the second day, the jury looked indignant, and the judge looked very grave, and the case very black.
Mr. Saunders electrified his attorney by saying, "My advice is, don't cross-examine him."Heathfield implored him not to take so strange a course.
On this Saunders shrugged his shoulders, rose, and cross-examined Alfred about the vision of one Captain Dodd he had seen, and about his suspicions of his father. "Had not Richard Hardie always been a kind and liberal father?" To this he assented. "Had he not sacrificed a large fortune to his creditors?" Plaintiff believed so. "On reflection, then, did not plaintiff think he must have been under an illusion?" No; he had gone by direct evidence.
Confining himself sagaciously to this one question, and exerting all his skill and pertinacity, Saunders succeeded in convincing the court that the Hard Cash was a myth: a pure chimera. The defendant's case looked up;for there are many intelligent madmen with a single illusion.
The re-examination was of course very short, but telling; for Alfred swore that Miss Julia Dodd had helped him to carry home the phantom of her father, and that Miss Dodd had a letter from her father to say that he was about to sail with the other phantom, the L. 14,000.
Here Mr. Saunders interposed, and said that evidence was inadmissible.
Let him call Miss Dodd.
_Colt._--How do you know I'm not going to call her?
_The Judge._-- If you are, it is superfluous; if not, it is inadmissible.