The Shadow of a Crime Part 63

"Nowt o' t' sort," with a growl.

"Were you captured by the King's soldiers, and branded with a hot iron, as a spy of their own who was suspected of betraying them?"

"It's a' a lie. I were never brandet."

"Pull up the right sleeves of your jerkin and sark."

The witness refused.

Justice Hide called on the keeper to do so.

The witness resisted, but the sleeves were drawn up to the armpit. The flesh showed three clear marks as of an iron band.

The man was hurried away, amid hissing in the court.

The next witness was the constable, Jonathan Briscoe. He described being sent after Wilson early on the day following that agent's departure from Carlisle. His errand was to bring back the prisoner. He arrived at Wythburn in time to be present at the inquest. The prisoner Stagg was then brought up and discharged.

Ralph asked if it was legal to accuse a man a second time of the same offence.

Justice Millet ruled that the discharge of a coroner (even though he were a resident justice as well) was no acquittal.

The witness remembered how at the inquiry the defendant Ray had defended his accomplice. He had argued that it was absurd to suppose that a man of Stagg's strength could have killed Wilson by a fall.

Only a more powerful man could have done so.

"Had you any doubt as to who that more powerful man might be?"

"None, not I. I knew that the man whose game it was to have the warrant was the likest man to have grabbed it. It warn't on the body.

There was not a sc.r.a.p of evidence against Ray, or I should have taken him then and there."

"You tried to take him afterwards, and failed."

"That's true enough. The man has the muscles of an ox."

The next two witnesses were a laborer from Wythburn, who spoke again to pa.s.sing Sim on the road on the night of the murder, and meeting Wilson a mile farther north, and Sim's landlord, who repeated his former evidence.

There was a stir in the court as counsel announced his last witness. A woman among the spectators was muttering something that was inaudible except to the few around her. The woman was Mrs. Garth. w.i.l.l.y Ray stood near her, but could not catch her words.

The witness stepped into the box. There was no expression of surprise on Ralph's face when he saw who stood there to give evidence against him. It was the man who had been known in Lancaster as his "Shadow"; the same that had (with an earlier witness) been Robbie Anderson's companion in his night journey on the coach; the same that pa.s.sed Robbie as he lay unconscious in Reuben Thwaite's wagon; the same that had sat in the bookseller's snug a week ago; the same that Mrs. Garth had recognized in the corridor that morning; the same that Justice Hide had narrowly scrutinized when he rose in the court to claim the honor of ferreting the facts out of the woman Rushton.

He gave the name of Mark Wilson.

"Your name again?" said Justice Hide, glancing at a paper in his hand.

"Mark Wilson."

Justice Hide beckoned the sheriff and whispered something. The sheriff crushed his way into an inner room.

"The deceased James Wilson was your brother?"

"He was."

"Tell my lords and the jury what you know of this matter."

"My brother was a zealous agent of our gracious King," said the witness, speaking in a tone of great humility. "He even left his home--his wife and family--in the King's good cause."

At this moment Sim was overtaken by faintness. He staggered, and would have fallen. Ralph held him up, and appealed to the judges for a seat and some water to be given to his friend. The request was granted, and the examination continued.

The witness was on the point of being dismissed when the sheriff re-entered, and, making his way to the bench, handed a book to Justice Hide. At the same instant Sim's attention seemed to be arrested to the most feverish alertness. Jumping up from the seat on which Ralph had placed him, he cried out in a thin shrill voice, calling on the witness to remain. There was breathless silence in the court.

"You say that your brother," cried Sim,--"G.o.d in heaven, what a monster he was!--you say that he left his wife and family. Tell us, did he ever go back to them?"

"No."

"Did you ever hear of money that your brother's wife came into after he'd deserted her--that was what he did, your lordships, deserted her and her poor babby--did you ever hear of it?"

"What if I did?" replied the witness, who was apparently too much taken by surprise to fabricate a politic falsehood.

"Did you know that the waistrel tried to get hands on the money for himself?"

Sim was screaming out his questions, the sweat standing in round drops on his brow. The judges seemed too much amazed to remonstrate.

"Tell us, quick. Did he try to get hands on it?"

"Perhaps; what then?"

"And did he get it?"

"No."

"And why not--why not?"

The anger of the witness threw him off his guard.

"Because a cursed scoundrel stepped in and threatened to hang him if he touched the woman's money."

"Aye, aye! and who was that cursed scoundrel?"

No answer.

"Who, quick, who?"

"That man there!" pointing to Ralph.

Loud murmurs came from the people in the court. In the midst of them a woman was creating a commotion. She insisted on going out. She cried aloud that she would faint. It was Mrs. Garth again. The sheriff leaned over the table to ask if these questions concerned the inquiry, but Sim gave no time for protest. He never paused to think if his inquiries had any bearing on the issue.

"And now tell the court your name."

"I have told it."