Still, there was the assignation, and the undisputed meeting between Smethurst and Kershaw, and those two and a half hours of a foggy evening to satisfactorily account for." The man in the corner made a long pause, keeping the girl on tenterhooks.

He had fidgeted with his bit of string till there was not an inch of it free from the most complicated and elaborate knots.
"I assure you," he resumed at last, "that at that very moment the whole mystery was, to me, as clear as daylight.

I only marvelled how his Honour could waste his time and mine by putting what he thought were searching questions to the accused relating to his past.

Francis Smethurst, who had quite shaken off his somnolence, spoke with a curious nasal twang, and with an almost imperceptible soupcon of foreign accent, He calmly denied Kershaw's version of his past; declared that he had never been called Barker, and had certainly never been mixed up in any murder case thirty years ago.
"'But you knew this man Kershaw,' persisted his Honour, 'since you wrote to him ?' "'Pardon me, your Honour,' said the accused quietly, 'I have never, to my knowledge, seen this man Kershaw, and I can swear that I never wrote to him.' "'Never wrote to him ?' retorted his Honour warningly.

'That is a strange assertion to make when I have two of your letters to him in my hands at the present moment.' "'I never wrote those letters, your Honour,' persisted the accused quietly, 'they are not in my handwriting.' "'Which we can easily prove,' came in Sir Arthur Inglewood's drawly tones, as he handed up a packet to his Honour; 'here are a number of letters written by my client since he has landed in this country, and some of which were written under my very eyes.' "As Sir Arthur Inglewood had said, this could be easily proved, and the prisoner, at his Honour's request, scribbled a few lines, together with his signature, several times upon a sheet of note-paper.