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[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ] Well, said Sir Walter patiently, what was the outline like? Was it, for instance, like the figure of the murdered woman? Not in the least, answered Seymour quietly. What did it look like to you? It looked to me, replied the witness, like a tall man. Everyone in court kept his eyes riveted on his pen, or his umbrella-handle, or his book, or his boots or whatever he happened to be looking at. They seemed to be holding their eyes away from the prisoner by main force; but they felt his figure in the dock, and they felt it as gigantic. Tall as Bruno was to the eye, he seemed to swell taller and taller when all eyes had been torn away from him. Cowdray was resuming his seat with his solemn face, smoothing his black silk robes, and white silk whiskers. Sir Wilson was leaving the witness box, after a few final particulars to which there were many other witnesses, when the counsel for the defense sprang up and stopped him. I shall only detain you a moment, said Mr. Butler, who was a rustic-looking person with red eyebrows and an expression of partial slumber. Will you tell his lordship how you knew it was a man? A faint, refined smile seemed to pass over Seymour s features. I m afraid it is the vulgar test of trousers, he said. When I saw daylight between the long legs I was sure it was a man, after all. Butler s sleepy eyes opened as suddenly as some silent explosion. After all! he repeated slowly. So you did think at first it was a woman? Seymour looked troubled for the first time. It is hardly a point of fact, he said, but if his lordship would like me to answer for my impression, of course I shall do so. There was something about the thing that was not exactly a woman and yet was not quite a man; somehow the curves were different. And it had something that looked like long hair. Thank you, said Mr. Butler, K.C., and sat down suddenly, as if he had got what he wanted. Captain Cutler was a far less plausible and composed witness than Sir Wilson, but his account of the opening incidents was solidly the same. He described the return of Bruno to his dressing room, the dispatching of himself to buy a bunch of lilies-of-the-valley, his return to the upper end of the passage, the thing he saw in the passage, his suspicion of Seymour, and his struggle with Bruno. But he could give little artistic assistance about the black figure that he and Seymour had seen. Asked about its outline, he said he was no art critic with a somewhat too obvious sneer at Seymour. Asked if it was a man or a woman, he said it looked more like a beast with a too obvious snarl at the prisoner. But the man was plainly shaken with sorrow and sincere anger, and Cowdray quickly excused him from confirming facts that were already fairly clear. The defending counsel also was again brief in his cross-examination; although (as was his custom) even in being brief, he seemed to take a long time about it. You used a rather remarkable expression, he said, looking at Cutler sleepily. What do you mean by saying that it looked more like a beast than a man or a woman? Page 39 ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html Cutler seemed seriously agitated. Perhaps I oughtn t to have said that, he said; but when the brute has huge humped shoulders like a chimpanzee, and bristles sticking out of its head like a pig Mr. Butler cut short his curious impatience in the middle. Never mind whether its hair was like a pig s, he said, was it like a woman s? A woman s! cried the soldier. Great Scott, no! The last witness said it was, commented the counsel, with unscrupulous swiftness. And did the figure have any of those serpentine and semi-feminine curves to which eloquent allusion has been made? No? No feminine curves? The figure, if I understand you, was rather heavy and square than otherwise? He may have been bending forward, said Cutler, in a hoarse and rather faint voice. Or again, he may not, said Mr. Butler, and sat down suddenly for the second time. The third, witness called by Sir Walter Cowdray was the little Catholic clergyman, so little, compared with the others, that his head seemed hardly to come above the box, so that it was like cross-examining a child. But unfortunately Sir Walter had somehow got it into his head (mostly by some [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ] |