Part 32 (1/2)
IS THIS MAN RIGHT?
A murmur of astonishment ran through the court as the witness made his last reply, and those most closely interested in him turned and looked at each other with obvious amazement. And for a moment Mr.
Millington-Bywater seemed to be at a loss; in the next he bent forward toward the witness-box and fixed the man standing there with a piercing look.
”Do you seriously tell us, on your oath, that these papers--your papers, if you are what you claim to be--were stolen from you many years ago, and have only just been restored to you?” he asked. ”On your oath, mind!”
”I do tell you so,” answered the witness quietly. ”I am on oath.”
The magistrate glanced at Mr. Millington-Bywater.
”What is the relevancy of this--in relation to the prisoner and the charge against him?” he inquired. ”You have some point, of course?”
”The relevancy is this, Your Wors.h.i.+p,” replied Mr. Millington-Bywater: ”Our contention is that the papers referred to were until recently in the custody of John Ashton, the murdered man--I can put a witness in the box who can give absolute proof of that, a highly reputable witness, who is present,--and that John Ashton was certainly murdered by some person or persons who, for purposes of their own, wished to gain possession of them. Now, we know that they are in possession of the present witness, or rather, of his solicitors, to whom he has handed them. I mean to prove that Ashton was murdered in the way, and for the reason I suggest, and that accordingly the prisoner is absolutely innocent of the charge brought against him. I should therefore like to ask this witness to tell us how he regained possession of these papers, for I am convinced that in what he can tell us lies the secret of Ashton's murder. Now,” he continued, turning again to the witness as the magistrate nodded a.s.sent, ”we will a.s.sume for the time being that you are what you represent yourself to be--the Lord Marketstoke who disappeared from England thirty-five years ago. You have just heard what I said to His Wors.h.i.+p--about these papers, and what I put forward as regards their connection with the murder of John Ashton? Will you tell us how you lost those papers, and more particularly, how you recently regained possession of them? You see the immense, the vital importance of this to the unfortunate young fellow in the dock?”
”Who,” answered the witness with a calm smile, ”is quite and utterly mistaken in thinking that he knew me in America, for I have certainly never set foot in America, neither North nor South, in my life! I am very much surprised indeed to be forced into publicity as I have been this morning--I came here as a merely curious spectator and had no idea whatever that I should be called into this box. But if any evidence of mine can establish, or help to establish, the prisoner's innocence, I will give it only too gladly.”
”Much obliged to you, sir,” said Mr. Millington-Bywater, who, in Viner's opinion, was evidently impressed by the witness's straightforward tone and candid demeanour.
”Well, if you will tell us--in your own way--about these papers, now--always remembering that we have absolute proof that until recently they were in the possession of John Ashton? Let me preface whatever you choose to tell us with a question: Do you know that they were in possession of John Ashton?”
”I have no more idea or knowledge of whose hands they were in, and had been in, for many years, until they were restored to me, than the man in the moon has!” affirmed the witness. ”I'll tell you the whole story--willingly: I could have told it yesterday to certain gentlemen, whom I see present, if they had not treated me as an impostor as soon as they saw me. Well,”--here he folded his hands on the ledge of the witness-box, and quietly fixing his eyes on the examining counsel, proceeded to speak in a calm, conversational tone--”the story is this: I left England about five-and-thirty years ago after certain domestic unpleasantnesses which I felt so much that I determined to give up all connection with my family and to start an absolutely new life of my own.
I went away to Australia and landed there under the name of Wickham. I had a certain amount of money which had come to me from my mother. I speculated with it on my arrival, somewhat foolishly, no doubt, and I lost it--every penny.
”So then I was obliged to work for my living. I went up country, and for some time worked as a miner in the Bendigo district. I had been working in this way perhaps fourteen months when an accident occurred in the mine at which I was engaged. There was a serious fall of earth and masonry; two or three of my fellow-workers were killed on the spot, and I was taken up for dead. I was removed to a local hospital--there had been some serious injury to my head and spine, but I still had life in me, and I was brought round. But I remained in hospital, in a sort of semiconscious state, for a long time--months. When I went back, after my discharge, to my quarters--nothing but a rough shanty which I had shared with many other men--all my possessions had vanished. Among them, of course, were the papers I had kept, and a packet of letters written to me by my mother when I was a schoolboy at Eton.
”Of course, I knew at once what had happened--some one of my mates, believing me to be dead, had appropriated all my belongings and gone off with them. There was nothing at all to be wondered at in that--it was the usual thing in such a society. And I knew there was nothing to do but to accept my loss philosophically.”
”Did you make no effort to recover your possessions?” asked Mr.
Millington-Bywater.
”No,” answered the witness with a quiet smile. ”I didn't! I knew too much of the habits of men in mining centers to waste time in that way. A great many men had left that particular camp during my illness--it would have been impossible to trace each one. No--after all, I had left England in order to lose my ident.i.ty, and now, of course, it was gone. I went away into quite another part of the country--into Queensland. I began trading in Brisbane, and I did very well there, and remained there many years.
Then I went farther south, to Sydney--and I did very well there too. It was in Sydney, years after that, that I saw the advertis.e.m.e.nts in the newspapers, English and Colonial, setting forth that my father was dead, and asking for news of myself. I took no notice of them--I had not the least desire to return to England, no wish for the t.i.tle, and I was quite content that my youngest brother should get that and the estates. So I did nothing; n.o.body knew who I really was--”
”One moment!” said Mr. Millington-Bywater. ”While you were at the mining-camp, in the Bendigo district, did you ever reveal your secret to any of your fellow-miners?”
”Never!” answered the witness. ”I never revealed it to a living soul until I told my solicitor there, Mr. Methley, after my recent arrival in London.”
”But of course, whoever stole your letters and so on, would discover, or guess at, the truth?” suggested Mr. Millington-Bywater.
”Oh, of course, of course!” said the witness. ”Well as I was saying, I did nothing--except to keep an eye on the papers. I saw in due course that leave to presume my death had been given, and that my younger brother had a.s.sumed the t.i.tle, and administered the estate, and I was quite content. The fact was, I was at that time doing exceedingly well, and I was too much interested in my doings to care about what was going on in England. All my life,” continued the witness, with a slight smile, ”I have had a--I had better call it a weakness--for speculating; and when I had got a goodly sum of money together by my trading venture in Brisbane and Sydney, I began speculating again, in Melbourne chiefly.
And--to cut my story short--last year I had one of my periodic bad turns of fortune: I lost a lot of money. Now, I am, as you see, getting on in life, over sixty--and it occurred to me that if I came over to England and convinced my nephew, the present holder of the t.i.tle and estates, that I am really who I am, he would not be averse--we have always been a generous family--to giving me enough to settle down on in Australia for the rest of my days. Perhaps I had better say at once, since we are making matters so very public, that I do not want the t.i.tle, nor the estate; I will be quite candid and say what I do want--enough to let me live in proper comfort in Australia, whither I shall again repair as soon as I settle my affairs here.”
Mr. Millington-Bywater glanced at the magistrate and then at the witness.
”Well, now, these papers?” he said. ”You didn't bring them to London with you?”
”Of course not!” answered the witness. ”I had not seen or heard of them for thirty-two years! No I relied, on coming to this country, on other things to prove my ident.i.ty, such as my knowledge of Marketstoke and Ellingham, my thorough acquaintance with the family history, my recollection of people I had known, like Mr. Carless, Mr. Driver, and their clerk, Mr. Portlethwaite, and on the fact that I lost this finger through a shooting accident when I was a boy, at Ellingham. Curiously,”
he added with another smile, ”these things don't seem to have much weight. But no! I had no papers when I landed here.”