IFICATION

The court room was crowded on every side. There was barely space for
another person to enter in comfort, and when the news went round in the
street that Sir Nigel Merriton, late of the army, was being tried for his
life, and that things were going pretty black against him, all London
seemed to turn out with a morbid curiosity to hear the sentence of death
passed.

Petrie, stationed at the door, spent most of his time waving a
white-gloved hand, and shaking his head until he felt that it would
shortly tumble off his neck and roll away upon the pavement. Mr. Narkom
had given him instructions that if any one of "any importance in the
affair in question" should turn up, he was to admit him, but to be
adamant in every other case. And so the queue of morbid-minded women and
idle men grew long and longer, and the clamour louder and louder, until
the tempers of the police on guard grew very short, and the crowd was
handled more and more firmly.

The effect of this began to tell. Slowly it thinned out and the people
turned once more into the Strand, sauntering along with their heads half
the time over their shoulders, while Petrie stood and mopped his face and
wondered what had become of Mr. Cleek, or if he had turned up in one of
his many _aliases_, and he hadn't recognized him.

"Like as not that's what's happened," he told himself, stuffing his
thumbs into his policeman's belt and setting his feet apart. "But what
gets over me is, not a sight 'ave I seen of young Dollops. And where Mr.
Cleek is.... Well, that there young feller is bound to be, too. Case is
drawin' to a close, I reckon, by this time. I wouldn't be in _that_ young
lord's shoes!"

He shook his head at the thought, and fell to considering the matter and
in a most sympathetic frame of mind if the truth be told.

Half-an-hour passed, another sped by. The crowd now worried him very
little, and judging from one or two folk that drifted out of the court
room, with rather pale faces and set mouths, as though they had heard
something that sickened them, and were going to be out of it before the
end came, Petrie began to think that that end was approaching very near.

And he hadn't seen Mr. Cleek go into the place, or Dollops either! Funny
thing that. In his phone message that morning, Mr. Cleek had said he
would be at the court sharp at one, and it was half-past two now. Well,
he was sorry the guv'nor hadn't turned up in time. He'd be disappointed,