e--and, as the saying is, I tried to
drown my sorrows."

"But you found that they could swim, didn't you? Now, tell me, among
these sorrows was not the greatest the one to which your former butler
has testified, your late wife's desire for a divorce in order that she
might marry Loftus? Is it not a fact that she told you so, and that
you then said, 'I'll kill him, I'll kill Royal Loftus like the dog
that he is'?"

"I recall no such conversation."

"What, then, was the nature of the conversation that passed between
you and your wife on this particular evening?"

"I don't remember."

"The conversation and the threat to which your butler has sworn may
therefore have occurred without your now recalling it. Is that not
so?"

"Everything is possible, you know," Annandale answered with a phrase
unconsciously borrowed of Orr. "But I doubt it very much for the
reason----"

"Here," interrupted Peacock. "I don't want your doubts or your reasons
or your haha airs. I want answers from you, direct answers. Where did
you go and what did you do after your threat?"

To this Orr objected. A wrangle ensued. Orr was sustained. Peacock
reconstructed his question. Annandale answered that he had gone to
Miss Waldron's, but that he remembered nothing else.

"Is this yours?" Peacock suddenly asked, producing the pistol marked
exhibit A.

"Probably," said Annandale, looking, not at it, but at the ceiling.

"That's all."

Annandale got from the stand. Others succeeded him there, experts for
the defense, men who recited their qualities and degrees as though
they were eating truffles to the sound of trumpets. One after another
they testified that liquor can ablate memory partially, wholly; can
ablate it regarding events antecedent and subsequent to a rememorated
point between; can, moreover, leave the subject in a condition
apparently normal yet actually in a state of trance.

"Do you really regard these people as experts?" Peacock with pitying
contempt asked of Orr. Then at once in rebuttal were other experts,
equally pleased with themselves, humorously disposing of psychical
epilepsy, affecting to regard it as a medicolegal myth. Among the
spectators the usual jest circulated. The mendacious were subdivided
into liars, damned liars, expert witnesses. Yet there you were. But
not Orr. Tortuously he involved the deponents in helpful
contradictions, smiling at them, at Peacock and the jury, smiling
with an air of saying "You see wh