ted into intimacy, and the girl became the
pliant tool of Birchill, who acquired an almost magnetic influence over
her. As the intimacy progressed she seemed to have become a willing
partner in his criminal schemes.

When Sir Horace Fewbanks heard that the girl had drifted into an
association with a criminal like Birchill he endeavoured to save her from
her folly by remonstrating with her, and the girl promised to give up
Birchill, but did not do so. When Sir Horace found out that he was being
deceived he was compelled to renounce her. Birchill, who had been living
on the girl, was furious with anger when he learnt that Sir Horace had
cut off the monetary allowance he had been making her, and, on
discovering by some means that his former prison associate Hill was now
the butler at Sir Horace Fewbanks's house, he planned his revenge. He
sent the girl Fanning to Riversbrook with a message to Hill, directing
him, under threat of exposure, to see him at the Westminster flat.

Hill, who dreaded nothing so much as an exposure of that past life of his
which he hoped was a secret between his master and himself, kept the
appointment. Birchill told him he intended to rob the judge's house in
order to revenge himself on Sir Horace for cutting off the girl's
allowance, and he asked Hill to assist him in carrying out the burglary.
Hill strenuously demurred at first, but weakly allowed himself to be
terrorised into compliance under Birchill's threats of exposure. Hill's
participation in the crime was to be confined to preparing a plan of
Riversbrook as a guide for Birchill. Birchill said nothing about murder
at this time, but there is no doubt he contemplated violence when he
first spoke to Hill. When Hill, alarmed by his master's return on the
actual night for which the burglary had been arranged, hurried across to
the flat to urge Birchill to abandon the contemplated burglary, Birchill
obstinately decided to carry out the crime, and left the flat with a
revolver in his hand, threatening to murder Sir Horace if he found him,
because of his harsh treatment--as he termed it--of the girl Fanning.

"Birchill left the flat at nine o'clock," continued Mr. Walters, who had
now reached the vital facts of the night of the murder. "I ask the jury
to take careful note of the time and the subsequent times mentioned, for
they have an important bearing on the circumstantial evidence against the
accused man. He returned, according to Hill's evide