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to you, gentlemen of the jury, that the man is a criminal by instinct and a liar by necessity--the necessity of saving his own skin. He robbed his former master, Lord Melhurst, and he planned to rob his late master, Sir Horace Fewbanks. But knowing that his former crime would be brought against him when the police came to investigate a robbery at Riversbrook he was too cunning to rob Riversbrook himself. He looked about him for an accomplice and he selected Birchill. You heard him say in the witness-box that he drew Birchill a plan of Riversbrook--the plan I now hold in my hand. I will ask you to inspect the plan closely. Hill told us that Birchill terrorised him into drawing this plan by threats of exposure. Exposure of what? His master, Sir Horace Fewbanks, knew he had been in gaol, so what had he to fear from exposure? His proper course, if he were an honest man, would have been to tell his master that Birchill was planning to rob the house and had endeavoured to draw him into the crime. But he did nothing of the kind, for the simple reason that the plan to rob Riversbrook was his own, and not Birchill's. "Now, gentlemen, you have all seen the plan which this tainted witness declares was drawn by him because Birchill terrorised him and stood over him while he drew it. Is there anything in that plan to suggest that it was drawn by a man in a state of nervous terror? Why, the lines are as firmly drawn as if they had been made by an architect working at his leisure in his office. Was this plan drawn by a man in a state of nervous terror with his tormentor standing threateningly over him, or was it drawn up by a man working at leisure, free not only from terror but from interruption? The answer to that question is supplied in the evidence given by three witnesses as to the paper used. Hill says the plan was drawn at the flat. Two other witnesses swore that it was paper supplied exclusively for Government Departments, and another witness swore that he had taken such paper to Riversbrook for the use of Sir Horace Fewbanks, who, like every one of His Majesty's judges, found it necessary to do some of his judicial work at home. What is the inevitable inference? I ask you if you can have any doubt, after looking at that plan and after hearing the evidence given to-day about the paper, that the proposal to rob Riversbrook was Hill's own proposal, that Hill drew a plan of the house on paper he abstracted from his master's desk-
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