wrapped it round half-a-crown and pushed it across the heads of the mob
to a police sergeant. He gave it to Sabre. Sabre snatched the thing as
if he was mad at it, and read it, and buzzed it on the floor and ground
his heel on it. Just to show me, I suppose. Nice! Poor devil, my
gooseberry eyes went up about ten degrees. Bit later I had another shot.
I--well, I'll come to that in a minute."

III

"They pushed off the case with the obvious witnesses--police, doctor,
and so on. Then the thing hardened down. Then Sabre saw what was coming
at him--saw it at a clap and never had remotely dreamt of it; saw it
like a tiger coming down the street to devour him; saw it like the lid
of hell slowly slipping away before his eyes. Saw it! I was watching
him. He saw it; and things--age, greyness, lasting and immovable
calamity--I don't know what--frightful things--came down on his face
like the dust of ashes settling on a polished surface.

"You see, what this Humpo fiend was laying out for was, first that Sabre
was the father of the girl's child, second that he'd deliberately put
the poison in her way, and brutally told her he was done with her, and
gone off and left her so that she should do what she had done and he be
rid of her. Yes. Yes, old man. And he'd got a case! By the living Jingo,
he'd got such a case as a Crown prosecutor only dreams about after a
good dinner and three parts of a bottle of port. There wasn't a thing,
there wasn't an action or a deed or a thought that Sabre had done for
months and months past but bricked him in like bricking a man into a
wall, but tied him down like tying a man in a chair with four fathoms of
rope. By the living Jingo, there wasn't a thing.

"Listen. Just listen and see for yourself. Worked off the police
evidence and the doctor, d'you see? Then--'Mr. Bright!' Old man comes
up into the box. Stands there massive, bowed with grief, chest heaving,
voice coming out of it like an organ in the Dead March. Stands there
like Lear over the body of Cordelia. Stands there like the father of
Virginia thinking of Appius Claudius.

"Like this, his evidence went: Was father of the deceased woman (as they
called her). Was employed as foreman at Fortune, East and Sabre's. Had
seen the body and identified it. So on, so on.

"Then Humpo gets on to him. Was his daughter the sort of girl to
meditate taking her life?--'Never! Never!' Great rending cry that went
down to your marrow.

"Touching the t