THE TRIAL OF FRANK MERRILL
know him to be, there would be another reason why he should not excite suspicion in this way."
His address covered the greater part of a day—but he returned to the scene in the garden, to the supposed meeting of the two men, and to the murder.
Saul Arthur Mann, sitting with Frank's solicitor, scratched his nose and grinned.
"I have never heard a more ingenious piece of reconstruction," he said; "though, of course, the whole thing is palpably absurd."
As a theory it was no doubt excellent; but men are not sentenced to death on theories, however ingenious they may be. Probably nobody in the court so completely admired the ingenuity as the man most affected. At the lunch interval on the day on which this theory was put forward he met his solicitor and Saul Arthur Mann in the bare room in which such interviews are permitted.
"It was really fascinating to hear him," said Frank, as he sipped the cup of tea which
227
