“No—not then I didn’t.”
“You suspected nothing and did not recognise him then; yet at a word from your wife you identified the prisoner with the man who stopped your coach, and you have so identified him ever since?”
Witness made the necessary admission, but attempted to explain matters, whereupon Culliford cut him short, and having gained the advantage which Tom had foreseen, passed on to one that was less apparent.
“To return to your fare,” said counsel; “did you notice any valuables upon his outer person? A watch-chain? Rings? A breast-pin in the stock?”
“I did,” was the rather sullen reply.
“Oh, you did; all three?”
“No; a watch-chain and a pin.”
“A watch-chain and a pin. What kind of a pin, now, should you say that it was?”
“A diamond pin.”
“A diamond pin; you can swear it was a diamond, can you?”
“Yes, I can, for I seen it glittering in the light of my near coach-lamp.”
“You saw the diamond glittering in the light of your lamp,” repeated Mr. Serjeant Culliford in his cool, ringing voice; and he sat down unexpectedly, but with an expression so satisfied that Tom lost much of the next evidence (that of the coachman’s wife) in endeavouring to account for it. He had not succeeded when the court adjourned for luncheon, for the hour of acute perceptions was over and had left him dazed, so that the venerable turnkey who had charge of him in the dock had to take him by the arm to make him leave it. Then it was that Tom discovered the public galleries behind
