• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

"Are there any further questions?" he asked.

Goldberger pulled at his moustache impatiently.

"There are a lot of questions I'd like to ask," he said, "but I feel a good deal as though I were questioning the Sphinx. Isn't it a little queer that a Thug should be so particular about a few blood-stains?"

"I fear that you are doing Mahbub an injustice in your thoughts," Silva said, gravely. "You have heard certain tales of the Thugs, perhaps--tales distorted and magnified and untrue. In the old days, as worshippers of Kali, they did, sometimes, offer her a human sacrifice; but that was long ago. To say a man is a Thug is not to say he is also a murderer."

"It will take more than that to convict him, anyway," assented Goldberger, quickly. "That is all for the present, professor." I bit back a smile at the title which came so unconsciously from Goldberger's lips.

Silva bowed and walked slowly away toward the house, Mahbub following close behind. At a look from Simmonds, two of his men strolled after the strange couple.

Goldberger stared musingly after them for a moment, then shook his head impatiently, and turned back to the business in hand.

"Will Mr. Swain please take the stand?" he said; and Swain took the chair. "Now, Mr. Swain," Goldberger began, after swearing him, "please tell us, in your own way, of what part you had in the incidents of Thursday night."

Swain told his story much as he had told it to Godfrey and me, and I noticed how closely both Goldberger and the district attorney followed it. When he had finished, Goldberger asked the same question that Godfrey had asked.

"While you were having the altercation with Mr. Vaughan, did you grasp hold of him?"

"No, sir; I did not touch him."

"You are quite sure?"

"Yes, sir."

"You didn't touch him at any time, then or afterwards?"

"No, sir. I didn't see him afterwards."

"What were your feelings when he took his daughter away?"

"I was profoundly grieved."

"And angry?"

"Yes, I suppose I was angry. He was most unjust to me."

"He had used very violent language to you, had he not?"

"Yes."

"He had threatened your life if you tried to see his daughter again?"

"Yes."

"Now, Mr. Swain, as you stood there, angry and humiliated, didn't you make up your mind to follow him to the house and have it out with him?"

Swain smiled.

"I'm lawyer enough to know," he said, "that a question like that isn't permissible. But I'll answer it. I may have had such an impulse--I don't know; but the sight of the cobra there in the arbour put it effectually out of my head."

"You still think there was a cobra?"

"I am sure of it."

"And you ran out of the arbour so fast you bumped your head?"

"I suppose that's what happened. It's mighty sore, anyway," and Swain put his hand to it ruefully.

"Mr. Swain," went on the coroner, slowly, "are you prepared to swear that, after you hurt your head, you might not, in a confused and half-dazed condition, have followed your previous impulse to go to the house and see Mr. Vaughan?"

"Yes," answered Swain, emphatically, "I am. Although I was somewhat dazed, I have a distinct recollection of going straight to the wall and climbing back over it."

"You cut your wrist as you were crossing the wall the first time?"

[Illustration: "I'm lawyer enough to know," he said, "that a question like that is not permissible"]

"Yes," and Swain held up his hand and showed the strip of plaster across the wound.

"Your right wrist?"

"Yes."

"It bled freely, did it not?"

"Very freely."

"What became of the clothes you took off when you changed into those brought by Mr. Godfrey?"

"I don't know. Mr. Lester told me they were left here. I intended to inquire for them."

At a sign from Goldberger, Simmonds opened a suit-case and placed a bundle on the table. Goldberger unrolled it and handed it to Swain.

"Are these the clothes?" he asked.

"Yes," said Swain, after a moment's examination.

"Will you hold the shirt up so the jury can see it?"

Swain held the garment up, and everybody's eyes were fixed upon the blood-soaked sleeve.

"There seems to have