VIII

turned back, and through the exercise of guile unique and his own, succeeded in reengaging the Court in conversation, protesting his respect, denying his contumacy and presently he was continuing the very objection because of which he had been told to sit down. He did sit down, but long after, when he was ready, when he had succeeded in having his say and his way. Then when at last he did sit down it was with an air of mastery that would have become Napoleon at Marengo. At the moment he was not a lawyer merely, he was an actor, quasi-Shakespearian, a compound of irony and good humor, Falstaff and Mercutio in one.

All this, however, was, to vary the metaphor, but the preliminary canter. That Loftus had been killed was shown and admitted. But it had not been shown nor was it admitted that the defendant was the man. This defect a star witness was to repair. The star was Harris.

Yet, though a star, he looked ghastly. Whether ill or not, he was at least ill at ease. The smug, household-servant air had gone. He seemed to have come from turmoils in Tatterdemalia. He was bruised, dirty, unshorn. But the story which he had brought to the Chronicle he repeated, with embellishments at that. After retailing the tale, precising the motive and elaborating on it, he declared that the love of the defendant’s wife for Loftus was common talk⁠—evidence which, though hearsay, Orr indifferently let pass.

Then, after identifying a pistol as the property of Annandale⁠—an exhibit marked A which Peacock had already tried but, held up by Orr, had not wholly succeeded in fitting to the crime⁠—Harris swore that on the night of the murder, at five minutes after twelve, in the room which he occupied at the top of Annandale’s house and which overlooked Gramercy Park, he heard a shot; that going to the window he looked out, that he could distinguish nothing, but that going then to the hall he heard someone coming in the house and looking down saw the defendant enter.