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Pennington, K.C., and Mr. Vodrey, K.C., engaged by the plaintiff, and Mr. Cass, K.C., and Mr. Crepitude, K.C., engaged by the defendant. These artistes were the stars of their profession, nominally less glittering, but really far more glittering than the player in scarlet.
His statement that he had no definite reason for pretending to be Leek that it was an impulse of the moment was received with mute derision. His explanation, when questioned as to the evidence of the hotel officials, that more than once his valet Leek had gone about impersonating his master, seemed grotesquely inadequate. People wondered why Crepitude had made no reference to the moles.
Leek?" asked Mr. Crepitude. "Mrs. Farll, if you please," she cheerfully corrected him. "Well, Mrs. Farll, then." "I must say," she remarked conversationally, "it seems queer you should be calling me Mrs. Leek, when they're paying you to prove that I'm Mrs. Farll, Mr. , excuse me, I forget your name."
"I submit to your lordship that my learned friend is putting a leading question," said Vodrey, K.C. "Mr. Crepitude," said the judge, "can you not phrase your questions differently?" "Has your husband any birthmarks er on his body?" Crepitude tried again. "Oh! Moles, you said? You needn't be afraid. Yes, he's got two moles, close together on his neck, here."
This nettled Crepitude, K.C. It nettled him, too, merely to see a witness standing in the box just as if she were standing in her kitchen talking to a tradesman at the door. He was not accustomed to such a spectacle. And though Alice was his own witness he was angry with her because he was angry with her husband. He blushed.
He drew from her an expression of opinion that her husband was the real Priam Farll, but she could give no reasons in support did not seem to conceive that reasons in support were necessary. "Has your husband any moles?" asked Crepitude suddenly. "Any what?" demanded Alice, leaning forward. Vodrey, K.C., sprang up.
At intervals he glanced surreptitiously at the judge, as though the judge had been a bomb with a lighted fuse. The examination started badly, and it went from worse to worse. The idea that this craven, prevaricating figure in the box could be the illustrious, the world-renowned Priam Farll, seemed absurd. Crepitude had to exercise all his self-control in order not to bully Priam.
And she pointed amid silence to the exact spot. Then, noticing the silence, she added, "That's all that I know of." Crepitude resolved to end his examination upon this impressive note, and he sat down. And Alice had Vodrey, K.C., to face. "You met your husband through a matrimonial agency?" he asked. "Yes." "Who first had recourse to the agency?" "I did." "And what was your object?"
Crepitude was beginning again, but he stopped and said to Duncan Farll, "Thank you. You can step down." Then a witness named Justini, a cashier at the Hôtel de Paris, Monte Carlo, swore that Priam Farll, the renowned painter, had spent four days in the Hôtel de Paris one hot May, seven years ago, and that the person in the court whom the defendant stated to be Priam Farll was not that man.
There is, of course, when it is mentioned in a theatre, something exorbitantly funny about even one mole. Two moles together brought the house down. Mr. Crepitude leaned over to a solicitor in front of him; the solicitor leaned aside to a solicitor's clerk, and the solicitor's clerk whispered to Priam Farll, who nodded. "Er " Mr.
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