United States or Pakistan ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
"Have a talk with Singa Phut? Why sure, if it will do you any good," said the headquarters man when the colonel had made known his desire. "I was going to the jail on another matter, anyhow, and I might as well kill two birds as one. They'll let you see him if I'm with you. Otherwise you'd have to get an order from the prosecutor's office. Come along."
He immediately constituted himself prosecutor, set his emissaries at work to secure a coroner's inquest suited to his cruel purposes; set out for the place in person, to take care that the prisoner should not escape; insulted him in jail, in the most inhuman manner; employed a whole army of attorneys and agents, to spirit up and carry on a most virulent prosecution; practised all the unfair methods that could be invented, in order that the unhappy gentleman should be transported to Newgate, from the healthy prison to which he was at first committed; endeavoured to inveigle him into destructive confessions; and, not to mention other more infamous arts employed in the affair of evidence, attempted to surprise him upon his trial in the absence of his witnesses and counsel, contrary to a previous agreement with the prosecutor's own attorney.
"That is the prosecutor's business," interrupted Maslenikoff, somewhat vexed. "Now, you say that trials must be speedy and just. It is the duty of the assistant prosecutor to visit the prisons and see that no one is innocently kept there. But these assistants do nothing but play cards." "So you can do nothing for them?"
"The Magistrate having granted the Public Prosecutor's application, the accused Krishni went into the witness-box, and, on being examined by Mr. Little, made the following confession: I am a mill-hand employed at the Jubilee Mill.
"What was the prosecutor's name? "shouted Dave. "Waterman." "So called because he opens the carriage-doors," I remarked involuntarily. "Do you know him, Collins?" persisted Dave. "I neither know him nor do I feel any aching void in consequence," I replied, pointedly interpolating, in two places, the quidnunc's flowers of speech. "How did the evidence go, mate?" asked the young fellow greedily.
The tall Cointet went back to Angouleme to be present at Petit-Claud's wedding, with a mind at rest as to the future. Petit-Claud had sold his professional connection, and was only waiting for M. Milaud's promotion to take the public prosecutor's place, which had been promised to him by the Comtesse du Chatelet.
How could any being believe in Lord Loughborough's telling such a tale? Mrs. K. may have, from ignorance, supposed that a prisoner on trial for his life can be examined by the prosecutor's counsel; but can anyone suppose that such a story as Davison's murder of his old companion could have happened, and no one even heard of it, or of his being hanged, as he must have been, on his own confession?
There was not much new in the papers. Harry Bartlett was still held as a witness, and the prosecutor's detectives were still working on the case. As yet no one had connected Colonel Ashley officially with the matter. The reporters seemed to have missed noting that a celebrated not to say successful detective was the guest of Viola Carwell.
The public prosecutor's seat was already occupied by one of the most skilful of the advocates-general, M. Lehmann, a broad-shouldered Alsatian Israelite, with cunning eyes, whose presence showed that the case was deemed exceptionally important. At last, amidst the heavy tread of gendarmes, Salvat was brought in, at once rousing such ardent curiosity that all the spectators rose to look at him.
At first Conscience instinctively refused that news credence, but in many subtle and convincing ways corroboration drifted in and her father, with his prosecutor's spirit, pieced the fragments together into an unbroken pattern. Until this moment there had lurked in Conscience's heart a faint ghost of hope that somehow the breach would be healed, that Stuart would return.
Word Of The Day