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His face lit up, it lost its expression of apathetic fatigue; and his first quick questions showed him a keen and clever cross-examiner. At once he seized on the real mystery, and that though the Senator had not made more of it than he could help. That was the discrepancy in the account given by the Poulains and by Mrs. Dampier respectively as to the lady's arrival at the hotel.
The keenest lawyer in our county is not so clever a cross-examiner as his sister when she sits with her needles and yarn. Questions directed at one can be parried. You expect them and dodge. The woman knits and knits, and lulls you half to sleep, and then in a far-away voice asks questions.
An amusing incident is recorded of how a feminine witness turned the laugh upon Mr. Francis L. Wellman, the noted cross-examiner. In his book he takes the opportunity to advise his lawyer readers to "avoid the mistake, so common among the inexperienced, of making much of trifling discrepancies.
The eyes of the cruel cross-examiner, veiled under half-closed lids, were regarding the boy with so curious an expression that under their scrutiny Mannie, in embarrassment, moved uneasily. "I guess that's right," he repeated. To his surprise, the District Attorney rose from his comfortable position and, leaning across the table, held out his hand. Mannie took it awkwardly.
The truth could be seen at a glance at the clean-cut, handsome, but too expressive profile of the crushing cross-examiner of female witnesses and insolent foe to the police.
Now if Zoe had been an Old Bailey counsel, she would have kept him to the point, reminded him that his visitor was unseen, and fixed a voluntary falsehood on him; but she was not an experienced cross-examiner, and perhaps she was at heart as indignant at the detective as at the falsehood: so she missed her advantage, and said, indignantly, "And what business had you with a detective?
"Never had a grain, dear boy, since I can remember," murmured Bertie apologetically. "You took all the rawness off me at Eton." "And you've been taking coffee in bed, I'll swear!" pursued the cross-examiner. "What if he have? Beauty's condition can't be upset by a little mocha, nor mine either," said his universal defender; and the Seraph shook his splendid limbs with a very pardonable vanity.
I handed the mail to you when you met me on the porch." Mr. Sloane, raising himself on one elbow to take the restoring drink from Jarvis, looked across the glass at his cross-examiner. "I put the mail in the basket on the hall table," he said in high-keyed endeavour to express withering contempt. "If it had been for me, Jarvis would have brought it to me later.
"Describe this here woman!" ordered Donohue, who loved to drag in details at a trial, not so much for the sake of the details themselves as to show his skill as a cross-examiner. "Well, sir," complied Weil, "I should say she's about twenty-five years old. It's hard to tell about those Italian women, but I should say she's about twenty-five or maybe twenty-six.
After the cigars were lighted and the fragrant clouds of tobacco smoke were rising, he reopened the conversation. And now, in an easy, diplomatic way, he took his turn at questioning. It was pretty thorough pumping, managed with the skill of an experienced cross-examiner.
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