VER the rest of that night I shall draw a veil. I was taken to Newgate, immured in the condemned cell, and left to my reflections. They were sombre enough, I assure you. Young, ambitious, ardent, I sat there in that foreign prison, without a friend, without a hope. If I state the truth about myself, this excuse will be seized for sending me back to France. And what then? Another prison! If I keep my identity concealed, how shall I prove that I am not the burgling musician?

As you can well imagine, I slept little and dreamed much. I was only thankful I had no parents to mourn my loss, for by this time I had quite made up my mind that the organ-grinder's antecedents would certainly hang me.

I cursed Fisher, I cursed the League, I cursed F. II, that indefatigable conspirator who had dragged me from a comfortable hotel and a safe alias to—what? The scaffold; ah, yes, the scaffold!

It may sound amusing now, when I am still unhanged; but it was far from amusing then, I assure you.

Well, the morning broke at last, and I was led, strongly escorted by the twins Lecoq and Holmes, towards the venerable law-court at Westminster. I recognized the judge, the jury, the witnesses, and the counsel, though my thoughts were too engrossed to take a careful note of these. In fact, in writing this account I am to some extent dependent on reports of other trials. They are all much the same, I understand, differing chiefly as one or more judges sit upon the bench.

In this case there was only one, a little gentleman with a shrewd eye and a dry voice—a typical hanging judge, I said to myself. I prepared for the worst.

First comes the formal accusation. I, giving the name of Dugald Cellarini am a blood-thirsty burglar. Such, in brief, is the charge, although its deadly significance is partly obscured by the discreet phraseology of the law.

Then my friend Holmes enters the box, stiff and evidently nervous, and in a halting voice and incoherent manner (which in France would inevitably have led to his being placed in the dock himself) he describes the clever way I was caught by himself and the astute Lecoq. So misleading is his account of my guilty demeanor and suspicious conduct, that I instantly resolve to cross-examine him. Politely but firmly I request the judge's permission. It is granted, and I can see there is a stir of excitement in the court.

“Did I struggle with you?” I ask.

Holmes, turning redder than ever, admits that I did not.

“Did I knock you down? Did I seek to escape?”

No, Holmes was not knocked down, nor had I tried to escape from the representatives of the law.

“And why, if I was a burglar, did I not do these things?”

“You wasn't big enough,” says Holmes.

Well, I admit he had the advantage of me there. The court, prejudiced against me as they were, laughed with Holmes, but at the next bout I returned his lunge with interest.

“What did Fisher give you to drink?” I ask.

The question is dismissed by my vindictive judge as irrelevant, but I have thrown Holmes into great confusion and made the court smile with me.

“That is all,” I say, in the tone of a conqueror, and thereupon Lecoq takes the place of Holmes, and in precisely the same manner, and with the same criminal look of abasement, repeats almost exactly the same words.

Against him I design a different line of counterattack. I remember his jealousy when I spoke of the servants, and, if possible, I shall discredit his testimony by an assault upon his character. Assuming an encouraging air, I ask:

“You know the servants at Fisher's house?”

He stammers, “Yes.”

“With one in particular you are well acquainted?”

He looks at the judge for protection, but so little is my line of attack suspected that the judge only gazes at us in rapt attention.

“I do,” says Lecoq, after a horribly incriminating pause.

“Now tell me this,” I demand, sternly. “Have you always behaved towards her as an honorable policeman?”

Would you believe it? This question also is disallowed! But I think I have damaged Lecoq all the same.

Next comes Fisher, red-faced, more pompous than ever, and inspired, I can see, with vindictive hatred towards myself. It appears that he is a London merchant; that his daughter heard a tapping on her window and called her father; that he and his servant caught me in the act of entering the chaste bedchamber through a broken window.

At this point I ask if I may put a question. The judge says yes.

“How much glass fell out?” I ask.

“Half a pane,” says he.

“And the rest stayed in?”

He has to admit that it did; very ungraciously, however.

“How many panes to the window?”

He cannot answer this; but the judge, much to my surprise, comes to the rescue and elicits the fact that there are six.

“How far had I gone through a twelfth of your window?” I ask.

His face gets redder, and there is a laugh through the court. I feel that I have “scored a try,” as they say, and my spirits begin to rise again.

But, alas! they are soon damped. Mrs. Thompson's butler steps into the witness-box, and a more shameless liar I have never heard. Yes, he remembers an organ-grinder coming to the house on various occasions during the past fortnight. Here I interpose.

“What did he play?” I ask.

“Not being interested in such kinds of music, I cannot say.”

“Possibly you have a poor ear?” I suggest.

“My ear is as right as some people's, but it has not been accustomed to the hand-organ,” says the butler, with a magnificence that seems to impress even the judge.

“You should have it boxed, my friend,” I cannot help retorting, though I fear this does not meet the unqualified approval of the judge.

Next he is asked for an account of his dealings with the musician when that gentleman visited the kitchen upon the night of the burglary, and it appears that, shortly after the grinder's departure, he lost consciousness with a completeness and rapidity that can only have been caused by some insidious drug surreptitiously introduced into the glass of beer he happened to be finishing at that moment. He scorns the insinuation (made by myself) that he and the musician were drinking together; he would not so far demean himself. That outcast did, however, on one occasion, approach suspiciously near his half-empty glass.

“Well,” I remark, with a smile, “the moral Is that next time you should provide your guests with glasses of their own.”

Again I score, but quickly he has his revenge. Does he recognize me as the organ-grinder? he is asked. He is not sure of the face, not taking particular notice of persons of that description, but—he is ready to swear to my voice!

It seems, then, that I have the same accent as an Italian organ-grinder! I bow ironically, but the sarcasm, I fear, is lost.

“What is so distinctive about this voice I share with your Italian boon companion?” I inquire, suavely.

He evidently dislikes the innuendo, but, in the presence of so many of his betters, decides to retaliate only by counter-sarcasm. “It's what I call an unedicated voice,” says he.

“Uneducated Italian or uneducated English?” I inquire.

“Italian,” he replies, with the most consummate assurance.

“You know Italian?”

“Having travelled in Italy, I am not altogether unfamiliar,” he answers.

I then put to him a simple Italian sentence.

“What does that mean, and is it educated or uneducated?” I ask.

“It means something that I should not care for his lordship to hear, and is the remark of a thoroughly uneducated person,” he retorts.

The court roars, and some even cheer the witness. For myself, I am compelled to join the laughter—the impudence is so colossal.

“My lord,” I say to the judge, “this distinguished scholar has so delicate a mind that I should only scandalize him by asking further questions.”

So the butler retires with such an air of self-satisfaction that I could have shot him, and the gagged cook takes his place.

This young woman is not ill-looking, and is very abashed at having to make this public appearance. It appears that her glimpse of the burglar was brief, as with commendable prudence he rapidly fastened her night-shift over her head, but in that glimpse she recognized my mustache!

“Could she tell how it felt?” I ask.

The point is appreciated by the court, though not, I fear, by the judge, who looks at me as though calculating the drop he should allow. Yes, it is all very well to jest about my mustache, but to be hanged by it, that is a different affair. And the case is very black against me.

“Has the prisoner any witnesses to call?” asks the judge.

“No,” I reply, “but I shall make you a speech.”

And thereupon I delight them with the following oration, an oration which should have gone on much longer than it did but for a most unforeseen interruption.

“My lord, the jury, and my peers,” I begin—remembering so much from my historical stories—“I am entirely guiltless of this extraordinary and infamous charge. No one but such a man as Fisher would have brought it!” [Here I point my finger at the unhappy tenant of Chickawungaree.]

“No one else of the brave English would have stooped to injure an innocent and defenceless stranger! As to the butler and the cook, you have seen their untruthful faces, you have heard their incredible testimony. I say no more regarding them. The policemen have only shown that they found me an unwilling and insulted—though invited—guest of the perfidious Fisher. What harm, then? Have you never been the unwilling guests of a distasteful host?

“Who am I? Why did I visit such a person as Fisher? I shall tell you. I am a French subject, a traveller in England. Only yesterday I arrived in London. How can I, then, have burgled Madame Thompson? Impossible! Absurd! I had not set my foot upon the shores of England—”

At this point the judge, in his dry voice, interrupts me to ask if I can bring any witnesses to prove this assertion.

“Witnesses?” I exclaim, not knowing what the devil to add to this dramatic cry, when, behold! I see, sent by Providence, a young man rising from his seat in the court. It is my fair-haired fellow-passenger!

“May I give evidence?” says he.

“Though your name be Iscariot, yes!” I cry.

The judge frowns, for it seems the demand was addressed to him and not to me; but he permits my acquaintance to enter the box. And now a doubt assails me. What will he say? Add still more damaging testimony, or prove that I am the harmless Bunyan?

He does neither, but in a very composed and assured fashion, that carries conviction with it, he tells the judge that he travelled with me from Paris on the very night of the crime, adding that I had appeared to him a very harmless though somewhat eccentric person. Not the adjectives I should have chosen myself, perhaps; but, I assure you, I should have let him call me vulgar or dirty without a word of protest.

Of course it follows that I cannot be the musical burglar, while as for my friend Fisher, that worthy gentleman is so disconcerted at the turn things have taken that he seems as anxious to withdraw his share of the charge as he was to make it.

I am saved; the case breaks, down.

“How's that?” says the judge.

“Guiltless!” cries the jury.

And so I am a free man once more, and the cook must swear to another mustache.

The first thing I do is to seize my witness and drag him from the court, repeating my thanks all the while.

“But how did you come to be in court?” I ask.

“Oh, I happen to be a barrister!” he explains. “I came in about another case, and, finding you'd been burgling, I thought I'd stay and see the fun.”

“Your case must take care of itself; come and lunch with me.”

Yes, he can escape. His case will not come on to-day, as mine has taken so long; and so we go forth together to begin a friendship that I trust may always endure.

And to this day I have never paid for Fisher's broken pane of glass.