She had listened to the cross-examination which
revealed Jasper as a scientist with something approaching amazement. She
had known of the laboratory, but had associated the place with those
entertaining experiments that an idle dabbler in chemistry might
undertake.

For a moment she doubted, and searched her mind for some occasion when
he had practiced his medical knowledge. Dimly she realized that there
_had_ been some such occasion, and then she remembered that it had
always been Jasper Cole who had concocted the strange drafts which had
so relieved the headache to which, when she was a little younger, she
had been something of a martyr. Could he--She struggled hard to dismiss
the thought as being unworthy of her; and now, when the object of his
visits to Silvers Rents was under examination, she found her curiosity
growing.

"Why did you go to Silvers Rents?"

There was no answer.

"I will repeat my question: With what object did you go to Silvers
Rents?"

"I decline to answer that question," said the man in the box coolly. "I
merely tell you that I went there frequently."

"And you refuse to say why?"

"I refuse to say why," repeated the witness.

The judge on the bench made a little note.

"I put it to you," said counsel, speaking impressively, "that it was in
Silvers Rents that you took on another identity."

"That is probably true," said the other, and the girl gasped; he was so
cool, so self-possessed, so sure of himself.

"I suggest to you," the counsel went on, "that in those Rents Jasper
Cole became Rex Holland."

There was a buzz of excitement, a sudden soft clamor of voices through
which the usher's harsh demand for silence cut like a knife.

"Your suggestion is an absurd one," said Jasper, without heat, "and I
presume that you are going to produce evidence to support so infamous a
statement."

"What evidence I produce," said counsel, with asperity, "is a matter for
me to decide."

"It is also a matter for the witness," interposed the soft voice of the
judge. "As you have suggested that Holland was a party to the murder,
and as you are inferring that Rex Holland is Jasper Cole, it is presumed
that you will call evidence to support so serious a charge."

"I am not prepared to call evidence, my lord, and if your lordship
thinks the question should not have been put I am willing to withdraw
it."

The judge nodded and turned his head to the jury.

"You will consider that question as not