ock at
the door Mr. Wethered was coming out of the room. Mary stopped with the
tray in her hand, and at the door Mr. Wethered turned and said quite
loudly: 'Now, don't fret, don't be anxious; do try and be calm. Your
will is safe in my pocket, nothing can change it or alter one word of it
but yourself.'

"It was, of course, a very ticklish point in law whether the
housemaid's evidence could be accepted. You see, she was quoting the
words of a man since dead, spoken to another man also dead. There is no
doubt that had there been very strong evidence on the other side against
Percival Brooks, Mary Sullivan's would have counted for nothing; but, as
I told you before, the judge's belief in the prisoner's guilt was
already very seriously shaken, and now the final blow aimed at it by Mr.
Oranmore shattered his last lingering doubts.

"Dr. Mulligan, namely, had been placed by Mr. Oranmore into the
witness-box. He was a medical man of unimpeachable authority, in fact,
absolutely at the head of his profession in Dublin. What he said
practically corroborated Mary Sullivan's testimony. He had gone in to
see Mr. Brooks at half-past four, and understood from him that his
lawyer had just left him.

"Mr. Brooks certainly, though terribly weak, was calm and more composed.
He was dying from a sudden heart attack, and Dr. Mulligan foresaw the
almost immediate end. But he was still conscious and managed to murmur
feebly: 'I feel much easier in my mind now, doctor--have made my
will--Wethered has been--he's got it in his pocket--it is safe
there--safe from that--' But the words died on his lips, and after that
he spoke but little. He saw his two sons before he died, but hardly
knew them or even looked at them.

"You see," concluded the man in the corner, "you see that the
prosecution was bound to collapse. Oranmore did not give it a leg to
stand on. The will was forged, it is true, forged in the favour of
Percival Brooks and of no one else, forged for him and for his benefit.
Whether he knew and connived at the forgery was never proved or, as far
as I know, even hinted, but it was impossible to go against all the
evidence, which pointed that, as far as the act itself was concerned, he
at least was innocent. You see, Dr. Mulligan's evidence was not to be
shaken. Mary Sullivan's was equally strong.

"There were two witnesses swearing positively that old Brooks' will was
in Mr. Wethered's keeping when that gentleman left the Fitzwilliam