on, nonsense without end.

"When he had finished his tea he lolled out again, but no sooner had he
disappeared down a turning of the road than the waiter discovered an old
umbrella, left behind accidentally by the shabby, talkative individual.
As is the custom in his highly respectable restaurant, Signor Torriani
put the umbrella carefully away in his office, on the chance of his
customer calling to claim it when he had discovered his loss. And sure
enough nearly a week later, on Tuesday, the 16th, at about 1 p.m., the
same shabbily dressed individual called and asked for his umbrella. He
had some lunch, and chatted once again to the waiter. Signor Torriani
and the waiter gave a description of William Kershaw, which coincided
exactly with that given by Mrs. Kershaw of her husband.

"Oddly enough he seemed to be a very absent-minded sort of person, for
on this second occasion, no sooner had he left than the waiter found a
pocket-book in the coffee-room, underneath the table. It contained
sundry letters and bills, all addressed to William Kershaw. This
pocket-book was produced, and Karl Mueller, who had returned to the
court, easily identified it as having belonged to his dear and lamented
friend 'Villiam.'

"This was the first blow to the case against the accused. It was a
pretty stiff one, you will admit. Already it had begun to collapse like
a house of cards. Still, there was the assignation, and the undisputed
meeting between Smethurst and Kershaw, and those two and a half hours of
a foggy evening to satisfactorily account for."

The man in the corner made a long pause, keeping the girl on
tenterhooks. He had fidgeted with his bit of string till there was not
an inch of it free from the most complicated and elaborate knots.

"I assure you," he resumed at last, "that at that very moment the whole
mystery was, to me, as clear as daylight. I only marvelled how his
Honour could waste his time and mine by putting what he thought were
searching questions to the accused relating to his past. Francis
Smethurst, who had quite shaken off his somnolence, spoke with a curious
nasal twang, and with an almost imperceptible soupcon of foreign accent,
He calmly denied Kershaw's version of his past; declared that he had
never been called Barker, and had certainly never been mixed up in any
murder case thirty years ago.

"'But you knew this man Kershaw,' persisted his Honour, 'since you wrote
to him?'

"'Pardon me, your Honour,