to you, gentlemen of the jury, that the man is a criminal
by instinct and a liar by necessity--the necessity of saving his own
skin. He robbed his former master, Lord Melhurst, and he planned to rob
his late master, Sir Horace Fewbanks. But knowing that his former crime
would be brought against him when the police came to investigate a
robbery at Riversbrook he was too cunning to rob Riversbrook himself. He
looked about him for an accomplice and he selected Birchill. You heard
him say in the witness-box that he drew Birchill a plan of
Riversbrook--the plan I now hold in my hand. I will ask you to inspect
the plan closely. Hill told us that Birchill terrorised him into drawing
this plan by threats of exposure. Exposure of what? His master, Sir
Horace Fewbanks, knew he had been in gaol, so what had he to fear from
exposure? His proper course, if he were an honest man, would have been to
tell his master that Birchill was planning to rob the house and had
endeavoured to draw him into the crime. But he did nothing of the kind,
for the simple reason that the plan to rob Riversbrook was his own, and
not Birchill's.

"Now, gentlemen, you have all seen the plan which this tainted witness
declares was drawn by him because Birchill terrorised him and stood over
him while he drew it. Is there anything in that plan to suggest that it
was drawn by a man in a state of nervous terror? Why, the lines are as
firmly drawn as if they had been made by an architect working at his
leisure in his office. Was this plan drawn by a man in a state of nervous
terror with his tormentor standing threateningly over him, or was it
drawn up by a man working at leisure, free not only from terror but from
interruption? The answer to that question is supplied in the evidence
given by three witnesses as to the paper used. Hill says the plan was
drawn at the flat. Two other witnesses swore that it was paper supplied
exclusively for Government Departments, and another witness swore that he
had taken such paper to Riversbrook for the use of Sir Horace Fewbanks,
who, like every one of His Majesty's judges, found it necessary to do
some of his judicial work at home. What is the inevitable inference? I
ask you if you can have any doubt, after looking at that plan and after
hearing the evidence given to-day about the paper, that the proposal to
rob Riversbrook was Hill's own proposal, that Hill drew a plan of the
house on paper he abstracted from his master's desk-