because you had two moles."

"Yes."

"Have you two moles?"

"Yes." (Immense sensation.)

Pennington paused.

"Where are they?"

"On my neck just below my collar."

"Kindly place your hand at the spot."

Priam did so. The excitement was terrific.

Pennington again paused. But, convinced that Priam was an impostor, he
sarcastically proceeded--

"Perhaps, if I am not asking too much, you will take your collar off and
show the two moles to the court?"

"No," said Priam stoutly. And for the first time he looked Pennington in
the face.

"You would prefer to do it, perhaps, in his lordship's room, if his
lordship consents."

"I won't do it anywhere," said Priam.

"But surely--" the judge began.

"I won't do it anywhere, my lord," Priam repeated loudly. All his
resentment surged up once more; and particularly his resentment against
the little army of experts who had pronounced his pictures to be clever
but worthless imitations of himself. If his pictures, admittedly painted
after his supposed death, could not prove his identity; if his word was
to be flouted by insulting and bewigged beasts of prey; then his moles
should not prove his identity. He resolved upon obstinacy.

"The witness, gentlemen," said Pennington, K.C., in triumph to the jury,
"has two moles on his neck, exactly as described by Mr. Duncan Farll,
but he will not display them!"

Eleven legal minds bent nobly to the problem whether the law and justice
of England could compel a free man to take his collar off if he refused
to take his collar off. In the meantime, of course, the case had to
proceed. The six or seven hundred pounds a day must be earned, and there
were various other witnesses. The next witness was Alice.

* * * * *

CHAPTER XII

_Alice's Performances_

When Alice was called, and when she stood up in the box, and, smiling
indulgently at the doddering usher, kissed the book as if it had been a
chubby nephew, a change came over the emotional atmosphere of the court,
which felt a natural need to smile. Alice was in all her best clothes,
but it cannot be said that she looked the wife of a super-eminent
painter. In answer to a question she stated that before marrying Priam
she was the widow of a builder in a small way of business, well known in
Putney and also in Wandsworth. This was obviously true. She could have
been nothing but the widow of a builder in a small way of business well
k