Simon Lesson took the beard in his hand. He scrutinized it carefully, he held it up to the light, then, screwing a magnifying-glass in one eye, he bent over it, while the other two men watched him in silence.
At last he looked up.
"I had nothing to do with the making of this, gentlemen, if that is what you want to know."
An expression of keen disappointment crossed the inspector's face, but he smoothed it out directly.
"It is a wonderfully good thing, Mr. Lesson, and I was told that you were the only man in London capable of manufacturing such an article."
"In London, eh?" the hunch-back ejaculated. "But suppose it was not made in London, or I should say by anyone who is in London now?"
"Mr. Lesson, I can see that you know something about it," the inspector said, his tone insensibly changing. "I can assure you that in no way does it mean trouble to the maker of this. It is just that we may be able to ascertain something about the buyer. I must request you to speak out."
The stress he laid on the word "request" gave it the force of a command.
The little man hesitated a minute, turning the beard about in his hands, his puckered face contorted. Then, with a sudden air of resolution he put it on the counter again and snapped the glass from his eye.
"There is only one man I know who could have made this article, sir, for unless you were in the trade yourself you could not appreciate the fine workmanship of it, and the way it is finished. Such a beard, properly put on, would be almost impossible of detection. As I say, I have never known more than one man capable of this work—a little French-Swiss who was the greatest artist I ever heard of. I feel sure this is his."
"And his name?" the inspector questioned sharply.
"Pierre Picquet. But he went back to his own country and it is years since I heard of him."
"You know his address?"
"No." Lesson shuffled his feet. "I had one or two letters from him from Geneva, but he was not much of a hand at writing English, and I cannot read French, so we lost sight of one another. But he was an artist—a real artist."
"And you can tell me nothing more about him?" the inspector asked in a disappointed tone.
Simon Lesson wrinkled up his brow.
"I heard of him once afterwards, yes. He had what he called a studio of his own. But that was in Brussels, and then came the Great War and the German occupation." He spread out his hands. "Everything was swept away. I have never heard of my friend Pierre Picquet since. I fear, I very much fear that he is numbered amongst those departed, for whom we offer Mass every day in our little church in Maiden Lane."
There was evidently nothing more to be gleaned from Simon Lesson.
The two detectives walked back to Scotland Yard. As they came in sight of the entrance Stoddart turned to his junior.
"You will be ready to go to Brussels this evening, Harbord. There is not one moment to be lost. Spare no expense. If Pierre Picquet is alive we must have him over for the trial. Let me know of your success by wireless at the earliest possible moment."
Chapter XXII
The trial of Basil Wilton for the murder of his wife had been fixed to take place at the Old Bailey early in November.
The court was crowded; the streets were thronged with disappointed sightseers. No trial of late years had so taken hold of the public imagination as this of Basil Wilton. The youth and good looks of the accused, combined with the fact that he was popularly supposed to have murdered his late employer as well as his wife, had aroused an enormous amount of excitement; and the fact of his love affair with Hilary Bastow—which had been allowed to leak out—had done nothing to allay it.
The judge was Mr. Justice Ruthven, as women whispered to one another with a pitying glance at the pale, delicate-looking young man in the dock.
There was a formidable array of counsel on both sides. The Attorney-General, Sir Douglas Wilshere, was for the Crown, and with him were Edward Davies, K.C., and James Francis Conroy. Arnold Westerham defended, one of the greatest—some said the greatest cross-examiner at the Bar. With him were James Backhouse and Huntley Sparkes. Villiers Lamb held a watching brief for Dr. Sanford Morris.
The case was opened by Sir Douglas Wilshere in studiously temperate language. There were those among the spectators who whispered that Wilshere was most dangerous when seemingly most moderate. In a quiet, unemotional voice he marshalled the facts against the prisoner, fitting each one into its place with deadly precision. Most damning of all was the question of time. The maid had testified to taking in tea for two, and to leaving Basil Wilton alone with his wife. She had then gone out and the medical testimony was decided that within a very few minutes of that time Iris Wilton had died. The evidence of the lift man and the hall porter, though in itself merely negative, further strengthened the case against the prisoner. They had caught sight of him in the hall and had not noticed that he carried a bag, they had seen no one go up, and in the case of the lift man he had taken no one up near the suspected time.
Inspector Stoddart, in spite of his strong belief in Wilton's innocence, was one of the principal witnesses for the prosecution. His description of the state of the flat, when he was called in, and of the finding of the bullets that had killed poor Iris Wilton—one lodged in the wooden mantelshelf, one in the wainscoting of the room—and of the subsequent fitting of them into the revolver concealed on the top of the wardrobe, was of absorbing interest to the listeners. His search of the prisoner's room, and the finding of the cloak-room ticket in the coat pocket there, were of course weighty points in the case for the Crown. The clerk in the cloak-room, contrary to expectation, did nothing to help them. He failed to identify Wilton as the man who took in the bag, and, more, declared his absolute certainty that he was not the man. On Wilton's being told to stand up, the clerk said he might be about the same height, but there all likeness ended.
Iris Wilton's will, made after her marriage and leaving everything to her husband, was put in as supplying the motive for the crime, but this was considerably discounted, as the cross-examination showed, by the fact that the fortune Iris Wilton had spoken of possessing had disappeared and nothing was left but a hundred or two in the Argentine Loan and a comparatively small sum of ready money in the Bank.
Still, there was no doubt the case did look black against the prisoner, and when Arnold Westerham rose to open for the defence most people felt that he had a hard job before him. He was not a great speaker. He would never emulate Felix Skrine's forensic triumphs, his strong point was the examination and cross-examination of witnesses. He outlined his case very briefly, pointing out the weak points of the prosecution, making the most of the fact that, though the revolver had been found in Wilton's bedroom, no previous purchase or possession had been traced home to him. The failure of the cloak-room clerk to identify him was also made the most of, and then the witnesses were called.
Basil Wilton had elected to give evidence, and he was naturally the first put in the box. But, briefly, his evidence was little more than a blank contradiction of that put forward by the prosecution. He told how his wife, pleading a headache, had insisted on his leaving her alone and going to his brother's. Like the maid, Alice Downes, he spoke of the total absence of visitors to the flat and stated that he knew no friends or relatives of his wife's. He positively denied knowing anything of the revolver and its concealment in his room, or of the cloakroom ticket in his pocket, and the Attorney-General's cross-examination entirely failed to shake him on any of these points.
Altogether it was conceded on all sides that Basil Wilton made a good witness, giving his testimony clearly, and not varying his story one iota under the most vigorous questioning. When at last he was allowed to step down from the box it was recognized that he had made a distinctly favourable impression.
The next witness