He proceeded with no variation of tone:  “The explanation is simplicity itself.  Priam Farll was not really dead.  It was his valet who died.  Quite naturally, quite comprehensibly, the great genius Priam Farll wished to pass the remainder of his career as a humble valet.  He deceived everybody; the doctor, his cousin, Mr. Duncan Farll, the public authorities, the Dean and Chapter of the Abbey, the nation—­in fact, the entire world!  As Henry Leek he married, and as Henry Leek he recommenced the art of painting—­in Putney; he carried on the vocation several years without arousing the suspicions of a single person; and then—­by a curious coincidence immediately after my client threatened an action against the defendant—­he displayed himself in his true identity as Priam Farll.  Such is the simple explanation,” said Pennington, K.C., and added, “which you will hear presently from the defendant.  Doubtless it will commend itself to you as experienced men of the world.  You cannot but have perceived that such things are constantly happening in real life, that they are of daily occurrence.  I am almost ashamed to stand up before you and endeavour to rebut a story so plausible and so essentially convincing.  I feel that my task is well-nigh hopeless.  Nevertheless, I must do my best.”

And so on.

It was one of his greatest feats in the kind of irony that appeals to a jury.  And the audience deemed that the case was already virtually decided.

After Whitney C. Witt and his secretary had been called and had filled the court with the echoing twang of New York (the controlled fury of the aged Witt was highly effective), Mrs. Henry Leek was invited to the witness-box.  She was supported thither by her two curates, who, however, could not prevent her from weeping at the stern voice of the usher.  She related her marriage.

“Is that your husband?” demanded Vodrey, K.C. (who had now assumed the principal role, Pennington, K.C., being engaged in another play in another theatre), pointing with one of his well-conceived dramatic gestures to Priam Farll.

“It is,” sobbed Mrs. Henry Leek.

The unhappy creature believed what she said, and the curates, though silent, made a deep impression on the jury.  In cross-examination, when Crepitude, K.C., forced her to admit that on first meeting Priam in his house in Werter Road she had not been quite sure of his identity, she replied—­

“It’s all come over me since.  Shouldn’t a woman recognize the father of her own children?”

“She should,” interpolated the judge.  There was a difference of opinion as to whether his word was jocular or not.

Mrs. Henry Leek was a touching figure, but not amusing.  It was Mr. Duncan Farll who, quite unintentionally, supplied the first relief.

Duncan pooh-poohed the possibility of Priam being Priam.  He detailed all the circumstances that followed the death in Selwood Terrace, and showed in fifty ways that Priam could not have been Priam.  The man now masquerading as Priam was not even a gentleman, whereas Priam was Duncan’s cousin!  Duncan was an excellent witness, dry, precise, imperturbable.  Under cross-examination by Crepitude he had to describe particularly his boyish meeting with Priam.  Mr. Crepitude was not inquisitive.