The judge inspected the two original documents with the aid of the lens and compared them with the photographs, nodding approvingly as he made out the points of agreement.  Then he passed them on to the jury and made an entry in his notes.

While this was going on my attention was attracted by Walter Hornby.  An expression of terror and wild despair had settled on his face, which was ghastly in its pallor and bedewed with sweat.  He looked furtively at Thorndyke and, as I noted the murderous hate in his eyes, I recalled our midnight adventure in John Street and the mysterious cigar.

Suddenly he rose to his feet, wiping his brow and steadying himself against the bench with a shaking hand; then he walked quietly to the door and went out.  Apparently, I was not the only onlooker who had been interested in his doings, for, as the door swung to after him, Superintendent Miller rose from his seat and went out by the other door.

“Are you cross-examining this witness?” the judge inquired, glancing at Sir Hector Trumpler.

“No, my lord,” was the reply.

“Are you calling any more witnesses, Mr. Anstey?”

“Only one, my lord,” replied Anstey—­“the prisoner, whom I shall put in the witness-box, as a matter of form, in order that he may make a statement on oath.”

Reuben was accordingly conducted from the dock to the witness-box, and, having been sworn, made a solemn declaration of his innocence.  A brief cross-examination followed, in which nothing was elicited, but that Reuben had spent the evening at his club and gone home to his rooms about half-past eleven and had let himself in with his latchkey.  Sir Hector at length sat down; the prisoner was led back to the dock, and the Court settled itself to listen to the speeches of the counsel.

“My lord and gentlemen of the jury,” Anstey commenced in his clear, mellow tones, “I do not propose to occupy your time with a long speech.  The evidence that has been laid before you is at once so intelligible, so lucid, and so conclusive, that you will, no doubt, arrive at your verdict uninfluenced by any display of rhetoric either on my part or on the part of the learned counsel for the prosecution.

“Nevertheless, it is desirable to disentangle from the mass of evidence those facts which are really vital and crucial.

“Now the one fact which stands out and dominates the whole case is this:  The prisoner’s connection with this case rests solely upon the police theory of the infallibility of finger-prints.  Apart from the evidence of the thumb-print there is not, and there never was, the faintest breath of suspicion against him.  You have heard him described as a man of unsullied honour, as a man whose character is above reproach; a man who is trusted implicitly by those who have had dealings with him.  And this character was not given by a casual stranger, but by one who has known him from childhood.  His record