“As my colleague has just explained,” said Inglewood, “there are two enigmas or inconsistencies on which we base the defence.  The first is a plain physical fact.  By the admission of everybody, by the very evidence adduced by the prosecution, it is clear that the accused was celebrated as a specially good shot.  Yet on both the occasions complained of he shot from a distance of four or five feet, and shot at him four or five times, and never hit him once.  That is the first startling circumstance on which we base our argument.  The second, as my colleague has urged, is the curious fact that we cannot find a single victim of these alleged outrages to speak for himself.  Subordinates speak for him.  Porters climb up ladders to him.  But he himself is silent.  Ladies and gentlemen, I propose to explain on the spot both the riddle of the shots and the riddle of the silence.  I will first of all read the covering letter in which the true account of the Cambridge incident is contained, and then that document itself.  When you have heard both, there will be no doubt about your decision.  The covering letter runs as follows:—­

“Dear Sir,—­The following is a very exact and even vivid account of the incident as it really happened at Brakespeare College.  We, the undersigned, do not see any particular reason why we should refer it to any isolated authorship.  The truth is, it has been a composite production; and we have even had some difference of opinion about the adjectives.  But every word of it is true.—­We are, yours faithfully,

“Wilfred Emerson Eames,
“Warden of Brakespeare College, Cambridge.

“Innocent Smith.

“The enclosed statement,” continued Inglewood, “runs as follows:—­

“A celebrated English university backs so abruptly on the river, that it has, so to speak, to be propped up and patched with all sorts of bridges and semi-detached buildings.  The river splits itself into several small streams and canals, so that in one or two corners the place has almost the look of Venice.  It was so especially in the case with which we are concerned, in which a few flying buttresses or airy ribs of stone sprang across a strip of water to connect Brakespeare College with the house of the Warden of Brakespeare.

“The country around these colleges is flat; but it does not seem flat when one is thus in the midst of the colleges.  For in these flat fens there are always wandering lakes and lingering rivers of water.  And these always change what might have been a scheme of horizontal lines into a scheme of vertical lines.  Wherever there is water the height of high buildings is doubled, and a British brick house becomes a Babylonian tower.  In that shining unshaken surface the houses hang head downwards exactly to their highest or lowest chimney.  The coral-coloured cloud seen in that abyss is as far below the world as its original appears above it.  Every scrap of water is not only a window but a skylight.  Earth splits under men’s feet into precipitous aerial perspectives, into which a bird could as easily wing its way as—­”