“We have had nothing direct from the prisoner,” said Moon quietly.  “The few documents which the defence guarantees came to us from another quarter.”

“From what quarter?” asked Dr. Pym.

“If you insist,” answered Moon, “we had them from Miss Gray.

“Dr. Cyrus Pym quite forgot to close his eyes, and, instead, opened them very wide.

“Do you really mean to say,” he said, “that Miss Gray was in possession of this document testifying to a previous Mrs. Smith?”

“Quite so,” said Inglewood, and sat down.

The doctor said something about infatuation in a low and painful voice, and then with visible difficulty continued his opening remarks.

“Unfortunately the tragic truth revealed by Curate Percy’s narrative is only too crushingly confirmed by other and shocking documents in our own possession.  Of these the principal and most certain is the testimony of Innocent Smith’s gardener, who was present at the most dramatic and eye-opening of his many acts of marital infidelity.  Mr. Gould, the gardener, please.”

Mr. Gould, with his tireless cheerfulness, arose to present the gardener.  That functionary explained that he had served Mr. and Mrs. Innocent Smith when they had a little house on the edge of Croydon.  From the gardener’s tale, with its many small allusions, Inglewood grew certain he had seen the place.  It was one of those corners of town or country that one does not forget, for it looked like a frontier.  The garden hung very high above the lane, and its end was steep and sharp, like a fortress.  Beyond was a roll of real country, with a white path sprawling across it, and the roots, boles, and branches of great gray trees writhing and twisting against the sky.  But as if to assert that the lane itself was suburban, were sharply relieved against that gray and tossing upland a lamp-post painted a peculiar yellow-green and a red pillar-box that stood exactly at the corner.  Inglewood was sure of the place; he had passed it twenty times in his constitutionals on the bicycle; he had always dimly felt it was a place where something might occur.  But it gave him quite a shiver to feel that the face of his frightful friend or enemy Smith might at any time have appeared over the garden bushes above.  The gardener’s account, unlike the curate’s, was quite free from decorative adjectives, however many he may have uttered privately when writing it.  He simply said that on a particular morning Mr. Smith came out and began to play about with a rake, as he often did.  Sometimes he would tickle the nose of his eldest child (he had two children); sometimes he would hook the rake on to the branch of a tree, and hoist himself up with horrible gymnastic jerks, like those of a giant frog in its final agony.  Never, apparently, did he think of putting the rake to any of its proper uses, and the gardener, in consequence, treated his actions with coldness and brevity.  But the gardener