Flashman And The Tiger

The five accusers stuck by their stories pretty well, although Clarke, who was obviously a complete hand at confusing the issue with trivial questions, claimed to find all kinds of discrepancies in their testimony; he also hinted, ever so delicately, that a couple of them might have been tight, had great fun about Lycett Green’s being a master of foxhounds, and took a nice injured line of surprise that in view of Cumming’s pledged word, stainless character, and so forth, they weren’t prepared to admit they’d been mistaken. His final speech was four times as long as that of Russell, who simply went straight at Cumming’s throat: why hadn’t he demanded to be brought face to face with his accusers, as any honest man would have done? He also reminded the jury that the five accusers weren’t alone in thinking Cumming guilty; the Prince, Williams, and Coventry thought so too.

In all that I read, I could put my finger on only one flat lie: the defendants' denial that there had been any arrangement to keep watch on Cumming’s play the second night. Well, I ask you! You’re told a man has been cheating, and don’t keep an eye on him next time? Pull the other one, Walker; you watch him like a lynx. According to Owen Williams, they’d told him they’d agreed to watch, but now, in the witness-box, they were claiming they’d done no such thing. Their reason was plain enough: they didn’t want to be thought of as spying on a fellow guest, and there was some fine wriggling under cross-examination—one of ’em, I think it was Lycett Green, absolutely said: "Knowing the man had cheated, I looked, but not with a view to watching", which is as fine a piece of humbug as I could ha' thought up myself. Not that it made a ha’porth of difference: they’d seen what they’d seen, and held by it.

By the morning of the seventh day, with the cases of both sides completed, the thing was on a knife-edge: half the Town was positive Gordon-Cumming was the biggest cheat since Jacob, while t’other half held that Clarke had shown up the five accusers for unreliable idiots (if not vindictive parvenus) whose evidence wasn’t worth stale beans. Perambulating from the Park to the Temple during the day, I heard Cumming damned and defended in the clubs, but the farther east I walked, the more I encountered a truly British phenomenon: among the commonalty, the anti-Cummings wanted to see him done down for precisely the same reason that the pro-Cummings hoped he’d win: because he was a toff. The lord-haters were full of righteous indignation about the pampered rich rioting and gaming while honest folk went hungry, so to Hell with Cumming and the Prince of Wales and the lot of ’em; on the other side were the forelock-tuggers who thought it "a bleedin' disgrice that a proper gent wot ’ad fought for Queen an' country" should be defamed by the likes o' them nobodies. No wonder the foreigners can’t understand us.

No doubt because I hoped to see him sunk to perdition, I could imagine several excellent reasons why the jury should find in his favour and award him thumping damages. Foremost in my mind still, you see, was the conviction that he couldn’t have cheated; spite and prejudice aside, it wasn’t in the man’s nature. But it was up to the jury now, and no doubt all hung on the direction they would receive from the venerable Coleridge. The early editions were carrying his summing-up at length, and I studied it eagerly in the corner of a Fleet Street pub, with a pie and pint to keep me company.

The day’s proceedings had begun with a protest from that ass Owen Williams, demanding to make a statement against the Solicitor-General, Clarke, who, says Williams, had accused him of an "abominable crime—of sacrificing an innocent man".

Coleridge couldn’t remember what exact words had been used, but told Williams that counsel could say what they dam' well liked in Court, and would Williams kindly keep quiet and give him, Coleridge, some judging-room, or words to that effect. After which Williams presumably retired, gnashing, and Coleridge addressed the twelve good men and true.

It must have been a sight to see, for he apparently played the wise, simple old codger, peering over his glasses while he told the jury what brilliant chaps Clarke and Russell and Asquith were: he didn’t say they were too clever by half, exactly, but he thought it no bad thing that "the humble jog-trot" of his summing-up should intervene between their fireworks and the verdict.

Having put the wigged brigade in their place, he told the jury something that was news to me: that cheating at cards was an offence for which you could be nailed in court. He then went on to remind them that Clarke had said Cumming wasn’t interested in soaking his accusers; they would bear that in mind if the question of damages arose. (A hundred to eight he’ll tell ’em to find for Cumming, thinks I.) And another thing: whether they disapproved of gambling or not was beside the point, which was simply this: did Cumming cheat or not?