Flynn’s Weekly Detective Fiction. Vol. 27, No. 2, September 24, 1927

The spectators exchanged glances. Even the judge looked up. For an eminent king’s counsel to acknowledge forgetfulness on an important point of this sort was an amazing admission. But no shade of perturbation crossed Everest’s face. He seemed entirely unperturbed.

“So naturally,” he went on, “you never heard a sound?”

“Naturally!”

Up to that moment Everest had been speaking loudly — unusually loudly for him. But now he turned to his junior with a smile and murmured hardly above his breath:

“I’d like to know where he keeps his own revolver.”

“If you mean me, I haven’t got one,” snapped back the butler.

A little murmur of amazement went over the court. Not a person, outside those immediately around Everest, had heard his careless, almost contemptuous aside. They had only seen him turn — heard him mutter something.

But the butler’s angry answer stiffened them into amazement in a moment — though not half as much as Everest’s next question, which followed in a flash.

“I thought you told us you were deaf?”

Silence for a moment. Every eye now was on the butler, who had flushed up angrily, his hands working, his eyes glaring sullenly in front of him like a trapped animal.

“Mr. Everest,” said the judge, slightly puzzled, “I heard the witness’s answer, but I never heard your question.”

“It was not a question, your lordship,” with a smile. “It was merely a remark to learned counsel behind me. What I said was—”

The attorney general was on his feet in a moment.

“I object, my lord,” he exclaimed. “I overheard the observation, and it was a most improper one.”

“Might I respectfully suggest to your lordship that your lordship asks the jury if they heard it?” suggested Everest blandly.

“I object, my lord,” boomed the attorney general again. “Observations made by learned counsel to their colleagues cannot be admitted as evidence.”

The judge deliberated for a moment.

“If learned counsel happens to make an observation,” he said, “and the witness, choosing to take it as a question, answers it” — he turned to the jury: “Did any of you hear counsel for the defense’s remark?”

A hurried consultation among the jury. Then the foreman rose: “Not one of us heard it, my lord.”

The judge addressed the shorthand writer.

“What have you got on your notes?”

“Merely the witness’s answer, my lord. I couldn’t catch the question.”

“It seems to me,” murmured the judge with a smile, “that it was learned counsel for the defense who did the catching.”

A little ripple of laughter ran through the court.

“I’m quite willing to repeat my remark, my lord,” said Everest.

“And I submit to your lordship,” exclaimed the attorney general angrily, “that it is not admissible.”

“It’s quite immaterial to me,” murmured Everest blandly.

“Of course it is — now,” snapped the other.

“Don’t blame me for your deaf clients!” retorted Everest and once again the spectators tittered.

“Mr. Everest,” said the judge, apparently anxious to pour oil on the troubled waters, “as neither the jury, nor the shorthand writer for the court, nor myself heard the remark, and as you have admitted that such remark was not addressed to the witness, may I suggest that for the future you confine yourself to addressing the witness and only the witness while you are engaged in cross-examination?”

“Certainly, my lord,” blandly. “May I add, as justification for having made a remark at all, that as neither you nor the jury heard it should prove conclusively that I never dreamed a deaf witness would!”

The attorney general looked up angrily, but Martin Everest’s face was as guileless as a young curate’s. The judge studied him thoughtfully over his glasses.

“I must accept your assurance, Mr. Everest,” he said slightly sarcastically.

“As your lordship pleases.”

The attorney general flopped down angrily into his seat, for he knew the spectators were smiling. He knew too the value of the point that Everest had so cleverly made. Yet the latter’s voice when he asked his next question was smoothness itself.

“Do you know the reason which brought the prisoner to your master’s house on the night the murder was committed?”

“I don’t!”

“You haven’t any idea?”

“None at all.”

“In fact you never knew of the existence of that letter to which my learned friend alluded in his opening speech, until you heard him mention it? I’m talking of course of that letter which the prisoner wrote to your master saying he would call?”

“I knew nothing whatsoever about it!” answered the butler.

Martin Everest nodded thoughtfully.

“I see. You didn’t know then that your master held certain letters written by the prisoner which he was trying to induce the prisoner to buy?”

“I certainly didn’t.”

“Or that the prisoner bought them from your master on the night the murder was committed?”

A little gasp of amazement went up round the court.

“No, I didn’t know that,” replied the witness.

“Didn’t know either that the prisoner paid your master six hundred pounds in bank notes for them?”