CHAPTER XVII.
CHIEFLY CONCERNS THE FORTUNES OF PAUL
SOMERTON.
Whilst the honorable proprietor of the Eastern Bank was fulminating his financial thunders against somebody at present unnamed, Paul Somerton stood at the dock of a London police court.
The prisoner seemed to be overwhelmed with the degradation of his position.
The police inspector, who stood forward when the case was called from the charge sheet, said the prisoner had only been apprehended that morning. The evidence, however, was very short, and he thought it would hardly be necessary for him to ask for an adjournment. The prisoner was charged with stealing a purse containing three ten-pound notes, four sovereigns, and scrip of the Barwood Banking Company to the value of fifty pounds.
“Does anybody appear to watch the case for the prisoner?” asked the magistrate.
Nobody replied, and the magistrate, putting a gold-rimmed glass to his eye, addressed the prisoner.
“Judging from your dress and general appearance, you are respectably connected. Have you no friends here?”
“No, sir,” said Paul. “But I am quite innocent of the charge which is made against me.”
“Yes, prisoners mostly say so,” said the magistrate, cynically; “but that must be inquired into.”
“It is some horrible conspiracy, sir,” said Paul with great earnestness, his lip quivering and his face quite pale with apprehension.
A gentleman who was sitting near the reporters rose at this juncture, and asked to be allowed to watch the case for the prisoner. Paul willingly embraced the offer on his part, and Mr. Arundel Williamson, a briefless barrister and a “gentleman of the press,” stepped up to the prisoner, and entered into a brief conversation with Paul.
“Would you like the case to be adjourned for a short time?” the magistrate asked.
“Thank you, no, sir,” said Mr. Williamson; and the police inspector called Mr. Shuffleton Gibbs, who stated that on the previous day he had business at the Meter Ironworks Company, Westminster. Whilst he was in Mr. Richard Tallant’s room, he had occasion to take something from his purse, and during conversation he laid the purse upon the mantel-shelf. About half-an-hour afterwards, when he was leaving the room, he remembered his purse, and found that it was gone. At first he thought he must have put it into his pocket again, but he searched without avail. The only person who had come into the room whilst he was there was the prisoner.
“Will you ask Mr. Gibbs any questions, Mr. Williamson?”
“No, sir, not at present,” the barrister replied.
“Proceed with the case,” said the magistrate.
Policeman X 40 said: “Late last night he had a search-warrant placed in his hands to execute at the house of Mr. Thomas Dibble, Still Street, Pimlico. He went there the next morning, and asked an old woman——”
“Old woman, thir!—how dare you call me an old woman?” somebody exclaimed in the body of the police court.
“Who is that? Bring that woman forward,” said the magistrate.
“Yeth, my lord and jury, or whatever you call yourthelveth,” said Mrs. Dibble, elbowing herself, amidst much laughter, towards the bench.
“Silence! Silence!” exclaimed two policemen; whilst another took hold of Mrs. Dibble’s arm to increase her momentum.
“How dare you, thir! Handth off, or I’ll have the law againtht you for falthe imprithonment; and ith more than your plathe ith worth to——”
“Take her out—take the woman out, if she will not be quiet,” said the magistrate.
“At your peril,” exclaimed Mrs. Dibble, amidst increasing laughter.
“Then out with her!” exclaimed the magistrate, losing his temper; and Mrs. Dibble speedily disappeared, struggling between two policemen, and bursting her hooks-and-eyes in the most extraordinary fashion.
“I asked the woman of the house,” went on the imperturbable policeman, “to show me Paul Somerton’s bedroom. She took me up-stairs, and pointed a room out to me which she said was his. I asked if the box beneath the dressing-table was Paul Somerton’s, and she said it was. I broke it open, and found at the bottom, beneath some clothes, the purse now produced. I then went to the offices of the Meter Ironworks and apprehended the prisoner.”
“Is this your purse, Mr. Gibbs?” the magistrate inquired.
“It is,” was that gentleman’s reply.
“And the contents now are the same as when you lost it?”
“They are, sir,” said Mr. Gibbs.
“Have you any questions to ask the policeman?” the magistrate inquired, addressing Mr. Williamson.
The barrister, after a short conversation with the prisoner, said he had not.
The police Inspector who had charge of the case asked if it would be necessary to call Mrs. Dibble to prove the ownership of the box wherein the purse was found.
Mr. Williamson said he thought, before the Court went any further with the case, it was well that he should apply for an adjournment until the next day. From the instructions of his client, who was, as the bench had judged, most respectably connected, he had no hesitation in saying that the case would turn out to be one of conspiracy against the prisoner; but he was hardly in a position to deal with it at so short a notice.
“At present there is ample evidence for committal to the sessions—a sufficiently primâ facie case for trial,” said the magistrate. “Would it not be better to defer your defence until then?”
Mr. Williamson differed with the learned magistrate, and pressed for adjournment.
“Without bail, of course,” said the magistrate.
“I think I shall be in a position to offer substantial bail in the course of an hour,” said Paul’s new friend.
“I shall be here for two hours,” said the magistrate, “and will consider your application. I do not think I should be inclined to accept bail.”
The prisoner was then removed, and his legal and journalistic friend went with him.
Mr. Williamson was a gentleman well-known on the London press, not only for a certain cleverness in the epistolary style of writing, but for his peculiar amiability. Educated for the Church, certain scruples of conscience had induced him to give up the Establishment just when he was expected to be ready for ordination.
Afterwards he read for the Bar, was called in due time, and took up his quarters in the Temple. No briefs coming into his hands, he directed his attention to the Press, secured an appointment as critic on the Sunday Review, and was appointed London correspondent of Berrow’s Journal, an old provincial paper of considerable repute. He joined the Hamilton Club, where Press-men most do congregate, and by degrees came to be regarded as one of the craft.
He was in the police court during Paul’s trouble quite by accident, having called in, out of kindness to little Simpkins, who was the accredited reporter of the Daily Mercury, and who was in a delicate state of health.
“I knew the little fellow was ill, and as he’s only just pushing his way on the Press, I have dropped in occasionally and relieved him. His father was an old friend of my father’s, and I feel a good deal of interest in him.”
This was the brief explanation of Mr. Williamson’s presence in court, which he thought it necessary to give Paul, and then he sat down quietly beside the prisoner, and made notes of all that Paul wished him to know.