“Pass along; pass along there, please,” said the uniformed men, with monotonous iteration; and Herrick, ere he hurried into the building, noticed that half a dozen of the constables were busily employed in keeping the fast-gathering multitude in motion. “Bad news about Boulton,” were almost the first words he heard in one of the corridors. The speaker was a circuit chum of his, and one of the junior counsel on the other side. “Why! What do you mean?” he demanded anxiously. “What! haven’t you heard? Set upon by hooligans near St Pancras station last night. Picked up insensible, and taken to the hospital in Gray’s Inn Road. We shall be on directly,” and, tilting up his wig, the speaker hurried down the corridor. A sense of planned events, a fatalistic feeling, gripped Herrick at the heart. Then, with a deep-drawn breath, he turned into the robing room--the armoury of forensic fray. While he robed, he looked round eagerly for Arthur Dutton, who held brief No. 3 for the prosecution. Dutton was a stuff gownsman of many years’ experience, a master of criminal pleading--on paper and parchment--and one of the permanent advisers of the Crown. If Dutton were in good form, all might yet be well; though, unfortunately, as advocate he did not usually excel. But Dutton was nowhere to be seen, and that morning nobody had come across him. Of course it might be that he was already in his place in Court, and thither Herrick hurried, entering just as cries of “Silence!” from the ushers heralded the approach of Lord Malvern, the presiding judge. “Where’s Sir John?” asked the Assistant Treasury Solicitor in an anxious whisper. In a few hurried sentences Herrick informed him of the great man’s sudden illness. “Both our leaders absent! Good heavens! What’s going to happen?” What actually happened next was the passing of a telegram from hand to hand until it reached the Treasury official. “Read that,” he said, and sat back in his seat, dismayed. Herrick read the message. It was as follows:-- “_To Treasury Solicitor, “Central Criminal Court._ “_Have received telegram reporting dangerous illness of my father. Am leaving town for Windermere._ “_From Dutton, Euston Station._” CHAPTER IV THE CASE THAT FAILED