Australia -- Fiction; England -- Fiction; Gold mines and mining -- Fiction
'Just so--just so, Sir John,' said Bagwax, feeling that every word
spoken to the lawyer renewed his own hopes of going out to Sydney,--but
feeling also that Sir John would be wrong, very wrong, if he subjected
his client to so unnecessarily prolonged a detention in the Cambridge
county prison. 'They do keep a book which would be quite conclusive. I
could have the pages photographed.'
'Would not that be best? and you might probably find out who it was who
gave this fraudulent aid.'
'I could find out everything,' said Bagwax, energetically; 'but----'
'But what?'
'It is all found out there. It is indeed, Sir John. If I could get you
to go along with me, you would see that that letter couldn't have gone
through the Sydney post-office.'
'I think I do see it. But it is so difficult, Mr. Bagwax, to make others
see things.'
'And if it didn't,--and it never did;--but if it didn't, why did they
say it did? Why did they swear it did? Isn't that enough to make any
Secretary let him go?'
The energy, the zeal, the true faith of the man, were admirable. Sir
John was half disposed to rise from his seat to embrace the man, and
hail him as his brother,--only that had he done so he would have made
himself as ridiculous as Bagwax. Zeal is always ridiculous. 'I think I
see it all,' he said.
'And won't they let the man go?'
'There were four persons who swore positively that they were present at
the marriage, one of them being the woman who is said to have been
married. That is direct evidence. With all our search, we have hitherto
found no one to give us any direct evidence to rebut this. Then they
brought forward, to corroborate these statements, a certain amount of
circumstantial evidence,--and among other things this letter.'
'The Caldigate envelope,' said Bagwax, eagerly.
'What you call the Caldigate envelope. It was unnecessary, perhaps; and,
if fraudulent, certainly foolish. They would have had their verdict
without it.'
'But they did it,' said Bagwax, in a tone of triumph.
'It is a pity, Mr. Bagwax, you were not brought up to our profession.
You would have made a great lawyer.'
'Oh, Sir John!'
'Yes, they did it. And if it can be proved that they have done it
fraudulently, no doubt that fraud will stain their direct evidence. But
we have to remember that the verdict has been already obtained. We are
not struggling now with a jury, but with an impassive emblem of
sovereign justice.'
'And therefore the real facts will go the further, Sir John.'
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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