To my mind, nothing was more natural than the encounter between John Fordham and Jack, nothing more natural than the instantaneous conclusions drawn by the combatants--Jack believing his antagonist to be an officer of the law, and Fordham believing his to be a ruffian, bent upon robbery or murder. In many respects Jack's disclosures corroborated the account written by Fordham, but there were important gaps that required to be filled in. Jack did not admit any lapses of memory; he went straight on from beginning to end without hesitation. Fordham was less confident, and his admission of a failure of memory at a vital point of his story would lead to the presumption that his memory was not to be depended upon in other points. Whether judge and jury would accept Jack's evidence with as much faith as I did remained to be seen. He was a tainted witness, and an accessory to the fact of the murder. Then, again, I had pledged myself that he should not be harmed. If he were brought forward in the present position of the case he would certainly come to grief. For a time, therefore, he must be kept in the background. Only through the principal being charged with the crime could he be accepted as Queen's evidence, and even then his statements would require corroboration. Morgan could corroborate them, but would he, being himself in danger? And before Morgan could be produced, he had to be found. Maxwell, also. It was not likely that either of them would present himself of his own accord. Well, they must be hunted down. Before I left Jack I questioned him upon various matters, testing him, as it were, and putting him in the witness-box. There was one statement especially which emphatically needed confirmation or refutation, and this I did not introduce till the end. There was no prevarication in his answers; his description of Louis' personal appearance, with the scar on his forehead which flushed and reddened when he was excited, tallied with that given by Fordham, and he adhered unflinchingly to his account of the last scene of the tragedy. A few of my questions were such as would be put to him in the witness-box under the fire of cross-examination. "You say your back was turned during the altercation between Louis and Maxwell?" "Yes." "And Morgan's also?" "Yes." "You heard them threaten each other!" "Yes." "Then you heard a scream?" "Yes." "And turning, saw Louis fall to the ground with a knife sticking in him?" "Yes." "But you did not see the blow struck?" "No." "It might have been done by himself?" "Now, look 'ere, guv'nor," said Jack, slipping out of the imaginary witness-box, "is that likely?"