"What the devil----" Ronnie, feeling a twitch at his gown, turned to see Bunce, all agog with excitement. "Chap at the back of the court, sir, says you're to look at this before you ask any more questions." Benjamin Bunce, having delivered himself of his message and a scrap of soiled paper, slipped away. Ronnie, taking no further notice of the interruption, continued his attempts to shake Maggie Peterson's evidence. But the witness had grown sullen. His suavity elicited only monosyllables. He felt the jury wearying, growing hostile once more--felt himself outwitted--felt it useless to continue the struggle. Then, just as he was preparing to sit down, his left hand, fidgeting with his notes, touched the scrap of paper which Bunce had laid among them; and glancing down, he saw: "M. P. is a bloody liar. I can tell you something about what she was doing on the fourth of July." Ronnie looked round for his clerk, but his clerk had disappeared. The ermined figure on the bench was growing bored. "If you have no further questions to ask this witness----" began the ermined figure. Maggie Peterson grinned. And suddenly Ronnie knew panic. Either he must close his cross-examination; or risk a shot in the dark. For a second he made as though to sit down; then, seeing some emotion almost akin to reproach flit across the pale face of his client, he took his risk. "You told both my learned friend and his lordship that at half-past nine o'clock on the fourth of July--I want you to be very careful of the date, please--you saw the accused go into Robert Fielding's room. You are still prepared to swear, on your oath, that that statement is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?" "Yuss"--shrilly, but there was a trace of fear in the shrill. "And supposing--mind you, I'm only supposing--that a witness were to come forward and say that, on the night in question, you could not possibly have seen any such thing, that witness would not be telling the truth?" "What do yer mean?" "I should have thought it was sufficiently obvious," said Ronnie gravely; and repeating his question knew, by the very look on the witness's face, that his shot in the dark had found its mark. "I've told yer all I know," retorted Maggie Peterson stubbornly. "Possibly more." Ronnie, warming to a subdued chuckle from Spillcroft, ventured one more question. "Tell me, please, what you did _after_ you had--as you say--watched the accused woman go into her cousin's room?" "Went to bed, of course." "Then you were in bed by a quarter to ten?" "I suppose so." "Not later than ten o'clock, anyway?" "No." "Thank you." Ronnie turned to the judge. "That is all I have to ask this witness, m' lord."