The Tale of Timber Town Part 68

"I can't say. It has no bearing on the prisoner, except indirectly. It affects the Crown, perhaps--the Crown always desires to promote Justice."

"Let the man be sworn."

So Benjamin was placed in the box, and stood prominent in his rags before them all. After he had been sworn, there was a pause; neither the prosecution, nor the defence, knowing quite what to make of him.

At length the counsel for the Crown began, "Where were you on March the 3rd, the supposed day of the murder of Isaac Zahn?"

"I don't keep a diary. Of late, I haven't taken much account of dates.

But if you refer to the date of the thunderstorm, I may state that I was in my cave."

"Indeed. In your cave? That is most interesting. May I ask where your cave may be?"

"In the mountains, not far from the track to Canvas Town."

"Dear me, that's very novel. When you are at home, you live in a cave.

You must be a sort of hermit. Do you know the prisoner?"

"Slightly."

"Did you meet him in your cave?"

"No; but there I saw the men who ought to be in the dock in his stead."

"Eh? What? Do you understand what you are saying?"

"Perfectly."

"Perfectly? Indeed. Have you come here to give evidence for the Crown against the prisoner at the bar?"

"I have nothing to do with the prisoner. I have come to disclose the guilty parties, who, so far as I am aware, never in their lives spoke two words to the prisoner at the bar."

"Your Honour," said the bewildered barrister, "I have nothing further to ask the witness. I frankly own that I consider him hardly accountable for what he says--his general appearance, his manner of life, his inability to reckon time, all point to mental eccentricity, to mental eccentricity in an acute form."

But the counsel for the defence was on his feet.

"My good sir," he said, addressing the witness, with an urbanity of tone and manner that Benjamin in his palmiest days could not have surpa.s.sed, "putting aside all worry about dates, or the case for the Crown, or the prisoner at the bar, none of which need concern you in the slightest degree, kindly tell the jury what occurred in your cave on the day of the thunderstorm."

"Four men entered, and from the place where I lay hid I overheard their conversation. It referred to the murder of Isaac Zahn."

"Exactly what I should have imagined. Did you know the four men? Who were they? What were their names?"

"I knew the names they went by, and I recognised their faces as those of men I had met in Timber Town."

"Tell the jury all that you heard them say and all that you saw them do in the cave?"

"I had returned from exploring a long pa.s.sage in the limestone rock, when I heard voices and saw a bright light in the main cave. For reasons of my own, I did not desire to be discovered; therefore, I crept forward till I lay on a sort of gallery which overlooked the scene. Four men were grouped round a fire at which they were drying their clothes, and by the light of the flames they divided a large quant.i.ty of gold which, from their conversation, I learned they had stolen from men whom they had murdered. They described the method of the murders; each man boasting of the part he had played. They had stuck up a gold-escort, and had killed four men, one of whom was a constable and another a banker."

"That was how they described them?"

"That is so. The two remaining murdered men they did not describe as to profession or calling."

"You say that you had previously met these fiends. What were their names?"

"They called each other by what appeared to be nicknames. One, the leader, was Dolly; another Sweet William, or simply William; the third was Carny, or Carnac; the fourth Garstang. But how far these were their real names I am unable to say."

"Where did you first meet them?"

"In The Lucky Digger. I played for money with them, and lost considerably."

"When next did you meet them?"

"Some weeks afterwards I saw two of them--the leader, known as Dolphin, or Dolly, and the youngest member of the gang, named William."

"Where was that?"

"On the track to Bush Robin Creek. I had come out of the bush, and saw them on the track. When I had hidden myself, they halted opposite me at a certain rock which stands beside the track. From where I lay I heard them planning some scheme, the nature of which I then scarcely understood, but which must have been the sticking-up of the gold-escort.

I heard them discuss details which could have been connected with no other undertaking."

"Would you know them if you saw them again?"

"Certainly."

"Look round the Court, and see if they are present."

Benjamin turned, and looked hard at the sea of faces on the further side of the barrier. There were faces, many of which he knew well, but he saw nothing of Dolphin's gang.

"I see none of them here," he said, "but I recognise a man who could bear me out in identifying them, as he was with me when I lost money to them at cards."

"I would ask you to point your friend out to me," said the Judge. "Do I understand that he was with you in the cave?"

"No, Your Honour; I knew him before I went there."

"What is his name?"

"On the diggings, he is Bill the Prospector, but his real name is William Wurcott."

"Call William Wurcott," said the Judge.

William Wurcott was duly cried, and the pioneer of Bush Robin Creek pushed his way to the barrier and stood before the Court in all his hairiness and shabbiness.

Tresco stood down, and the Prospector was placed in the box. After being sworn according to ancient custom, Bill was asked all manner of questions by counsel and the Judge, but no light whatever could he throw on the murder of Isaac Zahn, though he deposed that if confronted with the visitors to Tresco's cave, he would be able to identify them as easily as he could his own mother. He further gave it as his opinion that as the members of the gang, namely, Sweet William and his pals--he distinctly used the words "pals" before the whole Court--had drugged him and stolen his money, on the occasion to which Tresco had referred, they were quite capable, he thought, of committing murder; and that since his mate Tresco had seen them dividing stolen gold in his cave, on the day of the thunderstorm, he fully believed that they, and not the prisoner at the bar, were the real murderers.

All of which left the minds of the jury in such a confused state with regard to the indictment against the prisoner, that, without retiring, they returned a verdict of Not Guilty, and Jack left the Court in the company of Rose, the Pilot, and Captain Sartoris.

CHAPTER x.x.xVIII.