Read As Berry and I Were Saying for Free Online Page A

you would expect to find: his coat was torn, his arms were bruised and his hands were cut. The account he gave of his movements could hardly be checked. When asked about the cuts on his hands, he said he had broken the window of a baker’s shop in order to steal a loaf. He couldn’t give the name of the village, and, though inquiries were made, no baker’s shop was found to confirm his report. When asked about his movements upon the fatal night, he said he was in the bar of a certain public house. This was too far from The Grange for him to have committed the crime. When seen, the landlord denied this. On second thoughts, however, the landlord said he was there. In other words, his evidence was unsatisfactory. And this particular landlord was very well known to the police, as a most unscrupulous man. The revolver and knife, of course, had disappeared.
    “Well, the man was committed for trial and was later tried. He went into the witness-box and denied that he was the man. His only witness was the landlord, who came unwillingly to Court and went to pieces in the box. The Judge summed up against him, and the jury retired. Everyone thought they’d be out for a quarter of an hour. They weren’t. They were out for four hours. And then they came back and found the fellow ‘Not guilty’. So he was released.
    “Everyone was astounded. As I have said, it was the deadest case. But juries will be juries, and that was that.
    “When the tumult had died, something – I don’t know what – came to the knowledge of the police. Two months later another man was arrested and, to everyone’s amazement, charged with the crime. There was quite a lot against him. He was proved to have been in the vicinity of The Grange on the night of the crime. In his possession was a revolver: a bullet fired from this was found to bear exactly the markings which were borne by the bullet which was taken from the dining-room’s wall. Finally, when he was stood side by side with the man who had been acquitted, it was immediately seen that no man could tell them apart. They were facsimiles.
    “Now I don’t want to sound old-fashioned, but it has always been my honest belief that God Himself intervened and directed that jury to spare that first man’s life. There is no other explanation. It was the deadest case.”
    “That is history,” said Daphne.
    “I don’t go as far as that: but, at least, it’s true.”
    “What did you leave out?” said Jill.
    “Nothing of consequence, darling, as your inquiry shows.”
    “Who was the Judge?” said Berry.
    “I can’t remember. God knows it wasn’t his fault. But it must have shaken him up.”
    “Let’s have some more about receivers.”
    “It’s your turn now.”
    “One more – featuring ‘the fence’.”
    “Give me some port,” said I. “My throat’s getting sore.”
    Berry replenished my glass with tawny port.
    “If,” he said, “you knew how to produce your voice…”
    “I know,” said I, “I know. Strangely enough, it never got sore at the Bar.”
    “You never had a big enough brief.”
    “There’s something in that,” said I.
    “Rot,” said Jill. “Boy’s got the most powerful voice I’ve ever heard.”
    “That is irrelevant, but true. The fog-horn type. When he was calling Nobby, the Vicar’s nose used to bleed. And now for the receiver: he always interested me.”
    “Not half as much,” said I, “as he interested the police. But the receiver was always extremely hard to hit.
    “When I left Muskett’s office, after one year with him, I was called to the Bar. The following day I entered Treasury Chambers – as a pupil, of course. And there I spent one year.
    “One day a case came in – The King against Goldschmidt: and when I opened the brief I found it was ‘Cammy’ Goldschmidt, a most notorious fence. We’d been laying for him for years, for he was behind four-fifths of the really big things. But he wasn’t charged with receiving: he was charged with