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

harbouring, a little known offence. Harbouring is comforting a man whom you know to have committed a felony. For harbouring, you can get two years’ hard labour: but for receiving you can be sent to penal servitude for fourteen years.
    “Well, the thing was this. The police were unable to get Cammy on a charge of receiving, because he was too damned shrewd: but they were always ready, in case he should put a foot wrong. And now that was what he had done.
    “Cammy Goldschmidt lived in style. He’d a very nice house in Hampstead, he kept his carriage and horses and he dressed in Savile Row. One rainy night an old lag came to his door, with a cart and horse. His arrival was reported to Cammy – by the butler or parlour-maid. And, though he was very much vexed, Cammy thought it best to go to the door himself. Now Cammy’s instinct was to send the fellow away: but the lag knew rather too much, and, if he had turned nasty, it might not have been so good. So Cammy allowed him to stay and to sleep in a stable with his horse. But the horse and cart had been stolen, as Cammy very well knew. God knows how these things get round, but somebody talked – with the happy result that the biggest receiver in London was sent for trial on a charge of harbouring a thief.
    “From our point of view, it was a rotten case. In the first place, one’s sympathy is always with the hunted, and one finds it hard to blame a man who has given shelter to such unfortunates. In the second place, the case against Cammy was almost painfully thin, and the witnesses for the Crown were by no means above reproach. Still, it was so very important that such a receiver as Cammy should be out of action – if only for two or three months, that the Director of Public Prosecutions determined to have a stab.
    “Cammy was confident. He instructed Charles Gill, QC, a very eminent counsel and a master of the art of defence. Indeed, I must frankly confess that, if I had been offering odds, I’d have given twenty to one against the Crown. What was so galling was that City of London juries are very shrewd. And had the jury, in whose charge Cammy would be, had the faintest idea of the truth, they would have sent him down without leaving the box. But they wouldn’t know the truth, and we couldn’t put them wise.
    “Now, about this case, there was one curious thing. Among our witnesses – we only had two or three – was a man to whom Cammy had once given great offence. That was probably why he was bearing witness against him. Now this witness knew perfectly well who Cammy was: and he knew, as did all of us, that it was almost grotesque that so important a receiver of stolen goods should be arraigned only upon such a trifling charge. But that, of course, was neither here nor there. Cammy was charged with harbouring: and any reference to his activities as a receiver could not be allowed.
    “Before the Judge took his seat, Gill approached Travers Humphreys, who was appearing for the Crown. ‘You probably know,’ he said, ‘that one of your witnesses dislikes my client very much.’ ‘Yes,’ says Humphreys, ‘I do.’ ‘Well, you’ll be careful, won’t you, to keep his nose to his proof?’ ‘I promise you that.’
    “The case was tried by Bosanquet. He was the Common Serjeant – a first-rate lawyer and a delightful man. He was aged and pale as death, and there were times when he sat so still and so silent that a man might be pardoned for thinking that he was dead. I once heard this unusual appearance commented upon – by a lady who had hoped for six months, to whom of his wisdom he had given five years. ‘You – old corpse,’ she said. And Bosanquet led the laughter against himself.
    “Well, he came on to the Bench and Cammy entered the dock. He was something over-dressed. The cut of his morning dress left nothing to be desired, but the slip to his waistcoat, his button-hole and his patent-leather boots looked out of place. He was given a chair, and sat