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here, I will call him Frank. *
    I repeated the identification. Frank insisted again that I was mistaken.
    A week or so later, I attended another parade to see if I could identify Frank’s companion. I failed to do so. On that occasion, I asked the police where they found the men to make up these parades. They told me that for a parade in that age group they were usually helped by volunteers from a local Territorial drill hall.
    Meanwhile, Frank had been charged and the case was to be heard at the magistrate’s court. Frank proved elusive, however. Twice the hearing was postponed because he had sent word that he was ill. About five weeks elapsed before I was called to give evidence. Then, to the magistrate’s evident annoyance, Frank elected to be tried before a jury in a higher court. He was remanded on bail of fifty pounds. The money was put up by his father. They had the same lean, aquiline features; but there the resemblance ended. Frank was taller and had a flamboyant, challenging air. The father was wistful and gentle-looking, a craftsman of some kind who had worked hard and steadily all his life. On one occasion he nodded to me glumly when we encountered one another outside a courtroom.
    After the first identification parade, I had suggested to the police that, as no harm had been done, and as the offence was pretty trivial anyway, Frank should simply be given a warning and told to behave himself in the future. The inspector’s response had been cool and brief. At the jury trial, five months later, I learned why.
    Frank had a record for taking other people’s cars which went back some years. He had been caught and convicted a number of times. He had been placed on probation again and again. In fact, when he had taken my car he had still been on probation for an earlier offence. But the magistrate who had tried the previous case had also suspended Frank’s licence and disqualified him from driving. By taking my car while that disqualification was in force, he had made himself liable to a prison sentence. It would be a very light sentence, of course; but the police hoped that it would at last bring him to his senses.
    At the trial Frank’s counsel cross-examined me at length about the first identity parade, and asked me if I recalled Frank’s claim that I had been mistaken. I did, of course.Frank’s defence was a flat denial of the charge. They had the wrong man. The jury found him guilty and the judge sentenced him to seven days’ imprisonment.
    That evening the London newspapers carried reports of the trial with headlines describing it as a case of mistaken identity. One of them had a sub-heading—‘Friend’s Confession.’ Both reports were accompanied by pictures, taken outside the court, of Frank and another young man, apparently of similar height, build and general appearance. The latter was the friend who had now confessed. Frank’s counsel was to lodge an appeal.
    The police, when I asked them about the reports, were reticent, relaxed and sympathetic. I had identified Frank, had I not? I had never been in any doubt, had I? Well then, all I had to do was to say so. The appeal would be in the Lord Chief Justice’s court. They would let me know when. They were sorry that they had had to put me to such a lot of trouble—first, all those wasted days at the magistrate’s court, then the hanging about at Quarter Sessions, and now this. No wonder people were reluctant to come forward and be witnesses.
    I looked at the newspaper pictures again. It was easy enough to recognise Frank, of course. And why not? I had had all too many opportunities of seeing him since the identity parade. His was a now familiar face. Yet, the friend undoubtedly resembled him. There was the same long, narrow head, the same beaky nose, the same receding forehead. The personalities expressed by the two smiles were undoubtedly different; but, again, why not? The important question was this: if I had seen the friend in the first