— — —In the afternoon, as the light was beginning to fail, Belle was again in the witness-box, repeating the evidence she had given at the inquest.
It was very brief, and her precise business-like manner gave the lawyers no trouble.
She had not, she declared, recognised the voice of the prisoner as that of the man she had heard on Christmas Eve at No. 12.
As she spoke she looked directly and for the first time across at the prisoner. He was again standing erect in the dock, having again slipped his left hand, with the gesture that he had so convulsively changed in the morning when the servant-girl had remarked on it, into the bosom of his coat, his chin was sunk in the folds of his cravat, which was full and wide in the foreign fashion.
He met Belle’s look with a stare so expressionles
