‘Now, Cockram, go on. You say Mrs Keeson spoke to you. What did she say?’

“‘She seemed rather upset, sir,’ continued Cockram, still looking with humble apology across at his mistress, ‘for she only stammered something about: “Oh, it’s nothing, Cockram. I only wanted to speak to my son – er – to Mr Harold – I –”’

“‘Harold?’ thundered Mr Keeson, who was fast losing his temper.

“‘I must ask you, Mr Keeson, to be silent,’ said the Major. ‘Go on, Cockram.’

“And Cockram continued his narrative:

“‘“Mr Harold, ma’am?” I said. “What should ’e be doing ’ere in the stables at this time of night?” “Oh, nothing,” says she to me, “I thought I saw him come in here. I must have been mistaken. Never mind, Cockram; it’s all right. Good night.”

“‘I said good night, too, and then fell to wondering what Mr ’Arold could have wanted prowling round the stables at this hour of the night. Just then the clock of St Saviour’s struck four o’clock, and while I was still wondering I fell asleep again, and never awoke until six, when the mare was as sick as she could be. And that’s the whole truth, gentlemen; and I would never have spoke – for Mr and Mrs Keeson have always been good to me, and I’d have done anything to save them the disgrace – but Alice is goin’ to be my wife, and I couldn’t bear any shame to rest upon ’er.’

“When Cockram had finished speaking you might have heard a pin drop as Major Laverton asked Mrs Keeson to step into the witness-box. She looked fragile and pale, but otherwise quite self-possessed as she quietly kissed the book and said in a very firm tone of voice:

“‘I can only say in reply to the extraordinary story which this man has just told that the drug in the beer must have given him peculiarly vivid dreams. At the hour he names I was in bed fast asleep, as my husband can testify; and the whole of Cockram’s narrative is a fabrication from beginning to end. I may add that I am more than willing to forgive him. No doubt his brain was clouded by the opiate; and now he is beside himself owing to Alice Image’s predicament. As for my son Harold, he was absent from home that night; he was spending it with some bachelor friends at the Stag and Mantle hotel in Newmarket.’

“‘Yes! By the way,’ said the magistrate, ‘where is Mr Harold Keeson? I have no doubt that he will be able to give a very good account of himself on that memorable night.’

“‘My son is abroad, your worship,’ said Mrs Keeson, while a shade of a still more livid hue passed over her face.

“‘Abroad, is he?’ said the magistrate cheerfully. ‘Well, that settles the point satisfactorily for him, doesn’t it? When did he go?’

“‘Last Thursday, your worship,’ replied Mrs Keeson.

“Then there was silence again in the court, for that last Thursday was the day of the Coronation Stakes – the day immediately following the memorable night on which the mare Cigarette had been poisoned by an unknown hand.”

4

“I doubt whether in all the annals of criminal procedure there ever occurred a more dramatic moment than that when so strange a ray of daylight was shed on the mysterious outrage on Cigarette. The magistrate, having dismissed Mrs Keeson, hardly dared to look across at the trainer, who was a personal friend of his, and who had just received such a cruel blow through this terrible charge against his only son – for at that moment I doubt if there were two people in that court who did not think that Mrs Keeson had just sworn a false oath, and that both she and her son had been in the stables that night – for what purpose only they and their own conscience could tell.

“Alice Image and Charles Palk were both discharged; and it is greatly to the credit of Cockram that in the midst of his joy in seeing his sweetheart safe he still remained very gloomy and upset. As for Mr Keeson, he must have suffered terribly at all this mud cast at his only son. He had been wounded in what he worshipped more than anything else in the world – his family honour. What was the use of money and the old estates if such a stain rested upon his name?

“As for Mrs Keeson, public sympathy was very much overshadowed with contempt for her stupidity. Had she only held her tongue when Cockram challenged her, suspicion would never have fastened upon Harold. The fact that she had lied in the witness-box in order to try and remedy her blunder was also very severely commented upon. The young man had gone abroad on that memorable Thursday accompanied by two of his bachelor friends. They had gone on a fishing expedition to Norway, and were not expected home for three weeks. As they meant to move from place to place they had left no address: letters and telegrams were therefore useless.

“During those three weeks pending Harold Keeson’s return certain facts leaked out which did not tend to improve his case. It appears that he had long been in love with Lady Agnes Stourcliffe, the daughter of the Earl of Okehampton. Some people asserted that the young people were actually – though secretly – engaged. The Earl, however, seems all along to have objected to the marriage of his daughter with the son of a trainer, and on more than one occasion had remarked that he had not sunk quite so low yet as to allow so preposterous a mésalliance. Mr Keeson, whose family pride was at least equal to that of the Earl, had naturally very much resented this attitude, and had often begged his son to give up his pretensions, since they were manifestly so unwelcome.

“Harold Keeson, however, was deeply in love; and Lady Agnes stuck to him with womanly constancy and devotion.