She paused again and one might almost say that the Court heaved a deep sigh of relief.
Then Garbould asked in an unpleasant and incredulous voice: “Why didn’t you take this fantastic theory straight to the police?”
“But that wouldn’t have been any good,” she protested quickly. “It was no use my knowing it myself; I had to make other people believe it; I had to find evidence. I began to hunt for it. I felt in my bones that there was some. What I wanted was the mould. I found it!”
She uttered the words in a tone of triumph and smiled at Willoughton; then she went on: “At least I found bits of it. In the box into which we used to throw odds and ends, scraps of material, damaged instruments, and broken test tubes, I found some pieces of vulcanite; and I saw at once that they were bits of a vulcanite container. I took some wax and rolled it into a rod about the right size and then I pieced the container together on the outside of it – at least most of it – there are some small pieces missing. It took me nearly all night. But I found the most important bit – the pointed end!”
She dipped her hand into her handbag and drew out a black object about nine inches long and three quarters of an inch thick and held it up for every one to see.
Someone, without thinking, began to clap; and there came a storm of applause that drowned the voice of the Clerk calling for order and the bellowing of Garbould.
When the applause died down, Hazeldean, who never misses the right moment, said: “I have no more questions to ask the witness, my lord,” and sat down.
That action seemed to clinch it in my eyes, and I have no doubt, it clinched it in the eyes of the jury.
The purple Garbould leant forward and almost bellowed at Ruth: “Do you expect the jury to believe that a well-known man like your father died in the act of deliberately setting a dastardly trap to hang the prisoner?”
Ruth looked at him, shrugged her shoulders, and said with a calm acceptance of the facts of human nature one would expect to find only in a much older woman: “Oh, well, Daddy was like that. And he certainly believed he had very good reasons for killing Mr. Willoughton.”
There was that in her tone and manner which made it absolutely certain that Kelstern was not only like that but that he had acted according to his nature.
Greatorex did not re-examine Ruth; he conferred with Hazeldean. Then Hazeldean rose to open the case for the defence. He said that he would not waste the time of the Court, and that in view of the fact that Miss Kelstern had solved the problem of her father’s death, he would only call one witness, Professor Mozley.
The grey-headed, grey-bearded, stooping man, who had come to the Court so late, went into the witness-box. Of course his face had been familiar to me; I had seen his portrait in the newspapers a dozen times. He still carried the brown-paper parcel.
In answer to Hazeldean’s questions he stated that it was possible, not even difficult, to make a weapon of carbon dioxide hard enough and tough enough and sharp enough to inflict such a wound as that which had caused Kelstern’s death. The method of making it was to fold a piece of chamois leather into a bag, hold that bag with the left hand, protected by a glove, over the nozzle of a cylinder containing liquid carbon dioxide, and open the valve with the right hand. Carbon dioxide evaporates so quickly that its freezing-point, 80 degrees centigrade, is soon reached; and it solidifies in the chamois-leather bag as a deposit of carbon dioxide snow. Then turn off the gas, spoon that snow into a vulcanite container of the required thickness, and ram it down with a vulcanite plunger into a rod of the required hardness. He added that it was advisable to pack the container in ice while filling it and ramming down the snow, then put the rod into a thermos flask; and keep it till it is needed.
“And you have made such a rod?” said Hazeldean.
“Yes,” said the Professor, cutting the string of the brown-paper parcel. “When Miss Kelstern hauled me out of bed at half-past seven this morning to tell me her discoveries, I perceived at once that she had found the solution of the problem of her father’s death, which had puzzled me considerably. I had breakfast quickly and got to work to make such a weapon myself for the satisfaction of the Court. Here it is.”
He drew a thermos flask from the brown paper, unscrewed the top of it, and inverted it. There dropped into his gloved hand a white rod about eight inches long. He held it out for the jury to see.
“This carbon dioxide ice is the hardest and toughest ice we know of; and I have no doubt that Mr. Kelstern killed himself with a similar rod. The difference between the rod he used and this is that his rod was pointed. I had no pointed vulcanite container; but the container that Miss Kelstern pieced together is pointed. Doubtless Mr. Kelstern had it specially made, probably by Messrs. Hawkins Spender.”
He dropped the rod back into the thermos flask and screwed on the top.
Hazeldean sat down. The juryman who had been reprimanded by Garbould leaned forward and spoke earnestly to the foreman. Greatorex rose.
“With regard to the point of the rod, Professor Mozley: would it remain sharp long enough to pierce the skin in that heat?” he asked.
“In my opinion it would,” said the Professor. “I have been considering that point and bearing in mind the facts that Mr. Kelstern would from his avocation be very deft with his hands, and being a scientific man, would know exactly what to do, he would have the rod out of the flask and the point in position in very little more than a second – perhaps less. He would, I think, hold it in his left hand and drive it home by striking the butt of it hard with his right. The whole thing would not take him two seconds. Besides, if the point of the weapon had melted the tea-leaf would have fallen off it.”
“Thank you,” said Greatorex, and turned and conferred with the Crown solicitors.
Then he said: “We do not propose to proceed with the case, my lord.”
The foreman of the jury rose quickly and said: “And the Jury doesn’t want to hear anything more, my lord. We’re quite satisfied that the prisoner isn’t guilty.”
Garbould hesitated. For two pins he would have directed the case to proceed. Then his eye fell on Hazeldean, who was watching him; I fancied that he decided not to give him a chance of saying more disagreeable things.
Looking black enough, he put the question formally to the Jury, who returned a verdict of “Not Guilty,” and then he discharged Willoughton.
I came out of the Court with Ruth, and we waited for Willoughton.
Presently he came out of the door and stopped and shook himself. Then he saw Ruth and came to her. They did not greet one another. She just slipped her hand through his arm; and they walked out of the New Bailey together.
We made a good deal of noise, cheering them.
