' Then you had best drink it, Citizen,' Roger quipped. ' You will find it very good.'
His sally raised a titter, but next moment he could have bitten off his tongue. The Chairman of the Bench was on him in a flash. ' This bottle is unopened, yet you admit to knowledge of its contents. Therefore, you must be well acquainted with the cordial and must have drunk it recently. I regard this as evidence that you did visit Grove Place and were given the bottle there.'
A slight shiver ran through Roger. The courtroom was warmed only by a charcoal brazier; so it was distinctly chilly, and by this time his having had nothing to eat since the previous night was beginning to tell upon him. With an effort, he shrugged his shoulders and said:
'Citizen Chairman, you err in counting that against me. I recommended the cordial on the grounds that I recall enjoying it when as a youth I lived at Grove Place and I saw no reason to suppose that its quality had deteriorated.'
A frown momentarily wrinkled the bulging forehead of the Chairman, then he said, ' We will leave that question for the moment and enquire further into an outstanding feature of the case. You have stated that your recent visit to England was as an agent for General Bonaparte, and that having completed your mission you fooled the Captain of a British sloop into bringing you back to France. Evidence has been given that you were landed safely and covered near half a kilometre along the shore away from the boat before you were challenged by two members of the second patrol. At that distance, had you declared yourself in what you assert to be your true colours, the members of the boat's crew could not have shot you down or even heard you. Yet, instead of hailing your compatriots with joy, you shot one of them with a pistol and smashed the butt of it into the face of the other. If you are, as you claim, a Colonel in the Army of France, what possible explanation have you to offer for attacking two members of our Coastguard Service? '
This was the big fence and, pulling himself together, Roger took it to the best of his ability. Pointing to the Coastguard who had been among the first to arrive on the scene of the affray, he said, ' That man has told the Court that at the time of the occurrence the beach was lit only by starlight so faint that it was impossible to see an approaching figure at more than a few yards' distance. The men who attacked me were running full tilt towards me and I towards them. In such circumstances a yard can be covered in less than a second. They were upon me before I had even the time to shout. One of them had a sabre raised above his head with intent to cleave my head from scalp to chin. Instinctively, as the only chance of saving my life, I fired upon him. As he fell his companion charged at me. I barely escaped his thrust, and in swerving struck wildly at him with the hand that held my pistol. It caught him in the face and he went down.'
' And then,' the Chairman remarked acidly, ' instead of remaining to give such aid as you could to these compatriots you had injured, you ran off into the sea, leaving them, perhaps, to bleed to death.'
' There was no question of their bleeding to death,' Roger cried indignantly. 'The one was shot only in the shoulder and the other had but a bloody nose. Besides, their comrades came up with them no more than two minutes later. It was the thudding of the patrol's footsteps on the sand as they came charging towards me that caused me to act as I did. Had I remained beside the men I had wounded, their comrades would not have waited to listen to any explanations but would have struck me down where I stood and made an end of me. My only hope of preserving my life lay in an immediate flight and the hope that their resentment against me would have cooled a little by the time I gave myself up.'
The Prosecutor made no attempt to sum up, neither did the magistrates leave the Court to debate the evidence in private. No further evidence being offered, they began openly to discuss the case among themselves. The Chairman asked his two colleagues for their opinions and the little man with the ruddy cheeks, who had not so far spoken, said:
' He is a Frenchman. There can be no doubt about that. And he has an answer for everything. One must admit that his account of himself is entirely plausible.'
' Except about the Cherry Brandy,' put in the innkeeper. '1 am convinced that he was lying about that.'
'If so,' commented the Chairman, ' he was then lying to us on other matters. If he obtained the bottle from Grove Place that means he did contact his relatives at the house. His doing so would greatly increase the probability that he is Sir Brook's son rather than a French cousin who could not readily have accounted for his presence in England and who, on disclosing himself, would almost certainly have been detained.'
At that, Tardieu jumped to his feet and cried, ' He is lying, Citizen Chairman; and I can prove it. When I woke him this morning and charged him with being Admiral Sir Brook's son, his first words were, '' Admiral Brook? I've never heard of him." Yet now he declares himself to be a French relative of the Admiral and tells us that he spent several years of his youth in the Admiral's house. He cannot have it both ways.'
Shaken as Roger was by this bolt from the blue, he rallied all his resources to meet it. Leaning out of the dock, he pointed at Tardieu and shouted indignantly, ' It is the Lieutenant who is lying! I said no such thing! What I said was that I had not seen Admiral Brook since the war started. He has twisted my words because he is disgruntled. Having convinced himself this morning that I am a spy, he feels that I made a fool of him last night and that his men must be laughing at him for having accepted my statement that I am Colonel Breuc and an aide-de-camp to General Bonaparte.'
' Lies! More lies! ' shouted Tardieu. '1 swear to what I have said.'
' Then you should be charged with perjury,' Roger shouted back.
' Silence! ' cried the Chairman. ' Silence! ' and banged hard on the table with his gavel. When quiet was restored he went on:
' The Court has taken notice of the Lieutenant's statement, also of the prisoner's denial, although I can hardly credit that the reason he suggests constitutes sufficient grounds to have caused the Lieutenant to commit perjury. If we accept his statement it shows how anxious the prisoner was to conceal the truth about his activities while in Lymington and throws the gravest doubt on a great part of what he has said about himself.'
'1 told you he was lying about that Cherry Brandy,' the innkeeper declared in a self-satisfied voice. ' Displaying stolen liquor in a coffee room, indeed! Is it likely? '
Roger needed no telling that since Tardieu's intervention things were beginning to look black for him; but the little man with the ruddy face created a diversion by remarking, ' Whatever the truth may be about what he was up to in Lymington, I'll nofc believe that he's an Englishman. As my Citizen colleagues know, up till the Revolution I'd lived all my life in Paris, and it would be hard to find a man with a more definite Parisian accent.'
The Chairman nodded. ' On consideration, I think you are right, Citizen colleague, and the seaman's evidence, which is all we have to go on about that, was inconclusive. He must be a Frenchman or, at least, have French blood in his veins. From his statement, too, it can hardly be doubted that he has lived for a great part of his life in France. But pven if, as he says, he was born here, that is no guarantee that he is a loyal Frenchman. Every country has its quota of traitors, and in recent years France has suffered far more in that respect than others, owing to the thousands of emigres who now live abroad and intrigue against her.'