Chapter XXIX. Woman's Intuition

Next morning, Cyril Waring appeared once more in the Sessions House for the preliminary investigation on the charge of murder. As he entered, a momentary hush pervaded the room; then, suddenly, from a seat beneath, a woman's voice burst forth, quite low, yet loud enough to be heard by all the magistrates on the bench.

"Why, mother," it said, in a very tremulous tone, "it isn't Guy himself at all; don't you see it's Cyril?"

The words were so involuntarily spoken, and in such hushed awe and amaze, that even the magistrates themselves, hard Devonshire squires, didn't turn their heads to rebuke the speaker. As for Cyril, he had no need to look towards a blushing face in the body of the court to know that the voice was Elma Clifford's.

She sat there looking lovelier than he had ever before seen her. Cyril's glance caught hers. They didn't need to speak. He saw at once in her eye that Elma at least knew instinctively he was innocent.

Next moment Gilbert Gildersleeve stood up to state his defence, and gazed at her steadily. As he rose in his place, Elma's eye met his. Gilbert Gildersleeve's fell. He didn't know why, but in that second of time the great blustering man felt certain in his heart that Elma Clifford suspected him.

Elma Clifford, for her part, knew still more than that. With the swift intuition she inherited from her long line of Oriental ancestry, she said to herself at once, in categorical terms, "It was that man that did it. I know it was he. And he sees I know it. And he knows I'm right. And he's afraid of me accordingly." But an intuition, however valuable to its possessor, is not yet admitted as evidence in English courts. Elma also knew it was no use in the world for her to get up in her place and say so openly.

The great Q.C. put his case in a nutshell. "Our client," he contended, "was not the man against whom the warrant in this case had been duly issued; he was not the man named Guy Waring; he was not the man whom the witnesses deposed to having seen at Mambury; he was not the man who had loitered with evil intent around the skirts of Dartmoor; in short," the great Q.C. observed, with demonstrative eye-glass, "it was a very clear case of mistaken identity. It would take them time, no doubt, to prove the conclusive alibi they intended to establish; for the gentleman now charged before them, he would hope to show hereafter, was Mr. Cyril Waring, the distinguished painter, twin brother to Mr. Guy Waring, the journalist, against whom warrant was issued; and he was away in Belgium during the whole precise time when Mr. Guy Waring--as to whose guilt or innocence he would make no definite assertion--was prowling round Dartmoor on the trail of McGregor, alias Montague Nevitt. Therefore, they would consent to an indefinite remand till evidence to that effect was duly forthcoming. Meanwhile--" and here Gilbert