"You didn't bring them to London
with you?"
"Of course not!" answered the witness. "I had not seen or heard of them
for thirty-two years! No I relied, on coming to this country, on other
things to prove my identity, such as my knowledge of Marketstoke and
Ellingham, my thorough acquaintance with the family history, my
recollection of people I had known, like Mr. Carless, Mr. Driver, and
their clerk, Mr. Portlethwaite, and on the fact that I lost this finger
through a shooting accident when I was a boy, at Ellingham. Curiously,"
he added with another smile, "these things don't seem to have much
weight. But no! I had no papers when I landed here."
"How did they come into your possession, then?" asked Mr.
Millington-Bywater. "That is what we most earnestly desire to know. Let
me impress upon you, sir, that this is the most serious and fateful
question I can possibly put to you! How did you get them?"
"And--from whom?" said the magistrate. "From whom?"
The witness shook his head.
"I can tell you exactly how I got them," he answered. "But I can't tell
you from whom, for I don't know! What I can tell you is this: When I
arrived at Tilbury from Melbourne, I asked a fellow-passenger with whom I
came along to London if he could tell me of a quiet, good hotel in the
neighbourhood of the parks--he recommended the Belfield, in Lancaster
Gate.
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