Explore "Doctor Syn" by Russell Thorndike on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
The lawyers now asserted themselves, and for some three hours questioned and cross-questioned everybody. The squire left things in their hands, seeming to take small interest in the proceedings, while the captain, with his chin resting on his great hand, obviously took none at all. Doctor Syn, however, was at great pains to follow through the whole business, making notes of anything he deemed characteristic upon a scrap of paper before him.
But with all their cleverness the lawyers were greatly at sea, for they only ended up where they began -- namely, that Sennacherib Pepper was dead, and by violent means; that a foreign sailor was missing, and that this same sailor had stolen at a short period before the murder a certain harpoon from the house of Doctor Syn, and that from the nature and size of the wound upon the body sudden death was most certainly caused by this same weapon. To this false though obvious conclusion Doctor Syn, to Jerk's intense surprise, unhesitatingly agreed. Jerk couldn't understand this at all. Why had he been called to the trial if the vicar had not believed his story? for he found on being summoned to the witness box that all he was required to state was whether or no he had seen the mulatto enter the vicarage on the previous night and leave it a few minutes later with the harpoon in question in his hand. Having sworn to this, he was on the point of taking matters into his own hands and exposing the schoolmaster, when he was peremptorily ordered to "stand down" and only answer what was required of him. Returning to his place, he plainly noted the relief on the face of the schoolmaster. A warmer time of it had Mr. Mipps. There was something about Mipps that would always be called in question. If a great crime had been committed within a fifty-mile radius of Mipps, he would most assuredly have been detained upon suspicion. His quizzical appearance of injured innocence was quite enough to label him a "likely one. " On this occasion he acted upon the attorneys like a red rag to a bull.