Explore "The Jacob Street Mystery" by R. Austin Freeman on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
IT might perhaps be of interest, if space permitted, to describe in detail the trial of Carl Schiller for the murder of his wife, Lotta. But space does not permit, nor is there any need for such description, since all the facts brought forward in evidence against him are known to the reader of this narrative. It is, however, one thing to know the facts, but quite another to perceive their application or the inferences deducible from them. I had known all the facts that were known to Thorndyke; but it was not until I had heard him reconstruct the course of the investigation that I perceived their exact connections and understood how, by piecing them together, he had evolved his startling conclusion.
The trial had run its course to its inevitable end. The jury, without leaving the box, had brought in their verdict of "Guilty"; the judge had pronounced sentence of death; and the prisoner had descended the stairs from the dock, vanishing for ever from the sight of men; and the spectators, having thus witnessed the fall of the curtain, rose and began to surge out through the open doors. I followed them as soon as I could, and, presently, in the great hail, encountered Polton, Pedley, and Vanderpuye, whom I joined to wait for Thorndyke.