Another five minutes would see an experienced housebreaker
like Birchill inside the house. At twenty minutes past eleven a young man
named Ryder, who had wandered into Tanton Gardens while endeavouring to
take a short cut home, heard the sound of a report, which at the time he
took to be the noise of a door violently slammed, coming from the
direction of Riversbrook. A few moments afterwards he saw a man climb
over the front fence of Riversbrook to the street. He drew back
cautiously into the shade of one of the chestnut trees of the street
avenue, and saw the man plainly as he ran past him. Ryder will swear that
the man he saw was Birchill."
"It's a lie! It's a lie! You're trying to hang him, you wicked man. Oh,
Fred, Fred!"
The cry proceeded from the girl Doris Fanning. Her unbalanced temperament
had been unable to bear the strain of sitting there and listening to Mr.
Walters' cold inexorable construction of a legal chain of evidence
against her lover. She rose to her feet, shrieking wildly, and
gesticulating menacingly at Mr. Walters. The Society ladies turned
eagerly in their seats to take in through their _lorgnons_ every detail
of the interruption.
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