Sometimes
one or more of them stayed all night, and you were entrusted with the
confidential task of smuggling them out of the house without other
servants knowing of their presence. Is not that so?"
"I--I--"
"Answer the question without equivocation, witness."
"Y-es, sir."
There was a slight stir in the body of the court due to the fact that
Miss Fewbanks and Mrs. Holymead had risen and were making their way to
the door. The fashionably-dressed women in the court stared with much
interest at the daughter of the murdered man, whom most of them knew, in
order to see how she was taking the disclosures about her dead father's
private life.
"And sometimes there were quarrels between your late master and these
visitors, were there not?" continued Holymead.
"Quarrels, sir?"
"Surely you know that under the influence of wine some people become
quarrelsome?"
"Yes, sir."
"Well, did your late master's nocturnal visitors ever become
quarrelsome?"
"Sometimes, sir."
"In the exercise of your confidential duties did you sometimes see
quarrelsome ladies off the premises?"
"Sometimes, sir."
"And it was no uncommon thing for them to say things to you about your
master, eh?"
"Sometimes they didn't care what they said.
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