As Berry and I Were Saying by Dornford Yates Page B

take a look at the people who went in and out. After about three hours the play-boy appeared. At once, both women rose up and cried out, ‘That’s him.’
    “Well, that was good enough. The women returned to London, an information was sworn and a warrant for the playboy’s arrest was issued forthwith. But the offence was not an extraditable offence. Still, the play-boy was often in England, and every boat-train was met for week after week.
    “I’m afraid I’ll have to go back. Before the information was sworn, a statement was taken from Dixon. No, he had not sent the cable. He’d never been robbed. Where was he at such and such a time on such and such a day – the time and day on which the false cable was sent. Well, where do you think he was ? He was walking about the mean streets that neighbour Waterloo . That morning he’d come from Hampshire to Waterloo. He was on his way to Southampton, en route for Rome. And he had an hour and a half to wait for his train. So he left his luggage with a porter and went for a walk. As like as not, he passed the office of origin at the very moment at which the cable was being dispatched. Dispatched in his name . Perhaps you can beat that. I can’t. It was, of course, the purest coincidence: but, brought out in cross-examination, it would have sounded strange.”
    “I’ll say it would,” said Berry. “They couldn’t have put him in the box.”
    “I told them as much,” said I. “And he came to me about it and asked what I thought. ‘The defence may not get it,’ I said, ‘but if they do, I must tell you frankly they’ll fairly lam it in.’ ‘I didn’t do it,’ he said. ‘You don’t have to tell me that, sir. But you must see that of all coincidences it is the most unfortunate that any evil spirit could have devised.’ ‘Perhaps,’ he said, ‘perhaps it won’t come to that.’ ‘I don’t think it will,’ said I. And I was perfectly right.
    “The weeks went by, but the play-boy stayed fast in France. ‘He’s afraid to return to England,’ said Madame de B— . So we all thought.
    “Late that summer, S F Edge, the famous racing motorist, was spending a fortnight at Ostend. One day he received a cable. Have been robbed please cable me twenty pounds . And the cable was signed with the name of a close friend of his. But S F Edge wasn’t deceived, for the friend in question had joined him in Ostend the day before. Edge cabled to Scotland Yard – and a man was sent at once to the accommodation address…
    “The culprit was a clerk in the cable office. As soon as he was arrested, he threw in his hand. He confessed to sending both cables and to having obtained twenty pounds by sending the first. He was committed for trial and presently appeared at the Old Bailey, where he pleaded guilty. Madame de B—’s solicitors sent me a watching brief. And so I saw the man. If you’d put him beside the play-boy, you could hardly have told them apart.
    “So that was that. But Madame de B— wouldn’t have it. She always maintained that the play-boy had sent the first cable to twist her tail.”
    “That was childish,” said Daphne.
    “Of course it was,” said I. “But I said she had glaring faults.”
    “Dixon wasn’t called?”
    “No. The Crown only proceeded on the S F Edge case, and, before he was sentenced, the prisoner asked that Madame de B—’s case should be taken into account.”
    “So nothing about the first case ever came out?”
    “Nothing. I don’t think her name was mentioned. It was very much better so.”
    “Poor Dixon must have been thankful.”
    “I’m sure he was. For such a man, it was a most unpleasant position, and had the play-boy been charged – and had he come to London before Edge’s cable was sent, he certainly would have been charged – well, Dixon’s position would have been dreadful, indeed. For he had met the play-boy at Madame de B—’s.”
    “And the play-boy might have gone down?”
    “He might indeed,”