Читать книгу Charles Peace, or The Adventures of a Notorious Burglar онлайн

380 страница из 895

“Burglars’ implements were found upon him, you should remember, Brother Jawkins,” observed the judge.

“So the police aver, my lord,” returned the advocate. “Indeed, they are so prone to put the worst construction in cases of this sort, that it would not surprise me if they called a toothpick or a pencil case burglars’ tools. The prisoner denies this. He asserts that the Implements found on him are nothing more or less than tools which he uses in his business.”

“What is his trade, then?” inquired a juryman.

“From what I have been informed I am led to the conclusion that he is a sort of handy man at two or three trades—​he has worked as a smith, he has turned his attention to mechanical appliances, and is the inventor of a crane of a novel description. This is his rough draught of its form.”

Mr. Serjeant Jawkins held forth a large mechanical drawing, which the judge and jury understood as much about as they did of the Sanscrit language.

Nevertheless the diagram had its desired effect.

“It is quite clear,” said Serjeant Jawkins in continuation, “that no robbery has been committed. Nothing has been stolen from the house of the prosecutrix, and I maintain that it is equally clear that no robbery was contemplated. The prisoner has been roughly and, I may say, unmercifully used by the pugnacious Mrs. Pocklington and her valiant servant-maid. But, hardly as he has been dealt with by the relentless prosecutrix, he will, I feel assured, be recompensed by an acquittal from the hands of a jury of his countrymen.”