"Are you acquainted with Mr. Wolff? Do you speak to him if you should meet on the landing or stairs?"

"Yes—yes, I have until now." Hillman was obviously nonplussed.

"But something here has changed your mind?" Rathbone suggested helpfully. "Something that has been said today?"

Hillman looked acutely unhappy. He stood as if to attention, shoulders square, back stiff, eyes straight ahead.

"Perhaps I can assist you," Rathbone offered. "Mr. Sachev-erall has suggested a relationship which would be quite improper, and you might find that repugnant to you?"

"I should, sir! I should..." Hillman was shaking, his voice thick with emotion.

"Extremely repugnant?" Rathbone nodded.

Hillman was tight-lipped. "Extremely."

Sacheverall was leaning across his table, listening with a half smile on his face.

The jurors were watching Rathbone intently.

Melville had his head down, refusing to look at anyone.

"Quite so," Rathbone agreed. "You are not alone, Major Hillman. Most of us do not care to think or imagine the intimate details of other people's lives. We consider it intrusive at best, at worst a form of emotional illness."

Sacheverall started to his feet.

McKeever gestured him to silence, but his glance at Rathbone warned him that he would not indulge him much longer.

"But before coming here today, Major Hillman," Rathbone said with a smile, "you had not entertained such thoughts? You did not speak pleasantly while at the same time believing him to be practicing the acts Mr. Sacheverall has hinted at?"

"Certainly not, sir!" Hillman said sharply. "I believed him to be a normal man—indeed, a gentleman."

"So it is Mr. Sacheverall who has changed your mind?"

"Yes sir."

Rathbone smiled. "And here were we supposing it was your testimony which had changed his. Thank you for correcting our errors, sir. I am obliged to you. That is all I have to trouble you with."

There was a ripple of laughter around the room. But it was a short-lived victory, as Rathbone had known it would be. Hard on the major's heels was a man of much less repute, a grubby-minded idler with nothing better to do than to watch and imagine. His evidence was as well embroidered. The jury's contempt for his testimony was marked plainly in their faces, but they had to listen to his leering account, and however hard they might have wished to expunge it from their minds, it was not possible. One cannot willfully forget in an instant. And they were sworn to weigh the evidence, all of it, regardless of their own personal feelings, as Sacheverall reminded them more than once.

Rathbone could discredit the man, but it was hardly worth the effort. He had discredited himself. There was no point in trying to shake his actual testimony. To draw attention to it at all, whether to rebut, argue, or deny, was only to fix it more firmly in the jurors' minds.