The judge did not wait for Goode. “Mr. Rathbone, you are retracing old ground. Please, if you have a point, come to it!”

“Yes, my lord. I do have a point, indeed. Miss Herries, you are telling us that for Caleb to send for his brother, for him to come, and for Caleb to be bruised, stiff, injured, scarred, perhaps bleeding in places, but nonetheless jubilant, having won a fight, was a perfectly normal pattern of behavior for him. And you have also said no one beats Caleb Stone. That `no one' must include his unfortunate brother, who has not been seen since!

Only his bloodstained clothes have been found on the Isle of Dogs!” Selina said nothing. Her face was as white as the paper on which the court clerk wrote.

In the dock Caleb Stone started to laugh, wildly. It soared in pitch and volume until it seemed to fill the room and reverberate from the wooden paneling.

The judge banged his gavel and was ignored-it was no more than an instrument beating time to the uproar. He demanded silence, and no one even heard him. Caleb's hysterical laughter drowned out everything else. The gaolers grabbed at him, and he flung them off.

In the gallery journalists scrambled over each other to get out and grab the first hansom to race to Fleet Street and the extra editions.

Enid rose to her feet amid the clamor, looking one way, then the other. She tried to speak to Ravensbrook, but he ignored her, staring at the dock as if transfixed. He did not seem to see what was in front of him, the frenzy and the farce, only some terrible truth within him.

The judge was still banging his gavel, a sharp, thin, rhythmic sound without meaning.

Rathbone waved his hands to indicate that Selina Herries might be excused.

She swiveled around and descended the steps to the floor, her head always turned towards Caleb.

Finally the gaolers overpowered him and he was led down. Some semblance of order was restored.

Red-faced, the judge adjourned the court.

Outside in the corridor Rathbone, considerably shaken, ran into Ebenezer Goode, looking shocked and unhappy.

“Didn't think you could do it, my dear fellow,” he said with a sigh. “But from the jury's faces, I would wager now that you'll get a conviction.

Never had a client been so hellbent on his own destruction.”

Rathbone smiled, but it was a gesture of amiability, not of any pleasure.

His victory would bring a professional satisfaction, but it was curiously devoid of personal triumph. He had thought Caleb Stone totally despicable.

Now his feelings were less clear. The force of his instability, the awareness of his emotions in the room, even though he had not yet spoken, became tangled in his judgments, and he found himself awaiting his testimony with far less certainty of the outcome than Goode.