"There is your man!" he exclaimed.
"You are sure? You could swear to it?" queried his father.
"Swear to it? Yes. I would have known him anywhere, but sitting there,
watching that man, his face is precisely as I saw it that night. Wait a
moment, look!"
The man in his agitation at some word of the prisoner's, raised one hand
and brushed his forehead with a nervous gesture, which lifted his hair
slightly, disclosing one end of a scar.
"Did you see that scar?" Darrell questioned, eagerly. "You will find it
almost crescent shaped, rather jagged, and nearly three inches in
length."
"That is all I wanted," his father replied. "I have the warrant for his
arrest with me, and the examination is so nearly over I shall serve it
at once."
"Can I help you?" Darrell asked, as his father moved away.
"No; stay where you are; don't let him see you until after he is under
arrest."
The examination of the prisoner had just ended when Mr. Britton,
accompanied by two deputies, re-entered the court-room. The man still
maintained his crouching attitude, intently watching proceedings. Mr.
Britton approached from the rear. Seizing the man suddenly by the arms,
he pinioned him so that for an instant he was unable to move, and one of
the deputies, leaning over, snapped the handcuffs on him before he
fairly realized what had happened. Then, with a swift movement, Mr.
Britton raised him to his feet and lifted him quickly out into the
aisle, while his voice rang authoritatively through the court-room,-"José Martinez, alias Walcott, I arrest you in the name of the State!"
The man shouted something in Spanish, evidently a signal, for it was
repeated in different parts of the room. Instantly all was confusion. A
shot fired from the rear wounded one of the deputies; a man seated near
Darrell drew a revolver, but before he could level it Darrell knocked it
from his hand and felled him to the floor. The officers rushed to the
spot, and as the outbreak subsided Mr. Britton brought forward his
prisoner.
A murmur of consternation rose throughout the room, for Walcott had been
known years before among the business men of Galena, and there were not
a few citizens present who had known him as Mr. Underwood's partner.
Walcott, taking advantage of the situation, began to protest his
innocence. Mr. Britton, unmoved, at once beckoned Darrell to his side.
Upon seeing him Walcott's face took on a ghastly hue and he seemed for a
moment on the verge of collapse, but he quickly pulled himself together,
regarding Darrell meanwhile with a venomous malignity seldom seen on a
human face. Not the least surprised man in the crowd was Darrell
himself.
"Do you mean to say," he asked his father, "that this is the Walcott of
whose villany you have been writing me, and that he and the murderer of
Harry Whitcomb are one and the same?"