The matter was brought to trial as promptly as possible. A great number
of witnesses identified the prisoner as David Poindexter, but those who
had seen the corpse mostly gave their evidence an opposite inclination;
and four persons (one of them the gray-eyed gentleman who has been
already mentioned) swore positively that the prisoner was Giovanni
Lambert, the gray-eyed gentleman adding that he had once met
Poindexter, and had confidently taken him to be Lambert.
An attempt was then made to prove that Lambert had murdered Poindexter;
but it entirely failed, there being no evidence that the two men had
ever so much as met, and there being no conceivable motive for the
murder. Lambert, therefore, was permitted to enter undisturbed upon his
inheritance; for he had no difficulty in establishing the fact of the
elder Lambert's marriage to an Italian woman twenty-three years before.
The marriage had been a secret one, and soon after a violent quarrel
had taken place between the wife and husband, and they had separated.
The following month Giovanni was born prematurely.
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