Evening star., 1921-02-20
Translated From the French by
WILLIAM l.. MCPHERSON.

! u1NHE hat l speak Of" said m,
honorable friend. Sir Rob
ert Bruce, one of the jus.
| tices of the kings bench
i division of the United Kingdom, IVA:
for three months the only hat thai
interested the public of England
; Scotland, Ireland and Wales. That
may seen extraordinary to you, for
| thank God, there are many other hats
in our country which are worthy OF
! notice. There are the hats of the
chancellor and of the university proc
! tors. which aren't half bad. There is
! the headpiece of the poor little devils
! of the ancient corporate, schools of
! the city of London, which is medieval
| to the point of being carnival-like.
! There is the cap of the soldiers of our
old army. which is illustrious. and
] there, were at that period the hats OF
his majesty King Edward VII. which
were startling, ingenious and dis
| Greet, according to circumstances
! the hats of a monarch and an arbiter
| of fashion. But nobody thought of
these any longer. 1t was as if they
had never existed. People talked
about only one hat, that of Thomas
/ L
| an abominable murder.
1T wasn't a pretty hat. l still see
it figuring on the Surrey court table,
between the jury and myself. on the
one side. and the prosecutor, the de-
fendants attorney and the defendant
himself, on the other. 1t was a most
lamentable head cover. an old soft
felt, made in. Germany which. hav-
ing once been green, had become red
dish brown. 1t is a singular freak of
nature, or a mystery of chemistry,
that black hats. when they get old,
turn green, while green hats turn
reddish, especially when they come
from Germany. Nobody has ever been
able to explain this phenomenon.
x X x X
nTHIS one had had a band-even
still had one, in the final stage
OF dishonor and dilapidation. The
band had been formerly a Teutonic
imitation of silk. but initiated it not
spinach. 1t was frayed and stained
in q most original fashion. In the
opinion of every living man at the
beginning of the twentieth century,
no other hat could have looked like it.
The woof had disappeared complete
ly, as if delicately rubbed off by
some practiced hand. 1t had become
almost work Of art, resembling a
butterfiy's texture, a spiders web or
the clouds of early morning.
But, such as it was, I must admit
that it was almost the only evidence,
the sole proof. against Thomas Oba-
diah Barton. It wasn't Barton whom
they interrogated. examined and
cross-examined. 1t was the hat
ut had been found a few steps
away from the victim, young
woman whom the murderer, whoever
he was, had brutally crushed her
head under a huge stone, near a
canal where Barton was working at
the time of the crime. Was he it's
owner or not? The whole case turned
on the hat.
Nothing seems simpler at first
blush than to find out whether a hat
belongs or not to a certain individual.
The thing to do is to put it on his
head. If it fits, the presumption is
that it belongs to him. But the ac-
cused's lawyer. after having astutely
measured my own Uranium. sug-
gested:
May it please your lordship to try
the hat on? 1t doesn't Mt Thomas
Barton in three particulars. We pre-
sent the expert testimony of three
hatters on that point. I am willing
to bet that it fits your lordship ex-
actly. l
II was able. to give legal. reasons.