FULLY EQUAL TO FICTION.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume IX, Issue 17, 23 April 1892, Page 427

FULLY EQUAL TO FICTION.

HOW A LAWYER UPSET A CASE OF CIRCUMSTANTIAL EVI PENCE.

There is no figment of the imagination—if it is at all within the limit of possibilities—more curious or strange than some things that actually happen. The following is an instance in proof of this : A few years ago Frank Millet, the well known artist, war correspondent and story writer, published a short story in a leading magazine which had as its principal feature the mysterious killing of a I’aiisian artist in his own studio. A web of circumstantial evidence led to the arrest of a model who had been in the habit of posing for him. But through some chain of circumstances which the writer of this has now forgotten, the murder —if murder it can be called—was found to have been caused by the discharge of a firearm through the force of capillary attraction. The firearm was used by the artist as a studio accessory, and was hung in such a manner that he was directly in line with it. Its discharge occurred when he was alone in his studio. The story was a vivid and ingenious Hight of the imagination. Now for its parallel in fact: A recent number of the Albany Lain Journal tells of the arrest of a man upon the charge of killing his cousin. The dead man was found lying upon a lounge, about 3 o’clock in the afternoon, with a 32 calibre ball in his brain. The cousin who had an interest of $lOO,OOO in his death, was alone with him in the house at the time. The discovery of the real cause of death was due to the lawyer of the accused, who took the riHe from which the ball had been fired, loaded and hung it upon the wall, and then marked the form of a man upon a white sheet and placed it upon the lounge where the man had been found. Then a heavy cut-glass pitcher of water was placed upon a shelf above. The temperature was 90deg. in the shade. The pitcher of water acted as a sun glass, and the hot rays of the sun shining through the water were refracted directly upon the cartridge chamber of the rifle. Eight witnesses were in the room, and a few minutes after 3 o’clock there was a puff and a report, and the ball struck the outlined form back of the ear, and the theory of circumstantial evidence was exploded. This is interesting not only because the real occurrence is qnite as strange as the imagined one, but because the fact came after the fiction and paralleled it so closely.