On the day set for the trial of the Regan murder case the court-room at
Mont-Mer was crowded. Long before ten o'clock men and women were
flocking into the building, eager for the most desirable seats.
Residents from some of the country districts brought their lunches and
prepared to spend the day.
The court-house was an antique structure heated only by wood stoves, but
the fur-coated and the threadbare rubbed elbows and were oblivious of
drafts. For it is in the audience chamber of a criminal court that those
who seek will find the true democracy. One touch of sensation makes the
whole world kin.
A few hours before the trial Clinton Morgan arrived in town and was
permitted to see the prisoner. The vigilance of the Mont-Mer officials
did not preclude visitors, rather welcomed them as a possible means of
gaining valuable information from the suspected murderer when he was off
his guard. Dayton, who was in conference with his client when Clinton
entered, was immensely relieved by the appearance of this new actor in
the drama. "This thing seems to me to be a little too one-sided,
professor," he remarked when introductions were over. "The court-room
over there is jammed with people who expect to see us done to death.
It's good to have an ally loom up in the offing."
He left them alone for a few moments while they waited for the sheriff,
and Clinton measured his friend with an anxious eye. "I don't know what
you could have thought of me for not coming sooner," he said, "but I
couldn't possibly get away. You look all in, man. Haven't they been
giving you anything to eat?"
"As much as I wanted." As he returned the grip of his hand, Kenwick was
wondering if Clinton Morgan suspected that this encounter, in a prison
cell, between himself and the brother of Marcreta filled his cup of
humiliation to the brim. Her name was not mentioned by either of them.
Clinton's whole attention was centered upon the developments in the
case.
"You're not going to take the stand yourself, are you, Kenwick?" he
questioned, standing with one foot upon the backless chair.
"I was, but Dayton has advised against it."
"Absolutely. You'd be at an immense disadvantage."
"I suppose so. I can furnish proof from Dr. Gregson Bennet, in the city,
that I'm perfectly normal now. But after all, that doesn't really count
for much with anybody but myself. It was such an immense comfort to me
when he made the examination. I came away from his office feeling that
it was going to clear up everything. But no matter what science says,
I'll always be at a disadvantage."
Clinton laid a hand upon his shoulder. Ever since his first sight of him
he had been trying to conceal the fact that Kenwick's altered appearance
was a shock to him. And like the attempts of most straightforward men,
the effort had been a failure. "Why, buck up, man," he admonished now.
"They can't convict you, you know; not under--the circumstances. You
haven't been thinking that?"
"I've been thinking a good many things since I came back to Mont-Mer,"
Kenwick answered slowly. "You see, Morgan, I know more now than I did
when I was trying to ferret this thing out up in the city. For one
thing, I know a little more about my adversary. As I've figured out this
story now, it goes something like this.
"After that adventure out at Rest Hollow, Glover found himself in a
hole. But there were three ways out of it for him. If he wanted to
retain the grip that I think he has upon my estate, he had to choose
between these. The first one was to make it appear that I was dead. This
seems, at first thought, to be a hazardous venture, but it was not so
difficult in my case as it would have been under normal circumstances.
And when he first decided to take it I think he supposed that I was
dead. He had every reason to think so. The man to whom he had entrusted
me had mysteriously disappeared, and he had some strange woman come down
and identify as himself a stranger who had been killed in an automobile
tragedy; a very easy thing, in reality, you see. When Glover discovered,
upon inquiry around town, that there had been such an accident, he
concluded that I had been killed and that the man who was responsible
for it was afraid to let him know and had made his escape after having
himself declared dead. I haven't a doubt that Glover thought I was the
man who was shipped up to San Francisco in a casket. And believing this,
the whole thing seemed to play right into his hands. He knew, of course,
that he couldn't keep his hold on my fortune forever, but he wanted to
play the game until he got as much as he could out of it.
"But suddenly he discovered, by some means, that his whole hypothesis
was wrong. He discovered that I was alive, and what was infinitely more
appalling, that I was apparently restored to competency. He had been
willing to risk my possible reappearance, you see, for if I were ever
discovered wandering about deranged somewhere, I would have no means of
identifying myself and, after a medical examination, would simply be
committed to some institution. He would not have to connect himself with
that at all. But since I had come to life mentally as well as
physically, he had to take the second course--prove me irresponsible and
have me sent to an asylum. How he went about this I don't know, but I'm
sure that he must have attempted it. And I don't know either why he
failed, for as I look back now upon some of my moves I can see that they
might have appeared--erratic."
"I think," Clinton told him dryly, "that any of us could furnish
convincing proof that we have been, at certain periods of our lives,
dangerous to the public safety."
But Kenwick went on, unheeding this attempted solace.
"At any rate, Glover apparently failed in this attempt. So in order to
get himself out of this mess, there is only one thing now for him to
do." He broke off, eying his visitor with somber eyes. "You know what
that is, Morgan. In order to save himself, he must prove me to be a
cold-blooded murderer. Can he do it? Why shouldn't he? I'm certainly not
in a position to offer any convincing opposition. A contemptuous pity is
what I have read in the eyes of every person whom I've seen since this
thing came to light. I don't suppose there is a person in this town who
thinks I am innocent. I don't know whether Dayton himself does."
"But what motive could you have had for murder, Kenwick? You say that
you never saw this Regan in your life."
"_I_ say so, but what does my testimony amount to? And especially what
does it amount to when I am trying to save my own skin? I told you once,
Morgan, and I tell you again that it's impossible for a man to live down
my sort of a past. He may get his eyes back out of the bramble-bush, but
he'll never be able to make the world believe that he can really see
with them. I feel sorry for Dayton. He's working day and night on this
case, and he's a nice fellow. But he hasn't got any chance to make good
on it. I feel sorry for him."
"I have been thinking," Clinton mused, "that there might be something
out at Rest Hollow that would furnish a clue to help solve the question
to the satisfaction of the jury, as to just when you arrived at that
house, how long you stayed, and so on."
"The place is full of clues, of course," Kenwick admitted. "But by this
time they have all been carefully arranged. Dayton went out there, and
he told me that the public are not being admitted to the grounds at all.
The place is under guard night and day. There may be danger there for
Glover; I don't know anything about that, of course, but he knows. And
whatever else you may say about him, you can't say that he has been
asleep on this job."
The door opened to admit the sheriff. He shook hands with Clinton Morgan
and nodded to Kenwick. In absolute silence the trio walked through the
semitropical grounds to the court-house. As they entered the packed
audience chamber the buzz of conversation stopped, and in deathly
silence Roger Kenwick took his place.
The barrage of eyes leveled upon him was only partly visible through the
haze that for the first few moments blurred his vision. He told himself
that it was like that last charge, through blinding smoke, that he had
made across No-Man's-Land. Then the scene cleared and individual faces
emerged from the mist. There were the weather-beaten faces of ranch
workers, the smug, complacent faces of those whom life has petted, the
resolute faces of those who have come to see grim justice administered.
Among them, here and there, was a scattering of veiled faces; women
eager to see, but ashamed of being seen. Kenwick wondered contemptuously
if some of the writers of the perfumed notes were among these.
During his dispassionate survey of the spectators he was acutely
conscious of the presence of a man sitting at the far end of the table
around which the lawyers were assembled. He had felt this personality
when he first entered, but had reserved his attention until the blur of
his surroundings should clear. Now he turned slowly in his chair and
looked straight into the "tiger eyes" of Richard Glover. There was
neither anger nor appeal in his own face; only a curious, questioning
expression. An anthropologist who has stumbled upon some strange human
relic unknown to his research might wear such an expression. Any
physiognomist could have read in Kenwick's gaze the question, "What is
this all about?"
And here again his adversary had him at a disadvantage. For his was not
the mobile temperament which gives visible response to its emotional
experiences. Life played upon Kenwick as upon a highly strung
instrument, and drew from him whatever notes she needed in the universal
symphony. But Richard Glover permitted no hand but his own to manipulate
the keys of his life-board.
It was ten o'clock now but the trial seemed long in beginning. The judge
had barely noticed Kenwick's entrance and continued an inaudible
conversation with some one at his high desk. The district attorney, a
florid little man who seemed to find difficulty in keeping on his
eye-glasses, fussed with a mass of papers at the end of the long table
and spoke occasionally to the bald-headed man on his right, who was
evidently his colleague. Dayton leaned back in his chair and tapped the
table impatiently with his pencil. Kenwick was surprised to see that the
nervousness which his attorney had shown when he had visited him in jail
seemed now to have completely disappeared.
There was an eminent surgeon among Kenwick's New York acquaintances who
suffered from a nervous malady that was akin to palsy, and yet who, in
the vital crisis of an operation, had a hand as steady as an embedded
rock. He found himself wondering curiously now whether Dayton would
develop under pressure an abnormal sagacity. Some miracle would have to
intervene if he was to be saved from the ravenous clutches of fate.
Other persons were entering the court-room now and taking places that
had evidently been reserved for them. Dayton leaned over and presented
them at long distance to his client. "That fellow that just came in is
Gifford, the undertaker. He got the jolt of his life when this thing
blew up. Don't think he'll be much of a witness. He gets rattled. That
chap with him is Dr. Markham. Ever see him before?"
Kenwick nodded. "He bandaged my leg that night in the drug-store. He'll
remember it, too, for he was a little suspicious at the time that the
sprain was older than I admitted. And I think he knew the man whose name
I chanced to give as mine."
"Yes, that was a bad break, your chancing upon the name of Rogers. A
fellow by that name was visiting out at the Paddington place, and
although the doctor had never seen him, he had an engagement to play
golf with him that afternoon out at the country club. Fortunately the
man himself left town the next day so it wasn't as bad as it might have
been. But it was an unfortunate thing, such a beast of a thing, that you
should have given an assumed name at all."
"I suppose so. But that one seemed safe enough; it was my own name
backwards. And I'd been through enough during the last twenty-four hours
to make me cautious and secretive. And as it turned out, the taking of
another name _was_ the thing to do, Dayton. If I had hurled 'Roger
Kenwick' into that group, I imagine that some one would have made
connections and turned me over to the lunacy commission. My guardian
angel was on the job when I decided to keep my identity a secret that
night."
Dayton surveyed him with obvious satisfaction. It was a good sign that
Kenwick had thrown off some of his former apathy. And yet there still
remained a cold indifference about him, a sort of contemptuous disregard
of the crowded room, that for a man of Kenwick's caliber and social
position seemed to him inexplicable. He had an uncomfortable conviction
that this inscrutable self-possession would not take well with the
jury; that it somehow gave credence to the theory of the prosecution
that the prisoner was a hardened criminal. The local reporters were
already busy with their pencils. And Dayton could visualize a paragraph
in the evening sheet beginning, "Roger Kenwick himself showed a complete
indifference to the proceedings which----"
The conference with the judge had ended and he was rapping for order.
The charge against the prisoner was read and the tedious task of
impaneling the jury began. Dayton paid little attention to the formal
process of getting the legal machinery into action, except to object in
a decisive voice to three or four of the prospective jurymen. Aside from
these interruptions, he continued to identify the various witnesses to
his client, in an impersonal, entertaining manner, like the official
guide on a personally conducted excursion.
A short, ruddy man in long overcoat entered and cast impatient eyes
about the room for a seat. One was immediately brought in for him from
an adjoining room. "Annisen, ex-coroner," Dayton explained. "He's got a
fine position now as health officer somewhere in Missouri. He hated like
hell to come back and get mixed up in this fracas. You see, he never was
a howling success out here; made the mistake of knocking the climate
when he first came out, and no southern California town can stand for
that. And then, he had too many irons in the fire all the time, and
neglected his official position sometimes. I have a haunting suspicion
myself that he didn't spend any too much of his valuable time over the
examination of your supposed remains. We don't need to fear him; he'll
be a reluctant witness."
He swung about in his chair to announce himself satisfied with the
twelve men who had been selected to try the case, and then engaged for a
moment in conversation with the district attorney.
Kenwick turned his gaze to the window where he could see the date-palms
from a new angle, their curving leaves motionless now in the still
wintry air. The swinging doors of the court-room fanned incessantly back
and forth, but he no longer felt any interest in the hostile faces of
the witnesses. His mind was wandering back along the sun-lighted path of
his boyhood to the days when he had mother, father, and brother, and had
never suspected that he would ever lose any of them. It was a good
thing, though, he told himself bitterly, a good thing that they were
gone; that the last of the Kenwicks should go down in disgrace without
spreading the cankerous taint to anyone else of that proud name. The
imminent exposé appeared to him all at once in the guise of a mighty
tree, which was holding its place in the earth only by a single
supporting root. Now that root was to be chopped away. The house of
Kenwick was to fall. But in its fall it would harm no one else. For the
tree had long stood alone, solitary and leafless amid the white wastes
of life.
He became aware at last that the buzzing noise of the court-room had
increased. There seemed to be some new excitement in the air. He brought
his eyes back from the courtyard and glanced inquiringly at Dayton. But
he had leaned forward in response to a curt signal from the district
attorney. Every one except the jurymen was talking in low tones with
some one else. In their double row of seats the twelve newly-sworn
judges sat solemnly silent, freighted with a sense of their
responsibility.
Whence the news came Kenwick never knew, for during the moments just
preceding he had been deep in reverie and had lost connection with his
surroundings. But whatever it was, it seemed all at once to be upon
every one's tongue. Those who did not know were eagerly seeking
information from their neighbors. Kenwick's eyes swept the room,
puzzled. Dayton would doubtless tell him when he finished his
conference. But before he had time to gain the knowledge from this
source, it was hurled at the court-room from behind the lawyer's table.
The district attorney evidently deemed this the only way to quiet the
increasing tumult. He got to his feet, and flapping the fugitive
eye-glasses between his fingers, faced the judge and made one brief
statement, unembellished by explanation or judicial comment.
"Your Honor, news has just been received from a reliable source that the
house at Rest Hollow has burned to the ground!"