The Judge concluded his charge with the usual, "I leave the case with
you, gentlemen," and the jury, collecting their miscellaneous garments,
slowly retired. Leary, the County Detective assigned to "Part One,"
pushed an indictment across the desk, whispering:
"Try _him_; he's a _short_ one," for it was getting late, and the
afternoon sun was already gilding the dingy cornices of the big
court-room, now almost deserted save by a lounger or two half asleep on
the benches.
"People against Graham," called Dockbridge, the youthful deputy
assistant district attorney.
"Fill the box!" shouted the clerk. "James Graham to the bar!" and
another dozen "good men and true" answered to their names and settled
themselves comfortably in their places.
At the rear the door from the pen opened and the prisoner entered,
escorted by an officer. He walked stolidly around the room, passed
through the gate held open for him, and took his seat at the table
reserved for the defendant and his attorney. There appeared, however, to
be no lawyer to represent him.
"Have you counsel?" casually inquired the clerk.
"No," answered the prisoner.
"Mr. Crookshanks, please look after the rights of this defendant,"
directed the Judge.
The prisoner, a thick-set man of medium height, half rose from his seat,
and, turning toward the weazened little lawyer, shook his head rather
impatiently. It was obvious that they were not strangers. After a
whispered conversation Crookshanks stepped forward and addressed the
Court.
"The defendant declines counsel, and stands upon his constitutional
right to defend himself," he said apologetically.
There was a slight lifting of heads among the jury, and a few sharp
glances in the direction of the prisoner, which seemed in no wise to
disconcert him.
"Very well, then; proceed," ordered the Court.
The prosecutor rapidly outlined his case--one of simple "larceny from
the person." The People would show that the defendant had taken a wallet
from the pocket of the complaining witness. He had been caught _in
flagrante delicto_. There were several eye-witnesses. The case would
occupy but a few moments, unless, to be sure, the prisoner had some
witnesses. The young assistant, who seemed slightly nervous at the
unusual prospect of conducting a trial against a lawyerless defendant
(savoring as it did of a hand-to-hand combat in the days of trial by
battle), started to comment upon the novelty of the situation, gave it
up, and to cover his retreat called his first witness.
Dockbridge was very young indeed. He was undergoing the process of being
"whipped into shape" by the Judge, a kind but unrelenting observer of
all the technicalities of the criminal branch, and this was one of his
first cases. He could work up a pretty fair argument in his office, but
he now felt his inexperience and began to wish it was time to adjourn,
or that his senior, "Colonel Bob," the stout Nestor of Part One, whose
long practice made him ready for any emergency, would return. But
"Colonel Bob" could have proved an excellent alibi at that moment, and
the battle had to be fought out alone.
The prisoner, meanwhile, was sitting calm but vigilant, pen in hand. His
face, square and strong, with firmly marked mouth and chin, showed no
sign of emotion, but under their heavy brows his black eyes played
uneasily between the Court and jury. Evidently not more than thirty
years of age, his attitude and expression showed intelligence and alert
capacity.
"Go on, Mr. District Attorney," again admonished the Judge; and
Dockbridge, pulling himself together, commenced to examine the
complainant.
The prisoner was now straining eye and ear to catch every look and word
from the witness-stand. Hardly had the complainant opened his mouth
before the defendant had objected to the answer, the objection had been
sustained, and the reply stricken out. He continued to object from time
to time, and his points were so well taken that he dominated not only
the examination but the witness as well, and the jury presently found
themselves listening to a cross-examination as skilfully conducted as
if by a trained practitioner.
But, although the defendant showed himself a better lawyer than his
adversary, it was apparent that his battle was a losing one. Point after
point he contested stubbornly, yet the case loomed clear against him.
The People having "rested," the defendant announced that he had no
witnesses, and would go to the jury on the evidence, or, rather "failure
of evidence," as he put it, of the prosecution. It was done with great
adroitness, and none of the jury perceived that, by refusing to accept
counsel, he had made it impossible to take the stand in his own behalf,
and had thus escaped the necessity of subjecting himself to
cross-examination as to his past career.
If the spectators had expected a piteous appeal for mercy or a burst of
prison rhetoric, they were disappointed. The prisoner summed his case up
carefully, arguing that there was a reasonable doubt upon the evidence
to which he was entitled; begged the jury not to condemn him merely
because he appeared before them as one charged with a crime; appealed to
them for justice; and at the close, for the first time forgetting the
proprieties of the situation, exclaimed, "I did not do it, gentlemen! I
did not do it! There is an absolute failure of proof! You cannot find
that I took the purse from the old gentleman on such evidence! It is all
a lie!"
It was his one false touch. To raise the issue of veracity is usually a
mistake on the part of a defendant, and the defiant look in Graham's
eyes might well have suggested conscious guilt.
As he paused for a moment after this concluding sentence, an Italian
band came marching down Centre Street playing the dead march. Some
patriot was being borne to his last sleep in an alien land. Outside the
court-house it paused for a moment with one melancholy crash of funeral
chords. It seemed a vibrant echo of the discord of his own fruitless
life. At the same moment a ray from the red sun setting over the Tombs
fell upon the prisoner's face.
Dockbridge summed the case up in the stock fashion, and then for half an
hour the Judge addressed the jury in a calm and dispassionate analysis
of the evidence, not hesitating to compare the abilities of the
prosecutor and prisoner to the disadvantage of the former, saying in
this respect: "Neither must you be influenced by any feeling of
admiration at the capacity shown by this defendant to conduct his own
case. If he has appeared more than a match for the prosecution, it must
not affect the weight which you give to the evidence against him."
"More than a match for the prosecution!" That had been rather rough, to
be sure, and the fifth juror had looked at Dockbridge and grinned.
The jury filed out, the prisoner was led back to the pen, the Judge
vanished into his chambers, and the prosecutor, his feet on the counsel
table, lit a cigar and indulged in retrospection. The benches were
deserted. There was no one but himself left in the court-room. Usually,
when a jury retired, there was some mother or wife or daughter, with her
handkerchief to her eyes, waiting for them to come back, but this fellow
had none such. He had fought alone. Well, damn him, he deserved to! But
who the deuce was he? It had been clever on his part not to take the
stand. Strange to be trying a man you had never seen before--of whom you
knew nothing, who had merely side-stepped into your life and would soon
back out of it. "Poor devil!" thought the deputy as he lit another
Perfecto.
Now the jury, as juries sometimes do, wanted to talk and had a consuming
desire to smoke, so they both smoked and talked; and when O'Reilly came
to turn on the lights in the court-room, they were still out, and
Dockbridge had fallen fast asleep.