It was nearly six o'clock. The court-room with its round white ceiling
looked like a crypt in the soft glow of the artificial light, and the
Judge, in his black silk gown, with his handsome patrician face,
clean-cut but rather soft and flushed with good living, might have been
an abbot seated aloft in judgment upon a recalcitrant nun. Mrs. Balfame
in her crepe completed the delusion--if the imaginative spectator
glanced no further. The district attorney, who was summing up, looked
more like a wasp than ever as he darted back and forth in front of the
jury-box, shouting and shaking his fists. Occasionally he would hook his
fingers in his waistcoat, balance himself on his heels and with a mere
moderation of his rasping tones, demonstrate a contemptuous faith in the
strength of his case.
It is to be admitted that his arguments and expositions, his
denunciations and satirical refutations, were quite as convincing as
those of the counsel for the defence had been, such being the elasticity
of the law and of the legal mind; but although an able and powerful
speaker, he lacked the personal charm and magnetism, the almost tragical
enthusiasm and conviction, alternating with cold deliberate logic, that
had thrilled all present to the roots of their beings during the long
hours of the morning. Rush, whether he lost or won, had made his
reputation as one of the greatest pleaders ever heard at the bar of New
York State. He had finished at a quarter to one. Immediately after the
opening of the afternoon session Gore had darted into the breach,
speaking with a dramatic rapidity for four hours. He sat down at six
o'clock; and Mrs. Balfame felt as if turning to stone while the Judge,
standing, charged the jury and expounded the law covering the three
degrees of murder: first, second, manslaughter. It was their privilege
to convict the prisoner at the bar of any of these, unless convinced of
her innocence.
He dwelt at length upon the degree called manslaughter, as if the idea
had occurred to him that Mrs. Balfame, justly indignant, had run out
when she heard her husband's voice raised in song, and had fired from
the grove by way of administering a rebuke to an erring and
inconsiderate man. The second bullet had been made much of by Rush, as
indicating that two people, possibly gun-men, had shot at once, but the
district attorney held no such theory and had ignored the bullet found
in the tree. It was apparent, however, that the Judge had given to this
second bullet a certain amount of judicial consideration.
The jury filed out, not to their luxurious quarters in the Paradise City
Hotel, a mile away, but to a stark and ugly room in the Court-house
where they must remain in acute discomfort until they arrived at a
verdict. The Judge had his dinner brought to him in a private room
adjoining theirs, and even the reporters and spectators snatched a hasty
meal at the Dobton hostelry, so sure were they all that the jury would
return within the hour. Mrs. Balfame did not take off her hat with its
heavy veil, but sat in her quarters at the jail with several of her
friends, outwardly calm, but with her mind on the rack and unable to
share the dinner sent over from the Inn by Mr. Cummack for herself and
her guests.
The hours passed, however, and the jury did not return. Once the head of
the foreman emerged, and the sheriff, misunderstanding his surly demand
for a pitcher of ice water, rushed over for Mrs. Balfame, the Judge was
summoned, and the reporters, men and women, raced one another up the
Court-house stairs. Mrs. Balfame, schooled to the awful ordeal of
hearing herself pronounced a murderess in one form or other, but bidden
by her friends to augur an acquittal from a mere three hours'
deliberation, walked in with her usual quiet remoteness and took her
seat. She was sent back at once.
Rush paced the road in front of the Court-house. He had little hope. He
had studied their faces day by day and believed that several, at least,
were persuaded of Mrs. Balfame's guilt. Mrs. Battle, Mrs. Gifning and
Mrs. Cummack sat with Mrs. Balfame, who found the effort to maintain the
high equilibrium demanded by her admiring friends as rasping an ordeal
to her nerves as waiting for that final summons whose menace grew with
every hour the jury wrangled. Finally she took off her hat and suggested
that they knit, and the needles clicked through the desultory
conversation until, after midnight, they all attempted to sleep.
The Judge extended himself on a sofa in the private room devoted to his
use; he dared not leave the Courthouse. He told the district attorney
(who told it to the sheriff, who told it to the reporters) that the jury
quarrelled so persistently and so violently that he found it impossible
to sleep, and that the language they used was appalling.
Midnight came and passed. The sob-sisters, worn out, went home. Miss
Sarah Austin and Miss Alys Crumley had not returned to the Court-house
after dinner. The sheriff appeared at the entrance of the courtroom and
announced that the last trolley would leave for Elsinore and
neighbouring towns within five minutes. Most of the spectators filed
sleepily out. A few of Mrs. Balfame's less intimate but equally devoted
friends remained in their seats near her empty chair, and shortly after
midnight the warden's wife brought them over hot coffee and sandwiches.
The reporters, having long since consumed all the chocolate and peanuts
on sale below, strolled back and forth between the Court-house and the
bar of the Dobton Inn. They were bored and indignant and sought the only
consolation available. They returned periodically to the court-room,
growing, as the hours passed, more formal, polite, silent. One lost his
way in the jury-box and was steered by a court official to the
sympathetic haven of his brothers.
The room itself, its floor littered with tinfoil, peanut-shells, and
newspapers, its tables and chairs out of place, looked like a Coney
Island excursion boat. Finally two reporters laid their heads down on a
table and went to sleep, but the rest continued to address one another
at long intervals, in distant tones, obeying the laws of etiquette, but
with a secret and scornful reluctance.
Broderick, who was reasonably sober, had wandered in and out many times.
Occasionally he walked the road with Rush, and more than once he had
endeavoured to get Miss Crumley on the telephone. He had even
telephoned to the hospital to ascertain if she were there. A week ago
only he had accidentally discovered that Dr. Anna had been summoned by
Mrs. Balfame shortly after the murder and had passed many hours alone
with her; "it being the deuce and all to extract any information from
that closed corporation of Mrs. Balfame's friends." Broderick had
surprised it out of a group at the Elks' Club in the course of
conversation and then had set his phenomenal memory to work, with the
result that he was convinced Alys Crumley held the key to the whole
situation. He had gone to her house and pleaded with her to take him out
to the hospital and obtain a statement from the sick woman before it was
too late, representing in powerful and picturesque language the awful
peril of Rush.
"I've reason to know," he had concluded, "that Cummack and two or three
others have their suspicions, and there isn't a question that if the
jury brings in a verdict of guilty in any degree--and they're a
pigheaded lot--Rush will be arrested at once. These devoted friends of
Mrs. Balfame have accumulated enough evidence to begin on. He may have
gone to Brooklyn that night, but he was seen to get off the train at
Elsinore about a quarter of an hour before the shooting. They've been
doing a lot of quiet sleuthing, but if Mrs. Balfame is acquitted they'll
let him off. They don't want any more scandal, and they like him,
anyhow. But I have a hunch she won't be acquitted; and then, innocent or
guilty, there'd be no saving him. So for heaven's sake, stir yourself."
But Alys had replied: "I have besought my aunt, and she will not permit
Dr. Anna to be disturbed. She says her only chance for life is a
tranquil mind, and that the shock of hearing that Enid Balfame was on
trial for murder would kill her--let alone asking her to do her best to
send her to the chair. I've done _my_ best, but it seems hopeless."
This conversation had taken place on Thursday. To-day was Tuesday. They
were very reticent at the hospital, but he had reason to believe that
Dr. Anna had taken a turn for the worse. Could Alys Crumley be out
there, and could she have taken that minx Sarah Austin with her? It
would be just like a girl to go back on a good pal like himself and hand
a signal triumph over to another girl, who would get out of the game the
minute some fellow with money enough offered to marry her. He ground his
teeth.
He was standing near the doors of the court-room and staring at the
clock whose hands pointed to a quarter to one. Suddenly he heard his
name called from below. He sauntered out and leaned over the balustrade.
A weary page was ascending when he caught sight of the star reporter.
"Brabant Hospital wants you on the 'phone," he announced, with supreme
indifference.
Broderick leaped down the winding stair and into the booth. It seemed to
him that his very ears were quivering as he listened to Alys Crumley's
faint agitated voice. "Come out quickly and bring a stenographer," it
said. "And suppose you ask Mr. Rush to come too. Just tell the
sheriff--to--to postpone things a bit if the jury should be ready to
come in before you return. Hurry, Jim, hurry."