THE DEFENDANT TO THE BAR
"Hats off!"
Through the great white room the cry vibrated, followed instantly by
another:
"Hear ye, hear ye, all ye having business with the Court of the
General Sessions of the City and County of New York, draw near, give
attention and ye shall be heard."
Within the Bar, restless as hyenas awaiting their prey, roamed the
district attorneys. Against that Bar, crouching there, were Orr and
his associate counsel, restless too, but prepared to spring. To the
rear were reporters, the flower of newspaperdom, handsome young men
dressed to the ears in resplendent collars and astounding cravats.
Back of them were the spectators, a solid mass, ladies of every degree
except the high one and, with or without them, men whom you would
recognize as first-nighters, others whom you would not recognize at
all. To the right of the Bar were witnesses for the prosecution,
experts in various matters of which gastronomy evidently was one. To
the left was the jury, and above, beneath the amber panoply of the
Bench, the Recorder sat, an ascetic Solon.
The atmosphere of the room, high ceiled, close packed, was
Senegambian. Without you could see, within you could feel, the heat
and eagerness of the autumnal sun.
"Arthur Annandale to the Bar!"
Into the court, as though it were a theatre, the defendant strolled,
perfectly groomed, the Tombs pallor on his face but none of its dust
on his coat, an air of tranquil boredom about him. At his heels was a
keeper. He shook hands with Orr, sat down beside him, turned and gave
his hat to the keeper, turned again and looked over to a gated
inclosure at the right of the Bench where, in a sort of proscenium
box, Sylvia sat with her mother.
The entire settings were those of a play. With this difference, it was
real, a drama of mud and blood without orchestral accompaniment. After
months of preparation, after days of talesmen baiting, on this Indian
Summer forenoon the curtain was rising. The jury it had been a job to
get. A full hundred were examined, cross-questioned, challenged and
rejected before the dozen were boxed. When the last, the twelfth, a
cadaverous individual, was accepted the stage was set.
"May it please the Court; Mr. Foreman and gentlemen of the jury."
With three bows and these rituals, Peacock opened for the State,
outlining the case of the People, describing the crime, detailing the
motive, summarizing the evidence, expressing the wish that the jury
would believe the defendant innocent until his guilt had been proved,
but declaring that, personally, for his own part, of that guilt he was
thoroughly convinced.
Before he had finished Orr was at him. "I object to the District
Attorney prejudicing the jury against this gentleman, my client."
That gentleman did not appear to heed. From Sylvia and her mother he
had turned to look at the spectators, from them to fabulous beasts
that climbed the fluted columns on the walls.
The objection was not sustained.
"And I object to Your Honor's ruling," Orr with a bulldog look threw
up at the Bench.
Peacock proceeded. "There, gentlemen, is the crime, there too, the
motive. To finish the picture evidence will be adduced."
He sat down. Then getting up, he called the first witness for the
People, the Gramercy Park caretaker, who had found the body. The
witness was succeeded by others, by the policeman on the beat, by the
coroner's physician, by experts and servants.
By turn Orr took them in hand. With some he was curiously perfunctory.
Of the caretaker, a meagre old man, with shifty eyes, who appeared
very uncomfortable, he asked but four questions.
"When you found the body what did you do?"
"Ran and got the policeman, sir."
"Where did you get him?"
"On Lexington avenue and Twenty-third street, sir."
"Did you find him at once?"
"No, sir, I had to hunt a bit."
"Between the time you found the body and the time you got back how
many minutes would you say had elapsed?"
"About ten or fifteen minutes, sir."
"That's all," said Orr.
It was not much. Yet with the policeman, a fat man with a red face and
a blue nose, he was even briefer.
"When you reached the park with the last witness, how did you get in?"
"Walked in, sir," the man answered with a grin.
"The gate was open was it?"
"Yes, sir."
"That will do," said Orr.
It was not much either. But with other witnesses, notably with the
experts, he fought, he fought with them, fought with Peacock, fought
with the Court, would have fought with more had there been more to
fight, fought pertinaciously, step by step, reducing testimony to
nothing.
Meanwhile the court-room shimmered with silks. Wanderers from Fifth
avenue who never in their lives had been in the General Sessions
before begged and badgered their way there. It is great fun to see a
man tried for his life. But when you have known him, when in addition
elements supersensational blend like a halo about him, what more could
be decently asked? Yet one thing disappointed. It was regrettable that
the prisoner was not in chains, that he could sit there and yawn with
every appearance of being at a matinee, a keeper for lackey behind
him.
Otherwise the fun, if not fast, was furious. Peacock would ask a
question, the lips of a witness would part but before more than a
fraction of a syllable could issue Orr would hold him up, hold up the
prosecution, hold up the Court. Generally he was overruled. But no
overruling abashed him. He arose from opposition refreshing. There
were times when Sylvia thought him bowed to the earth, utterly
routed, hushed for good. But not a bit of it. At the moment when his
ammunition seemed exhausted and his defeat assured, from an arsenal of
books before him he pulled weapons wherewith not merely to renew the
fight but to win.
In the course of one objection he was commanded by the Bench to sit
down. He protested. The Recorder declined to listen to him further,
reiterating the order that he be seated. Then with the air and manner
of a little boy sent for misbehavior from the room, Orr half turned,
hesitated, turned back, and through the exercise of guile unique and
his own, succeeded in re-engaging the Court in conversation,
protesting his respect, denying his contumacy and presently he was
continuing the very objection because of which he had been told to sit
down. He did sit down, but long after, when he was ready, when he had
succeeded in having his say and his way. Then when at last he did sit
down it was with an air of mastery that would have become Napoleon at
Marengo. At the moment he was not a lawyer merely, he was an actor,
quasi-Shakespearian, a compound of irony and good humor, Falstaff and
Mercutio in one.
All this, however, was, to vary the metaphor, but the preliminary
canter. That Loftus had been killed was shown and admitted. But it had
not been shown nor was it admitted that the defendant was the man.
This defect a star witness was to repair. The star was Harris.
Yet, though a star, he looked ghastly. Whether ill or not, he was at
least ill at ease. The smug, household-servant air had gone. He seemed
to have come from turmoils in Tatterdemalia. He was bruised, dirty,
unshorn. But the story which he had brought to the _Chronicle_ he
repeated, with embellishments at that. After retailing the tale,
precising the motive and elaborating on it, he declared that the love
of the defendant's wife for Loftus was common talk--evidence which,
though hearsay, Orr indifferently let pass.
Then, after identifying a pistol as the property of Annandale--an
exhibit marked A which Peacock had already tried but, held up by Orr,
had not wholly succeeded in fitting to the crime--Harris swore that on
the night of the murder, at five minutes after twelve, in the room
which he occupied at the top of Annandale's house and which overlooked
Gramercy Park, he heard a shot; that going to the window he looked
out, that he could distinguish nothing, but that going then to the
hall he heard someone coming in the house and looking down saw the
defendant enter.
"Ha!" said Orr, taking him in hand, or rather, by the throat. For he
made no attempt at ordinary amenities. He questioned him ferociously,
with an air of personal hatred, with an air of saying, "Damn you, I
have got it in for you now."
"What is your name?" he asked.
"Richard Harris, sir."
Orr pounded on the table in front of him. "Your name! Your name! I
want your name, not something that you have made up like the rest of
your rubbish. How many times have you been in jail? You were once
employed in Hill street, Berkeley Square, by the Duchess of
Kincardine. When you absconded from there, where was it that the
police caught you? Answer me."
From behind the rail objections exploded like shell. But through the
running fire of them Orr held his own, sandbagging the man with one
charge after another, charge of theft, charge of forgery, but
particularly of boasting the week before, in a Sixth avenue saloon
where grooms and footmen congregate, that he could testify to anything
that he was paid for.
From ghastly Harris turned vermilion. The flush retreating left him
livid. Had the fluted columns with their fabulous beasts fallen on him
he could not have been more limp. At one question he swayed like an
animal hit on the head. At another he hissed like a snake. There were
times when he tried to hide from view. It was a curious example of the
biter bit.
"That's all," said Orr with tigerish cheerfulness at last.
He had done him. He had given him the medicine. He had more in
reserve. Peacock meanwhile had once jumped at Orr, his fist raised.
Once he gave him the lie direct. Once he accused him of suborning. But
Orr in sandbagging the witness with one hand, had another free for the
prosecution. He was gluttonish, giving as good as was sent, very often
better.
The Recorder, dismayed at the slugging, protested. "A human being is
on trial for his life. I cannot try a case where only counsel are
heard."
Immediately Orr supplied him with a diversion. One after another
witness for the defense scaled the stand, sleuths from over seas,
experts and servants.
In his corner before them Orr prowled. At the witnesses for the
prosecution he had roared, sometimes he had bounded at the Bar,
sometimes when a move of his succeeded he raised his right hand and
looked at it as though surprised that it was not blood red. But now
with his own witnesses he was serene, entirely calm, refreshingly
civil.
That civility awoke in Peacock the hyena. The first witness Orr
produced, a man who, as it afterward appeared, had had a rough and
tumble with Harris that morning in the corridor, he partly devoured.
What was left of him he sent to the Tombs. As fast as witnesses could
be produced he ate them up. It was terrific. You could not help
feeling that there are safer places than the witness stand in a murder
trial, that you ran the risk of being killed yourself, talked to death
if nothing worse.
"Don't go at him like a common scold," Orr engagingly pleaded at one
stage of the game. "Why browbeat and bully a witness as you do?" he
expostulated at another. "That's all, my friend," he said to one
witness, "and let me apologize for the District Attorney's remarks."
From his tone and manner never in the world would you have thought him
the man who, but a little before, had so thoroughly sandbagged Harris.
Meanwhile questions coarse as oaths, answers frank as sword thrusts,
clashed and resounded. One and all Orr's charges were substantiated.
The testimony was damning to Harris, infecting everything he had said.
From behind the rail Peacock volleyed and thundered. But truth when
you get at it is a stubborn thing. So far as Harris was concerned
there it stood and there too, during the production of it, Orr stood,
quite like an Angora lapping milk. You could hear him purr. The eyes
of Sylvia glistened like mica. Now and again Annandale laughed
outright.
It is always insufficient to be innocent of a given charge. You must
appear so. Annandale did not. Alternately he was bored and buoyant.
But not dejected, never depressed. He did not seem to feel that his
life was at stake. That is the attitude of the habitual ruffian. But
sentiment was veering. Public opinion is a wave that thinks, thinks
again, changes its mind, volatile as a woman. At the opening everybody
knew that Annandale was guilty. Now nobody was quite so sure.
The Recorder caressed his beard. "I think," he announced, "that I will
give the jury a recess."