THE CONFOUNDING OF JUSTICE
The atmosphere of the Court was intolerably heavy. It was the reek
of humanity and steam heat. But there was no desire for ventilation.
Winter was winter to the people in Calford, and steam heat its only
antidote. Besides, every soul amongst that very mixed gathering was
absorbed in the drama being enacted.
It was the first day of the trial of the Wolf for the murder of
Ernest Sinclair. That was the apparently simple case. There was no
complication through the added charge of his liquor traffic. It was
murder, just murder. And the official position of the victim of the
crime made it the greatest “nine days’ wonder” which the people of the
city of Calford had ever known.
The trial had proceeded swiftly, as was the way with the Supreme Court
in Calford. Already the late winter day was drawing to its close. The
carefully screened lights had been lit, and the heavy haze prevailing
had contrived to depress their brilliancy.
The Court was crowded from end to end. A sea of intent faces filled
the background of at least three walls. The fourth was where sat Chief
Justice Pansarta, and other officials of the Court. Every face was
slightly raised and peering, even amongst the most hardened servants
of the law. It was as though all were determined to miss nothing of
interest, no display of emotion, no sign that might be given by any of
the principals in the moving drama. It was all powerfully human. And it
had the effect of reducing every soul in the place to a single level.
It was no different in the well of the Court. Counsel, and official,
and privileged spectator, sat packed together in the limited space at
disposal. And above the intense, though restless hush rose and fell the
tones of the voices of the various actors; counsel, witness, judge, and
ushers.
The only spectator with space at his disposal was Superintendent
Croisette, who sat alone at the little table set aside for the use
of Mounted Police officials. He sat with his alert face supported on
his hand, and in such a position that the entire Court came under
his scrutiny. His keen gray eyes were watching, searching. And his
ears were strained for every inflection in the voices to which he was
listening. He knew the crux of the trial had been reached. Annette
Estevan was in the witness box. And she had just concluded her evidence
in chief.
And what evidence it had been. The girl had told it with damning
clarity under the skilful shepherding of the prosecuting counsel.
It was full of all that which drives the human soul to bitter
partisanship against the wrongdoer.
But Superintendent Croisette had had enough of Annette, and the story
he knew almost by heart. It was the same, dreadfully the same, as he
and Fyles had searched together. The story Annette had told at the
preliminary hearing had not been changed one iota.
Croisette had watched closely during the recital of the girl’s
evidence. He had been looking for revealing signs. And he had not been
wholly disappointed.
The dusky cheeks had become almost ashen under the girl’s ordeal. Her
big eyes were restless and burning. There had been a telltale averting
whenever it was possible to escape the compelling gaze of the counsel
inviting her story. Furthermore, at no moment was her look steady.
There were moments, too, when real passion swept the girl in fierce,
stormy gusts. They were the moments when she was forced to bare her
woman’s secrets to the Court.
Croisette realized Annette’s unquestioning belief in the Wolf’s guilt.
And so he was able the more surely to dismiss the ultimate theory of
Sergeant Fyles. But he also realized something else. Annette was nearly
at the extremity of her nervous resources. And he wondered how she
would endure the cross-examination now about to start.
He was glad to turn from the sight of Annette’s gripping hands upon the
rail of the witness box to the easy, lounging, unemotional figure of
the prisoner in the dock.
The Wolf stood there leaning, with his arms folded. He had been
unmoving from the moment Annette had entered the witness box. And his
immobility had extended even to his unblinking eyes.
The man had given no sign. He had listened without one single flash of
resentment to the awful indictment against him. Nor was there a sign
of reproach whenever Annette turned accusingly upon him. Boundless
devotion, which he was at no pains to conceal, shone in the dark depths
of his eyes; that, and a subtle shadowy anxiety.
It was that unvoiced concern which Croisette fixed upon and pondered.
What was it the man feared? Croisette knew full well it had nothing to
do with any personal concern. The man had shown from the first that his
own ultimate fate was a matter of complete indifference to him. First,
there had been the incidents connected with his arrest. Then he had
rejected every assistance that might save him in his trial. It had been
the same here as at the preliminary hearing. He had refused to plead.
He had rejected the assistance of counsel by the simple process of
remaining mute. Not a single word had passed his lips since he had been
placed in the dock. Then where lay the source of his obvious anxiety?
John Danson K.C. rose to cross-examine.
Croisette considered the defending counsel’s strong, full, clean-shaven
face. The man’s brows were heavy and broad. His eyes were keen and
sparkled under bushy gray brows. There was a truculent set to his jaws
that reached his hard lips. And, somehow, as the superintendent watched
that big figure rise from its seat, a feeling akin to pity for the
half-breed girl in the witness box stirred in him. He, himself, had
spent upwards of an hour in close conference with this man, before his
appointment to the defence.
There was a sigh from the spectators and some clearing of throats as
John Danson faced the witness. If possible, interest and emotion had
deepened. Like Superintendent Croisette the eager crowd of onlookers
understood that this man would somehow clear away the cobwebs of
mystery surrounding the case.
The advocate began almost gently. There was no brow-beating at the
start. None of the vicious bark for which he was renowned and feared.
He almost smiled on the witness, whose restless eyes and clutching
hands had told him so much already.
“The prisoner?” he questioned, in his blandest manner. “Who is he? What
is he to you? A relation?”
Annette’s reply was instant with a sense of relief at his manner.
“No. He’s no relation. We were raised together. That’s all.”
“That’s all?”
“Yes.”
Annette failed to appreciate the note underlying the echo of her words.
“Sort of brother and sister, eh? You just played together? Maybe even
fought together--as playmates will?”
Annette stirred. Croisette saw the grip of her hands tighten on the
rail. She inclined her head.
“Yes.”
“In a city? Where?”
“No. The hills. West.”
“Ah! The hills. West. Forest and hill, valleys and rivers--all the
wonderful things that set kiddies dreaming and playing. Where you’re
free and unrestrained. Where companionship is everything. And the Wolf
was your companion. You liked your playmate, and he liked you. You
loved him--as a child?”
Annette turned from the questioner and found herself gazing into
the Wolf’s now troubled eyes. Croisette saw a sudden lifting of her
swelling bosom as she breathed deeply. And in that moment he felt that
John Danson’s reputation had been well earned.
“Ye-es.”
It was Annette’s first falter.
But John Danson appeared not to notice. Certainly he displayed no
interest in it. He pursued his questioning with unruffled composure,
and, to the uninitiated, in a direction that looked to be leading him
no whither.
In reality, however, he was delving. He was delving deep into the soul
of the girl while he held her under the anæsthetic of illusion. He was
shrewdly recalling to her the almost forgotten past. He was returning
the playmate of her youth to her; that lank fearless youth who had
always been her willing slave.
Croisette understood.
For awhile Annette was clay in the man’s hands. At first she displayed
no anxiety. His questions seemed to have so little to do with the case.
She answered readily. It was almost as if she welcomed them.
But in a while the lawyer became more pressing. In a while his tone
sharpened. And his jaws closed, snapping over his words. And very
quickly reaction set in. First came the girl’s return of restlessness.
She found it difficult to respond to the keen inquiry of his eyes.
Then fear became apparent in a gaze that looked everywhere but at the
questioner. Her replies came in a voice that had grown strident. Then,
as the hunted look in her eyes grew, the half-breed in her became
uppermost and she sought evasion and subterfuge.
The whole process was something that Croisette had witnessed often
enough before. A witness in John Danson’s hands was rather like a
snared rabbit. He would wring any secret this girl was striving to
keep from him out of her, as surely as someone had shot Sinclair. He
turned to the prisoner.
There had come a significant change in the Wolf. He was no longer
lounging. There was none of his earlier indifference. But much more of
the anxious searching in his eyes. He was leaning over the rail of the
dock, and the smile of his queer eyes was a tiger-smile.
He was following every word of his counsel. His every inflection. His
every gesture. Danson was pointing at him.
“And that man there,” he was saying. “The man now grown out of the boy
with whom you were raised, the boy you loved and played with, who only
thought of your happiness and comfort, the boy you’ve just told the
Court you even sided with against your father in some domestic affair.
You wanted to send him to penitentiary, deliberately, callously, him
and your father as well, both, so you could be free to satisfy your
woman’s lust for a policeman whose propensities you knew only too well.
Tell me. That man--and your father? You were betraying, sacrificing
them, that you might have your lover--your husband?”
The scorn and revolting were devastating. The lawyer’s tone smote as it
was intended to smite.
Annette shrank before its withering. Her nervous grip on the rail was
pitiful. For an instant Croisette had a vision of self-horror in the
widened black eyes. Then the lids fell to conceal the world of shame
they had been driven to betray.
“Answer!”
Like a gunshot Danson’s challenge rang out.
“He--reckoned he couldn’t marry me without--promotion.”
Annette’s voice was so low that every ear in the Court was set
straining. A sigh broke like a wave over the spectators.
“And so you must betray them, the men who’d loved you, and raised you,
and fed you, and clothed you. Penitentiary! That was his price--for
marriage.”
“Ye-es.”
Croisette’s arms were folded on the table. The Wolf was forgotten.
“And you--believed?”
“Yes! Why shouldn’t I?”
There was a limp tone of defiance in the girl’s reply.
“In spite of the common knowledge of Sinclair, and the other woman and
her baby?”
“Why not?” Again there was defiance. “I knew he would marry me. He
swore it.”
“He swore it. You knew he would marry you. You were sure?”
“Yes.”
Annette snatched up the glass of water set for her use. She gulped down
half of it.
Danson’s gaze swept over the crowded court. The girl set her glass down
with a clatter.
“You told him where to find the cache, the liquor, the still. You
revealed the whole secret entrusted to you by these men who loved you?”
“Yes.”
“Then--why, why did you go there, stealing after him?”
“I--I----”
“Why did you follow him to witness what took place? Why did you go
there to see the prisoner murder Sinclair? Answer!”
“That’s a lie!”
“Answer!”
“I didn’t go to see him murdered.”
“Don’t play with the question. Tell the Court why you went there at
all. You had good reason. What was it?”
“I needed to be sure he located the cache right.”
“Sinclair! A skilled officer! He knew the country. Every foot. You’d
told him. He was satisfied. Yet you must see he located it--right?”
“Yes.”
“You insist to the jury, to the Court, that was your reason?”
The sneer, the incredulity in the man’s voice were furiously
provocative.
There was a metallic crash as a fist descended on the rail of the
prisoner’s dock. And a sound like the snarl of a wild beast drew every
eye to the prisoner.
“Don’t answer, kid! Say!”
The Wolf’s eyes were ablaze, and he stood with a warning hand outflung.
He was erect now. Dire urgency had broken down the barrier of silence
he had set up.
Danson completely ignored the interruption. It might never have
occurred.
“Answer me!” he roared at the girl in the box. “You followed Sinclair.
Why?”
“I told you.”
“You’re on oath. The real reason. I want it. Why?”
“Not on your life, kid. It’s a trap! A lousy trap!”
The Wolf’s face had suddenly distorted with fury. The veins in his
forehead stood out. His fists clenched. He flung them out in desperate
appeal.
The lawyer’s face wore a sardonic smile. Annette had turned at the
Wolf’s challenge. Croisette saw her sway as though about to collapse.
She was shaking in every limb. Her eyes, those great appealing eyes
were hunted. It was as though the voice of the Wolf had awakened her
from some dreadful nightmare. John Danson’s voice rasped. Perhaps he
understood.
“The prisoner can’t help you. He’s the man you tell the Court you
saw murder Sinclair. Now this is the simple truth. You went to see
Sinclair didn’t escape you. Is that so?”
“Annette!”
The Wolf’s cry howled through the Court.
“Be silent!”
It was the Judge.
“You must not interrupt,” he went on sharply, frowning down from his
bench. “You will have every opportunity given you of saying anything
you have to say. You are delaying proceedings which I will not allow.”
Then he turned to Annette.
“You must answer Counsel’s question.”
But Annette was beyond answering any question. And Croisette, watching
her, saw something of the miracle that was being wrought.
It was the Wolf. It was there in the girl’s frantically appealing eyes.
It was there in the heaving bosom, the hands that now gestured towards
the man she had been seeking to destroy. What was it? How had it come?
It was not terror of the inquisition to which she was being submitted
that Croisette beheld in those agonized eyes. It was some tremendous,
pitiful emotion. Some emotion that was tearing the girl’s soul with
torturing agony.
There was no doubt now. Annette’s hate of the Wolf was dead. It had
died in a moment, slain by the mad impulse of the race to which she
belonged. All that had driven her to witness against him had been swept
away by some force of whose existence she had been wholly unaware. She
was mutely gazing, appealing, praying forgiveness for the enormity of
the thing she had done.
“Wolf! Help me! Wolf!” she wailed.
But it was the thunder of Danson’s voice that replied to her.
“I put it to you,” he cried. “It’s as I said. You went to make sure
of your payment. And Sinclair laughed at you. You’d handed them over
to him, your father; your playmate. He wanted no more of you. So you
pulled the Wolf’s gun on him! You shot him cold! You murdered Sinclair!”
“It’s a lie! A foul, crazy lie!” the Wolf shouted frantically.
“It’s not a lie. It’s truth. Truth! Truth!” Annette screamed back in a
wild burst of hysteria. Her eyes were blazing. She was beside herself.
Her face was contorted with nervous twitchings. “It’s a lie, I tell
you! I was lyin’ before! It was all lies, lies, lies! I didn’t see you
shoot, because I shot him. Ernie lied to me! He lied like hell! An’ he
laffed at me! He laffed in my face. He cursed me for a Breed--a dirty
Breed! He cursed me, an’ sent me to hell with my kid! They can’t hang
you, Wolf! You didn’t do it! I did! I stole your gun from your room.
I done it! I left him there dead, an’ I’m glad! They can’t hang you,
boy. You didn’t do it! I did! I did! I----”
In a flash the Wolf came back.
“Don’t take notice of her!” he cried in a sweat of awful dread. “She’s
crazy mad! She don’t know a thing she’s sayin’. You’ve drove her crazy
between you! She didn’t kill Sinclair. I did!”
He broke off and gazed about him. He looked yearningly at the bowed
figure in the witness box. The sight seemed to spur him. The next
moment Croisette became aware of movement at the back of the Court as
someone stood up and moved towards the door. Then the Wolf was talking
again, but coldly, quietly, convincingly.
“You’ve mazed her! You may as well get the truth right here, so you ken
let that pore kid alone. I shot Sinclair. An’ I’d do it all again if he
was livin’ now. He stole my woman,” he went on, pointing at the huddled
figure of Annette. “She’s my woman. Do you get what that means--any of
you? An’ he made her bear his kid. I said I’d kill him. All she said
first was right--dead right. Ther’ wasn’t one lie to it. She’s only
lyin’ now, cos you’ve got her rattled. I shot that boy to the hell he
belongs, an’ now you ken hang me right away.”
Croisette scrawled a note and passed it to Stanley Fyles. But as the
Wolf finished speaking Annette was galvanized into fierce rejection of
his confession.
“I’m not mazed or crazy!” she cried at the Judge. “It’s that fool boy!
He guesses to save me from hangin’. That’s been him always. He reckons
me a crazy kid. I’m not. I’m a woman. I killed Ernie Sinclair ’cos he
made me hate him. My kid. I killed him for my kid. I ken show you the
way I did it. It wasn’t him. The Wolf didn’t shoot him. You can’t hang
him! It’s me! You got to hang me!”
Croisette saw Fyles thrust his way out of the Court.
* * * * *
It was like the passing of a fantastic dream. Where before had pulsed
a throng of eager life with every passion astir, now all was darkness,
and the hush of desertion. The courthouse was closed, and locked up,
and empty.
There had been one final half-hour when Judge and Counsel had battled
laboriously with the astounding situation. But it was useless. The Wolf
and Annette clung tenaciously to their conflicting claims. Had they
entered that Court with the purpose of creating legal confusion it
could have been never so grotesquely complete. Chief Justice Pansarta
was left with no alternative.
The Court had adjourned.