What the case was in which Shiel Crozier was to give evidence is not
important; what came from the giving of his testimony is all that
matters; and this story would never have been written if he had not
entered the witness-box.
A court-room at any time seems a little warmer than any other spot
to all except the prisoner; but on a July day it is likely to be a
punishment for both innocent and guilty. A man had been killed by one
of the group of toughs called locally the M’Mahon Gang, and against the
charge of murder that of manslaughter had been set up in defence; and
manslaughter might mean jail for a year or two or no jail at all. Any
evidence which justified the charge of murder would mean not jail, but
the rope in due course; for this was not Montana or Idaho, where the
law’s delays outlasted even the memory of the crime committed.
The court-room of Askatoon was crowded to suffocation, for the M’Mahons
were detested, and the murdered man had a good reputation in the
district. Besides, a widow and three children mourned their loss, and
the widow was in court. Also Crozier’s evidence was expected to be
sensational, and to prove the swivel on which the fate of the accused
man would hang. Among those on the inside it was also known that the
clever but dissipated Augustus Burlingame, the counsel for the prisoner,
had a grudge against Crozier,--no one quite knew why except Kitty Tynan
and her mother, and that cross-examination would be pressed mercilessly
when Crozier entered the witness-box. As Burlingame came into the
court-room he said to the Young Doctor--he was always spoken of as the
Young Doctor in Askatoon, though he had been there a good many years
and he was no longer as young as he looked--who was also called as a
witness, “We’ll know more about Mr. J. G. Kerry when this trial is over
than will suit his book.” It did not occur to Augustus Burlingame that
in Crozier, who knew why he had fled the house of the showy but virtuous
Mrs. Tynan, he might find a witness of a mental and moral calibre with
baffling qualities and some gift of riposte.
Crozier entered the witness-box at a stage when excitement was at fever
height; for the M’Mahon Gang had given evidence which every one believed
to be perjured; and the widow of the slain man was weeping bitterly in
her seat because of noxious falsehoods sworn against her honest husband.
There was certainly something credible and prepossessing in the look of
Crozier. He might be this or that, but he carried no evil or vice of
character in his face. He was in his grave mood this summer afternoon.
There he stood with his long face and the very heavy eyebrows,
clean-shaven, hard-bitten, as though by wind and weather, composed
and forceful, the mole on his chin a kind of challenge to the
vertical dimple in his cheek, his high forehead more benevolent than
intellectual, his brown hair faintly sprinkled with grey and a bit
unmanageable, his fathomless eyes shining. “No man ought to have such
eyes,” remarked a woman present to the Young Doctor, who abstractedly
nodded assent, for, like Malachi Deely and John Sibley, he himself had a
theory about Crozier; and he had a fear of what the savage enmity of the
morally diseased Burlingame might do. He had made up his mind that so
intense a scrupulousness as Crozier had shown since coming to Askatoon
had behind it not only character, but the rigidity of a set purpose; and
that view was supported by the stern economy of Crozier’s daily life,
broken only by sudden bursts of generosity for those in need.
In the box Crozier kept his eye on the crown attorney, who prosecuted,
and on the judge. He appeared not to see any one in the court-room,
though Kitty Tynan had so placed herself that he must see her if he
looked at the audience at all. Kitty thought him magnificent as he told
his story with a simple parsimony but a careful choice of words which
made every syllable poignant with effect. She liked him in his grave
mood even better than when he was aflame with an internal fire of his
own creation, when he was almost wildly vivid with life.
“He’s two men,” she had often said to herself; and she said it now
as she looked at him in the witness-box, measuring out his words and
measuring off at the same time the span of a murderer’s life; for
when the crown attorney said to the judge that he had concluded his
examination there was no one in the room--not even the graceless
Burlingame--who did not think the prisoner guilty.
“That is all,” the crown attorney said to Crozier as he sank into his
chair, greatly pleased with one of the best witnesses who had ever been
through his hands--lucid, concentrated, exact, knowing just where he
was going and reaching his goal without meandering. Crozier was about to
step down when Burlingame rose.
“I wish to ask a few questions,” he said.
Crozier bowed and turned, again grasping the rail of the witness-box
with one hand, while with an air of cogitation and suspense he stroked
his chin with the long fingers of the other hand.
“What is your name?” asked Burlingame in a tone a little louder than
he had used hitherto in the trial, indeed even louder than lawyers
generally use when they want to bully a witness. In this case it was as
though he wished to summon the attention of the court.
For a second Crozier’s fingers caught his chin almost spasmodically. The
real meaning of the question, what lay behind it, flashed to his mind.
He saw in lightning illumination the course Burlingame meant to pursue.
For a moment his heart seemed to stand still, and he turned slightly
pale, but the blue of his eyes took on a new steely look--a look also
of striking watchfulness, as of an animal conscious of its danger, yet
conscious too of its power when at bay.
“What is your name?” Burlingame asked again in a somewhat louder tone,
and turned to look at the jury, as if bidding them note the hesitation
of the witness; though, indeed, the waiting was so slight that none but
a trickster like Burlingame would have taken advantage of it, and only
then when there was much behind.
For a moment longer Crozier remained silent, getting strength, as it
were, and saying to himself, “What does he know?” and then, with a
composed look of inquiry at the judge, who appeared to take no notice,
he said: “I have already, in evidence, given my name to the court.”
“Witness, what is your name?” again almost shouted the lawyer, with a
note of indignation in his voice, as though here was a dangerous fellow
committing a misdemeanour in their very presence. He spread out his
hands to the jury, as though bidding them observe, if they would, this
witness hesitating in answer to a simple, primary question--a witness
who had just sworn a man’s life away!
“What is your name?”
“James Gathorne Kerry, as I have already given it to the court,” was the
calm reply.
“Where do you live?”
“In Askatoon, as I have already said in evidence; and if it is necessary
to give my domicile, I live at the house of Mrs. Tyndall Tynan, Pearl
Street--as you know so well.”
The tone in which he uttered the last few words was such that even the
judge pricked up his ears.
A look of hatred came into the decadent but able lawyer’s face.
“Where do you live when you are at home?”
“Mrs. Tynan’s house is the only home I have at present.”
He was outwitting the pursuer so far, but it only gained him time, as he
knew; and he knew also that no suggestive hint concerning the episode at
Mrs. Tynan’s, when Burlingame was asked to leave her house, would be of
any avail now.
“Where were you born?”
“In Ireland.”
“What part of Ireland?”
“County Kerry.”
“What place--what town or city or village in County Kerry?”
“In neither.”
“What house, then--what estate?” Burlingame was more than nettled; and
he sharpened his sword.
“The estate of Castlegarry.”
“What was your name in Ireland?”
In the short silence that followed, the quick-drawn breath of many
excited and some agitated people could be heard. Among the latter were
Mrs. Tynan and her daughter and Malachi Deely; among those who held
their breath in suspense were John Sibley, Studd Bradley the financier,
and the Young Doctor. The swish of a skirt seemed ridiculously loud
in the hush, and the scratching of the judge’s quill pen was noisily
irritating.
“My name in Ireland was James Shiel Gathorne Crozier, commonly called
Shiel Crozier,” came the even reply from the witness-box.
“James Shiel Gathorne Crozier in Ireland, but James Gathorne Kerry
here!” Burlingame turned to the jury significantly. “What other name
have you been known by in or out of Ireland?” he added sharply to
Crozier. “No other name so far as I know.”
“No other name so far as you know,” repeated the lawyer in a sarcastic
tone intended to impress the court.
“Who was your father?”
“John Gathorne Crozier.”
“Any title?”
“He was a baronet.”
“What was his business?”
“He had no profession, though he had business, of course.”
“Ah, he lived by his wits?”
“No, he was not a lawyer! I have said he had no profession. He lived on
his money on his estate.”
The judge waved down the laughter at Burlingame’s expense.
“In official documents what was his description?” snarled Burlingame.
“‘Gentleman’ was his designation in official documents.”
“You, then, were the son of a gentleman?” There was a hateful suggestion
in the tone.
“I was.”
“A legitimate son?”
Nothing in Crozier’s face showed what he felt, except his eyes, and they
had a look in them which might well have made his questioner shrink. He
turned calmly to the judge.
“Your honour, does this bear upon the case? Must I answer this legal
libertine?”
At the word libertine, the judge, the whole court, and the audience
started; but it was presently clear the witness meant that the
questioner was abusing his legal privileges, though the people present
interpreted it another way, and quite rightly.
The reply of the judge was in favour of the lawyer. “I do not quite see
the full significance of the line of defence, but I think I must allow
the question,” was the judge’s gentle and reluctant reply, for he
was greatly impressed by this witness, by his transparent honesty and
straightforwardness.
“Were you a legitimate son of John Gathorne Crozier and his wife?” asked
Burlingame.
“Yes, a legitimate son,” answered Crozier in an even voice.
“Is John Gathorne Crozier still living?”
“I said that gentleman was his designation in official documents. I
supposed that would convey the fact that he was not living, but I see
you do not quickly grasp a point.”
Burlingame was stung by the laughter in the court and ventured a
riposte.
“But is once a gentleman always a gentleman an infallible rule?”
“I suppose not; I did not mean to convey that; but once a rogue always a
bad lawyer holds good in every country,” was Crozier’s comment in a low,
quiet voice which stirred and amused the audience again.
“I must ask counsel to put questions which have some relevance even to
his own line of defence,” remarked the judge sternly. “This is not a
corner grocery.”
Burlingame bowed. He had had a facer, but he had also shown the witness
to have been living under an assumed name. That was a good start.
He hoped to add to the discredit. He had absolutely no knowledge of
Crozier’s origin and past; but he was in a position to find it out if
Crozier told the truth on oath, and he was sure he would.
“Where was your domicile in the old country?” Burlingame asked.
“In County Kerry--with a flat in London.”
“An estate in County Kerry?”
“A house and two thousand acres.”
“Is it your property still?”
“It is not.”
“You sold it?”
“No.”
“If you did not sell, how is it that you do not own it?”
“It was sold for me--in spite of me.”
The judge smiled, the people smiled, the jury smiled. Truly, though a
life-history was being exposed with incredible slowness--“like pulling
teeth,” as the Young Doctor said--it was being touched off with
laughter.
“You were in debt?”
“Quite.”
“How did you get into debt?”
“By spending more than my income.”
If Askatoon had been proud of its legal talent in the past it had now
reason for revising its opinion. Burlingame was frittering away the
effect of his inquiry by elaboration of details. What he gained by the
main startling fact he lost in the details by which the witness scored.
He asked another main question.
“Why did you leave Ireland?”
“To make money.”
“You couldn’t do it there?”
“They were too many for me over there, so I thought I’d come here,”
slyly answered Crozier, and with a grave face; at which the solemn scene
of a prisoner being tried for his life was shaken by a broad smiling,
which in some cases became laughter haughtily suppressed by the court
attendant.
“Have you made money here?”
“A little--with expectations.”
“What was your income in Ireland?”
“It began with three thousand pounds--”
“Fifteen thousand dollars about?”
“About that--about a lawyer’s fee for one whisper to a client less than
that. It began with that and ended with nothing.”
“Then you escaped?”
“From creditors, lawyers, and other such? No, I found you here.”
The judge intervened again almost harshly on the laughter of the court,
with the remark that a man was being tried for his life; that ribaldry
was out of place; and that, unless the course pursued by the counsel
was to discredit the reliability of the character of the witness, the
examination was in excess of the privilege of counsel.
“Your honour has rightly apprehended what my purpose is,” Burlingame
said deprecatingly. He then turned to Crozier again, and his voice
rose as it did when he began the examination. It was as though he was
starting all over again.
“What was it compelled” (he was boldly venturing) “you to leave Ireland
at last? What was the incident which drove you out from the land where
you were born--from being the owner of two thousand acres”--
“Partly bog,” interposed Crozier.
“--From being the owner of two thousand acres to becoming a kind of
head-groom on a ranch? What was the cause of your flight?”
“Flight! I came in one of the steamers of the Company for which your
firm are the agents. Eleven days it took to come from Glasgow to
Quebec.”
Again the court rippled, again the attendant intervened.
Burlingame was nonplussed this time, but he gathered himself together.
“What was the process of law which forced you to leave your own land?”
“None at all.”
“What were your debts when you left?”
“None at all.”
“How much was the last debt you paid?”
“Two thousand five hundred pounds.”
“What was its nature?”
“It was a debt of honour--do you understand?” The subtle challenge of
the voice, the sarcasm, was not lost. Again there was a struggle on the
part of the audience not to laugh outright, and so be driven from the
court as had been threatened.
The judge interposed again with the remark, not very severe in tone,
that the witness was not in the box to ask questions, but to answer
them. At the same time he must remind counsel that the examination must
discontinue unless something more relevant immediately appeared in the
evidence.
There was silence again for a moment, and even Crozier himself seemed to
steel himself for a question he felt was coming.
“Are you married or single?” asked Burlingame, and he did not need to
raise his voice to summon the interest of the court.
“I was married.”
One person in the audience nearly cried out. It was Kitty Tynan. She
had never allowed herself to think of that, but even if she had, what
difference could it make whether he was married or single, since he was
out of her star?
“Are you not married now?”
“I do not know.”
“You mean you do not know if you have been divorced?”
“No.”
“You mean your wife is dead?”
“No.”
“What do you mean? That you do not know whether your wife is living or
dead?”
“Quite so.”
“Have you heard from her since you saw her last?”
“I had one letter.”
Kitty Tynan thought of the unopened letter in a woman’s handwriting in
the green baize desk in her mother’s house.
“No more?”
“No more.”
“Are we to understand that you do not know whether your wife is living
or dead?”
“I have no information that she is dead.”
“Why did you leave her?”
“I have not said that I left her. Primarily I left Ireland.”
“Assuming that she is alive, your wife will not live with you?”
“Ah, what information have you to that effect?” The judge informed
Crozier that he must not ask questions of counsel.
“Why is she not with you here?”
“As you said, I am only picking up a living here, and even the passage
by your own second-class steamship line is expensive.”
The judge suppressed a smile. He greatly liked the witness.
“Do you deny that you parted from your wife in anger?”
“When I am asked that question I will try to answer it. Meanwhile, I do
not deny what has not been put before me in the usual way.”
Here the judge sternly rebuked the counsel, who ventured upon one last
question.
“Have you any children?”
“None.”
“Has your brother, who inherited, any children?”
“None that I know of.”
“Are you the heir-presumptive to the baronetcy?”
“I am.”
“Yet your wife will not live with you?”
“Call Mrs. Crozier as a witness and see. Meanwhile, I am not upon my
trial.”
He turned to the judge, who promptly called upon Burlingame to conclude
his examination.
Burlingame asked two questions more.
“Why did you change your name when you came here?”
“I wanted to obliterate myself.”
“I put it to you, that what you want is to avoid the outraged law of
your own country.”
“No--I want to avoid the outrageous lawyers of yours.”
Again there was a pause in the proceedings, and on a protest from the
crown attorney the judge put an end to the cross-examination with the
solemn reminder that a man was being tried for his life, and that the
present proceedings were a lamentable reflection on the levity of human
nature--in Askatoon. Turning with friendly scrutiny to Crozier, he said:
“In the early stage of his examination the witness informed the court
that he had made a heavy loss through a debt of honour immediately
before leaving England. Will he say in what way he incurred the
obligation? Are we to assume that it was through gambling-card-playing,
or other games of chance?”
“Through backing the wrong horse,” was Crozier’s instant reply.
“That phrase is often applied to mining or other unreal flights for
fortune,” said the judge, with a dry smile.
“This was a real horse on a real flight to the winning-post,” added
Crozier, with a quirk at the corner of his mouth.
“Honest contest with man or horse is no crime, but it is tragedy to
stake all on the contest and lose,” was the judge’s grave and pedagogic
comment. “We shall now hear from the counsel for defence his reason for
conducting his cross-examination on such unusual lines. Latitude of this
kind is only permissible if it opens up any weakness in the case against
the prisoner.”
The judge thus did Burlingame a good turn as well as Crozier, by
creating an atmosphere of gravity, even of tragedy, in which Burlingame
could make his speech in defence of the prisoner.
Burlingame started hesitatingly, got into his stride, assembled the
points of his defence with the skill of which he really was capable. He
made a strong appeal for acquittal, but if not acquittal, then a verdict
of manslaughter. He showed that the only real evidence which could
convict his man of murder was that of the witness Crozier. If he had
been content to discredit evidence of the witness by an adroit but
guarded misuse of the facts he had brought out regarding Crozier’s past,
to emphasise the fact that he was living under an assumed name and that
his bona fides was doubtful, he might have impressed the jury to some
slight degree. He could not, however, control the malice he felt, and he
was smarting from Crozier’s retorts. He had a vanity easily lacerated,
and he was now too savage to abate the ferocity of his forensic attack.
He sat down, however, with a sure sense of failure. Every orator
knows when he is beating the air, even when his audience is quiet and
apparently attentive.
The crown attorney was a man of the serenest method and of cold,
unforensic logic. He had a deadly precision of speech, a very remarkable
memory, and a great power of organising and assembling his facts. There
was little left of Burlingame’s appeal when he sat down. He declared
that to discredit Crozier’s evidence because he chose to use another
name than his own, because he was parted from his wife, because he left
England practically penniless to earn an honest living--no one had
shown it was not--was the last resort of legal desperation. It was
an indefensible thing to endeavour to create prejudice against a man
because of his own evidence given with great frankness. Not one single
word of evidence had the defence brought to discredit Crozier, save by
Crozier’s own word of mouth; and if Crozier had cared to commit perjury,
the defence could not have proved him guilty of it. Even if Crozier had
not told the truth as it was, counsel for the defence would have found
it impossible to convict him of falsehood. But even if Crozier was a
perjurer, justice demanded that his evidence should be weighed as truth
from its own inherent probability and supported by surrounding facts.
In a long experience he had never seen animus against a witness so
recklessly exhibited as by counsel in this case.
The judge was not quite so severe in his summing up, but he did say of
Crozier that his direct replies to Burlingame’s questions, intended
to prejudice him in the eyes of the community into which he had come a
stranger, bore undoubted evidence of truth; for if he had chosen to say
what might have saved him from the suspicions, ill or well founded, of
his present fellow-citizens, he might have done so with impunity, save
for the reproach of his own conscience. On the whole, the judge summed
up powerfully against the prisoner Logan, with the result that the jury
were not out for more than a half-hour. Their verdict was, guilty of
murder.
In the scene which followed, Crozier dropped his head into his hand and
sat immovable as the judge put on the black cap and delivered sentence.
When the prisoner left the dock, and the crowd began to disperse,
satisfied that justice had been done--save in that small circle where
the M’Mahons were supreme--Crozier rose with other witnesses to leave.
As he looked ahead of him the first face he saw was that of Kitty Tynan,
and something in it startled him. Where had he seen that look before?
Yes, he remembered. It was when he was twenty-one and had been sent away
to Algiers because he was falling in love with a farmer’s daughter. As
he drove down a lane with his father towards the railway station, those
long years ago, he had seen the girl’s face looking at him from the
window of a labourer’s cottage at the crossroads; and its stupefied
desolation haunted him for many years, even after the girl had married
and gone to live in Scotland--that place of torment for an Irish soul.
The look in Kitty Tynan’s face reminded him of that farmer’s lass in his
boyhood’s history. He was to blame then--was he to blame now? Certainly
not consciously, not by any intended word or act. Now he met her eyes
and smiled at her, not gaily, not gravely, but with a kind of whimsical
helplessness; for she was the first to remind him that he was leaving
the court-room in a different position (if not a different man) from
that in which he entered it. He had entered the court-room as James
Gathorne Kerry, and he was leaving it as Shiel Crozier; and somehow
James Gathorne Kerry had always been to himself a different man
from Shiel Crozier, with different views, different feelings, if not
different characteristics.
He saw faces turned to him, a few with intense curiosity, fewer
still with a little furtiveness, some with amusement, and many with
unmistakable approval; for one thing was clear, if his own evidence
was correct: he was the son of a baronet, he was heir-presumptive to
a baronetcy, and he had scored off Augustus Burlingame in a way which
delighted a naturally humorous people. He noted, however, that the nod
which Studd Bradley, the financier, gave him had in it an enigmatic
something which puzzled him. Surely Bradley could not be prejudiced
against him because of the evidence he had given. There was nothing
criminal in living under an assumed name, which, anyhow, was his own
name in three-fourths of it, and in the other part was the name of the
county where he was born.
“Divils me own, I told you he was up among the dukes,” said Malachi
Deely to John Sibley as they came out. “And he’s from me own county, and
I know the name well enough; an’ a damn good name it is. The bulls of
Castlegarry was famous in the south of Ireland.”
“I’ve a warm spot for him. I was right, you see. Backing horses ruined
him,” said Sibley in reply; and he looked at Crozier admiringly.
There is the communion of saints, but nearer and dearer is the communion
of sinners; for a common danger is their bond, and that is even more
than a common hope.