HALF AN HOUR.
Scrambling, rushing, hurrying, squeezing, talking, laughing, and
sighing, the great throng poured out of the building and dispersed
down the streets of Abertaff. One topic was on every tongue. The fate
of the prisoner was the sole thing discussed. They weighed the
evidence, they repeated it, they distorted it. Some were violently in
favour of the prisoner, and considered half the witnesses to be
committing perjury. Others were violently against her, and could not
see, so they professed, a shadow of doubt in the case from first to
last. Others, again, in complete doubt as to how the case would end,
wisely declined to commit themselves till they had heard more of the
defence.
Then, again, these parties were subdivided into groups. There was the
ignorant group, who knew nothing about the case, and went about asking
questions of their wiser neighbours. There was the mysterious group,
who suspected many things, but said nothing, contenting themselves
with shaking their heads in corners, and suggesting that not half the
real motives of the parties to the affair had come out at all. And
there was the well-informed group of those who had watched the whole
thing from first to last, and knew more, far more, about it than the
counsel on either side, or the criminal either, for that matter.
And they were not churlish in bestowing their information, either.
There were the Lewisite partisans, who knew exactly the value of the
jewels to a halfpenny, and how they were kept in a box under the bed,
and how the prisoner had carried them off by stealth, and buried them
somewhere in the sands of Newton Bay. Some of these, the more
charitably disposed, could go even further than this. They explained
how it was that the prisoner had never meant to commit the murder at
all, but simply to steal the jewels, but had been interrupted in the
act by the unexpected waking of the deceased woman. They grew
impressive as they pictured the elder woman suddenly roused from sleep
by the midnight robber, and the emotions of that robber detected in
the act of guilt. They could tell you how she started back in terror,
and then, realizing that ruin was upon her, succumbed to temporary
frenzy, and with the weapon which she had brought to open the
jewel-chest dealt the fatal blow to her unhappy victim.
Others, less lenient in their views, had obtained quite different
details. They could relate numerous previous attempts of the prisoner
on the life of her benefactress. They knew how she had sought to
introduce poison into her food, from which she was only saved by a
miraculous chance, which caused her to be summoned from the table just
as she was about to taste the fatal dish. Also how she had on one
occasion led her victim along the cliff with the well-formed purpose
of pushing her over the edge; only the curate happened to come along
and meet them, and accompanied them till the opportunity was gone.
The Owenite section, on the other hand, had their account, equally
authentic, and, if possible, more minute and graphic than the other.
They would tell you more about their villain, Lewis, than he himself
could possibly have remembered. They took you back to his childhood.
They started you with the well-known story of his beating his little
sister, the sister in the North whom he had refused to go and see.
They explained the causes which led to his expulsion from school after
school. They tracked him to Australia, and unearthed dark secrets in
his life out there which would have made the bushranger Kelly reject
him from his historic gang. Finally, they brought him back to England
a ruined desperado, intent on getting at his relative's wealth by fair
means or foul. The robbery of her jewels was only part of his scheme.
By killing her he obtained the whole of her wealth at once. Then a
victim became necessary--a stalking-horse to mislead the minions of
justice, and whose punishment would ensure his own safety. He was thus
a double murderer.
So the tongues wagged. Meanwhile the object of these rumours had made
his way round in a towering passion to the seat from which his
solicitor was trying to get away.
'What does this mean?' he cried, as soon as he got near enough to
speak without being heard by others. 'Are you playing me false? Where
is Mr. Prescott?'
'He was called away into the other court,' said Mr. James Pollard, the
barrister's brother, who was a partner with his father in the
Porthstone firm.
'He ought not to have gone. Your brother managed the case wretchedly.
I wasn't allowed to say the most important thing of all.'
'My brother did the best he could. No one could dream that Prescott
would desert us like this. I shall never give him another brief, I
promise you.'
By this time they had got outside the door of the court-house. They
turned towards a hotel close by, where a general luncheon was put on
the table for the convenience of people having business in the
assize-courts. The civil court had risen a few minutes before the
other, and the place was crowded with solicitors, witnesses, jurymen,
and the general public.
'Look here, Mr. Pollard,' Lewis said, as they fought their way into
the room, 'I could have proved that about the jewels up to the hilt if
I had been allowed. Why, my aunt was speaking to me about them that
very night, and she said Miss Owen knew of them.'
'And why on earth didn't you tell me all this before?' retorted the
solicitor.
'I thought I had.'
'Thought you had! Goodness me! that's just like you laymen. You keep
back the chief points in a case, and then you're angry with us because
we don't guess them by instinct. Why didn't you tell the judge this
when he was examining you?'
'Because it wasn't said in the prisoner's presence.'
'Pooh! Why, it was evidence of motive. But there, it's no good trying
to explain the law of evidence to you. If any thing's gone wrong, you
have yourself to thank for it--a good deal, that's all. What shall you
take?'
And they fell to on the refreshments before them.
Meanwhile the barristers, whose self-imposed code forbade them to
enter a public hotel room in a town where the assizes were being held,
had straggled off, some to the County Club, and others to the
common-room reserved for their especial use in the chief hotel of the
place.
Among the latter was Tressamer, who found Prescott awaiting him
anxiously, and trying, with poor success, to get through the wing of a
fowl. He (Prescott) looked pale and dejected; but Tressamer rushed
into the place in a state of exaggerated buoyancy, and loudly called
for a bottle of champagne.
'George, how goes it?' cried his friend.
'All went merry as a marriage-bell,' returned the other. 'Have no
fear; keep up your heart, old man. Leave it to me; I'll get her off.
Much obliged to you for going away, though. Young Pollard did come
some croppers, I can tell you. Buller's against us, of course, on the
evidence; but what do I care? I'll get the jury, see if I don't. I'll
make a speech this afternoon the like of which hasn't often been heard
in this dead-and-alive hole. Lewis, beware! Here's confusion to the
guilty, and safety to the innocent!'
He had rattled on in a jerky, excited, nervous manner, and he wound up
by drinking off nearly a tumblerful of champagne. Prescott could
hardly make him out. He feared the strain of the last few weeks was
unhinging his friend's mind.
'Gently,' he said, remonstrating; 'you must keep cool, or you will
spoil everything. Beware of old Buller. When he is giving you the most
rope, he is getting ready to come down on you most heavily at the end.
I think you'll find it a weak jury. They will do pretty well as the
judge tells them.'
'Don't you be afraid, Charlie,' retorted the other in the same
unnaturally careless strain; 'it's my case, and I know how to manage
it. I've sworn to save her, and, by God! I'll do it, if I have to
declare I did the thing myself! By Jove, didn't I touch up that
scoundrel in the witness-box, though! You saw me, Beltrope?'
He called to another barrister, who had been present in court the
whole morning.
'Yes, I know,' answered Beltrope; 'but you'd better be awfully
careful, Tressamer. So far as I could see, your line of defence is
that Lewis must have done it. Now, unless you're prepared with some
very strong evidence against him, you'd far better change that tack
before it's too late. You'll have old Buller dead against you, as
Prescott says, and, I dare say, the jury too. Whatever you do, don't
leave it in such a way that they must convict one or the other.'
'Rubbish! You don't understand,' replied Tressamer. 'Wait till you've
heard my speech, that's all. Well, I must be off.' He drank some more
champagne. 'I want to have a wash just to cool my head.'
And he darted out of the room to go upstairs. The other barristers
looked at each other and exchanged meaning glances. They did not like
to say much out loud before Prescott, who was known to be Tressamer's
friend; but they whispered together, and the tenor of their whispers
was precisely that of Prescott's own reflections. Tressamer, they
agreed, had lost his head through over-excitement, and would probably
create a scene in court that afternoon.
So anxious did Prescott feel, that he at last resolved to bare his own
feelings to his friend in the hope of thereby sobering him. He
accordingly went up to his bedroom, where he found him with his head
in a basin of water, and addressed him in very grave accents:
'George, you must listen to me. You have told me that you love Eleanor
Owen, and I suppose, as she has you to defend her, that she returns
your love. Now, I have a confession to make to you. I love her, too.'
'What! You, Charles!' He was certainly sobered for the moment.
'Yes. You know I saw something of her as a child. I was fond of
her then, I recollect. But to-day, when I saw her, so beautiful,
so innocent, in that dreadful place, I found another feeling
overmastering me. Oh, do not be afraid! She shall never know it. I
shall not try to take her from you. I am not the sort of man to rob
his friend. But, George, let me say this to you: that if anything--oh,
the thought is horrible!--if any miscarriage of justice should occur,
I shall blame you. I shall never forgive you if she comes to harm
through your means. Be careful. Oh, great Heaven, man, do your best,
your very best! It is the crisis of our lives--of all our lives.
Beware how you fail to prove yourself worthy of your trust.' And
without waiting for an answer he turned away, and hastened back to
his own work in the Nisi Prius Court.
In spite of the confident opinions expressed by the barristers, the
judge's mind was less firmly settled than they supposed. Sir Daniel
Buller was in the judges' private room at the court-house, sharing a
dish of cutlets with Sir John Wiseman. And, of course, they were
discussing the case.
'I tell you what it is, Wiseman,' the first judge was saying, 'there
is something in this case that hasn't come out yet. So far, there has
been absolutely no real defence. Waiter!'
The waiter darted into the room.
'Look at this cutlet! It's burnt to a cinder. Take it away. And tell
your cook, with my compliments, that it's always better to have a
thing underdone than overdone, because if it's not cooked enough you
can always do it more, but if it's cooked too much you can't do it
less. D'you hear?'
The waiter bowed low and retired, deeply impressed with the profound
wisdom displayed in these observations.
'You know, if that man who's defending her--what's his name:
Tressamer?--thinks he's going to get her off by attacking Lewis, he
makes a mistake. I shall go for him if he tries it on.'
'Most improper--most improper,' assented Sir John. 'I don't know what
the Bar's coming to, I don't indeed! These young men are throwing over
all the old traditions. The judges will really have to do something.'
'You see, Lewis has acted a perfectly natural and straightforward
part. He was bound to do what he did.'
'What sort of a girl is she? because that will make a good deal of
difference with the jury.'
'I don't quite agree with you,' answered Sir Daniel. 'My experience is
that in a case of this kind the jury are sobered by their sense of
responsibility too much to be influenced by a thing like that. It's
the outside public afterwards who get up petitions and kick up a row
in the press about a pretty woman.'
'Then she is pretty?' said the other.
'You old sinner!' retorted Sir Daniel playfully. 'It's well for the
interests of justice that you're not on the jury. Yes, begad! Wiseman,
she's one of the loveliest creatures I've ever tried. Waiter! Where
are those tomatoes?'
The tomatoes were brought in and hurriedly partaken of, as the time
was running out.
'I suppose you'll sum up for a conviction, then?' questioned the other
judge, as he rose and put on his wig.
'No, I shan't,' said Sir Daniel, helping his brother on with the
purple-coloured garment which is worn in presiding over the civil
court. 'I shall just leave it to the jury. I don't feel a bit
satisfied, and I'm very glad, for once in my life, that I have got a
jury to take the decision off my shoulders.'
And with these words he drew his own scarlet gown around him and,
grasping a small square piece of silk in his left hand, strode back to
his seat in court.
At his entrance the whole assemblage rose, including the prisoner, who
had been brought back a minute before. Then a start of horror ran
through them, and Eleanor's calmness for a moment gave way in a faint
gasp. For the object which the judge had just laid on the desk beside
him was--the Black Cap.