Drummond died late in the evening. An account of the accident was in the
headlines of the morning papers. Unfortunately for Lydia, he was a
conspicuous local figure. He had had the early popularity of a
good-looking, dissipated boy, and then he had been one of the men who
had not waited for the draft but had volunteered and gone into the
Regular Army, and had come home from France unwounded, with a heroic
record. Moreover, there had been a long boy-and-girl love affair between
him and Alma Wooley, the daughter of the hardware merchant. Mr. Wooley,
who was a native Long Islander, hard and wise, had been opposed to the
engagement until, after the war, the return of Drummond as a hero made
opposition impossible. It was at this point that O'Bannon had come to
the rescue, securing the position of traffic policeman for the young
man. The marriage was to have taken place in June.
Before Drummond died he recovered consciousness long enough to recognize
the pale girl at his beside and to make an ante-mortem statement as to
the circumstances of the accident.
Eleanor heard of the accident in the evening, but did not know of
Drummond's death until early the following morning. She called up
O'Bannon, but he had already left his house. At the office she was asked
if Mr. Foster would do. Mr. Foster would not do. With her clear mind and
recently acquired knowledge of criminal law, she knew the situation was
serious. She called up Fanny Piers and found she was spending the day in
town. Noel came to the telephone. He was very casual.
"Yes, poor Lydia," he said; "uncomfortable sort of thing to have
happened to you."
"Rather more than uncomfortable," answered Eleanor. "Do you know if
she's been arrested?"
Piers laughed over the telephone. Of course she hadn't been. Really, his
tone seemed to say, Eleanor allowed her socialistic ideas to run away
with her judgment. Poor Lydia hadn't meant any harm--it was the sort of
thing that might happen to anyone. Oh, they might try her--as a matter
of form. But what could they do to her?
"Well," said Eleanor, "people have been known to go to prison for
killing someone on the highway."
Piers agreed as if her point was irrelevant.
"Oh, yes, some of those careless chauffeurs. But a thing like this is
always arranged. You'll see. You couldn't get a grand jury to indict a
girl like Lydia. It will be arranged."
"Arranged," thought Eleanor as she hung up the receiver, "only at the
expense of Dan O'Bannon's honor or career."
She did not want that, and yet she did want to help Lydia. She felt
deeply concerned for the girl, more aware than usual of her warm, honest
affection for her. She often thought of Lydia as she had appeared on her
first day at school. The head mistress had brought her into the study
and introduced her to the teacher in charge. All the girls had looked up
and stared at the small, black-eyed new pupil with the bobbed hair and
slim legs in black silk stockings, one of which she was cleverly
twisting about the other. She was shy and monosyllabic, utterly unused
to children of her own age; and yet even then she had shown a certain
capacity for comradeship, for under the elbows of the two tall teachers
she had directed a slow, shy smile at the girls as much as to say, "Wait
till we get together! We'll fix them!"
She was very well turned out, for Miss Bennett had just taken charge,
but not so well equipped mentally, the long succession of her
governesses having each spent more time in destroying the teachings of
her predecessors than in making progress on her own account. Much to
Lydia's chagrin, she was put in a class of children younger than she.
This was shortly before Christmas. Before the second term she had
managed to get herself transferred into a class of her contemporaries.
She had never studied before, because in old times it had seemed to her
the highest achievement lay in thwarting her governesses. But the
instant it became desirable to attain knowledge she found no difficulty
in attaining it. It had amused her studying late into the night when
Miss Bennett thought she was asleep.
In the same way she had decided to make a friend of Eleanor, who was a
class above her and prominent in school life. There had been nothing
sentimental about the friendship. She had admired Eleanor's clear mind
and moral courage then, just as she admired them now.
It was of that little girl twisting one leg about the other that Eleanor
thought now with a warm affection that the later Lydia had not
destroyed. She ordered her car and drove into town to the Thorne house.
At the door Morson betrayed just the proper solemnity--the proper
additional solemnity--for he was never gay.
Yes, Miss Thorne was in, but he could not be sure that she could see
Miss Bellington at the moment. Mr. Wiley was in the drawing-room.
"Mr. Wiley?" said Eleanor, trying to remember.
"The lawyer, madam."
Eleanor hesitated.
"Tell her I'm here," she said, and presently Morson came back and
conducted her to the drawing-room.
Lydia's drawing-room was brilliant with vermilion lacquer, jade, rock
crystal, a Chinese painting or two and huge cushioned armchairs and
sofas. Here she and Miss Bennett and Mr. Wiley were sitting--at least
Mr. Wiley and Miss Bennett were sitting, and Lydia was standing, playing
with a jade dog from the mantelpiece, pressing its cold surface against
her cheek.
As Eleanor entered, Lydia, with hardly a sound, did a thing she had
occasionally seen her do before--she suddenly seemed to radiate greeting
and love and gratitude. Miss Bennett introduced Mr. Wiley.
Wiley had established his position early in life--early for a lawyer; so
now at fifty-eight he had thirty years of crowded practice behind him.
In the nineties, a young man of thirty, his slim frock-coated figure,
his narrow, fine features and dark, heavy mustache were familiar in most
important court cases, and in the published accounts of them his name
always had a prominent place. His enemies at one time had been
contemptuous of his legal profundity and had said that he was more of an
actor than a lawyer; but if so juries seemed to be more swayed by art
than law, for Wiley had a wonderful record of successes. He was a man of
scrupulous financial integrity--universally desired as a trustee--an
honorable gentleman, a leader at the bar. It was hard to see how Lydia
could be in better hands. He might not have been willing to undertake
her case but for the fact that he had been her father's lawyer and was
her trustee. He had a thorough familiarity, attained through years of
conflict over finances, with all the problems of his client's
disposition. He knew, for instance, that she would be absolutely
truthful with him, a knowledge a lawyer so rarely has in regard to his
clients. He knew, too, that she might carry this quality into the
witness chair and might ruin her own case with the jury. He was a man
accustomed to being listened to, and he was being listened to now.
Eleanor sat down, saying she was sorry if she interrupted them. She
didn't. Wiley drew her in and made her feel one of the conference.
"I had really finished what I was saying," he added.
"I only wanted to know if the situation were serious," said Eleanor.
"Serious, Miss Bellington?" Wiley looked at her seriously. "To kill a
human being while violating the law?"
"Mr. Wiley considers it entirely a question of how the case is managed,"
said Lydia. There was not a trace of amusement in her tone or her
expression.
"To be absolutely candid," Wiley continued, "and Lydia tells me she
wants the facts, I should say that if juries were normal, impartial,
unemotional people Lydia would be found guilty of manslaughter in the
second degree--on her own story. Fortunately, however, the collective
intelligence of a jury is low; and skillfully managed, the case of a
beautiful young orphan may be made very appealing, very pathetic."
"Pathos has never been my strong point," observed Lydia.
"The great danger is her own attitude," said Miss Bennett to Eleanor.
"She doesn't seem to care whether she's convicted or not."
Lydia moved her shoulders with a gesture that confirmed Miss Bennett's
impression, and then suddenly turned.
"I don't believe you want me for a few minutes, Mr. Wiley. I want to
speak to Eleanor."
She dragged her friend away with her to her own little sitting room
upstairs. Here her calm disappeared.
"Aren't lawyers terrible, Eleanor? Here I am--I've killed a man! Why
shouldn't I go to prison? I'm not quixotic. I didn't want to be
convicted, but Wiley shocks me, assuming that I can't be because I'm a
woman and rich and he can play on the jury."
"I should not say that he assumed that you were safe, Lydia."
"Oh, yes, he does! Don't be like Benny. She sees me in stripes at once.
What Wiley means is that as long as I am fortunate enough to have the
benefit of his services I'm perfectly safe, not because I did not mean
to kill Drummond, but because he, Wiley, will make the jury cry over me.
Isn't that disgusting?"
"Yes, it is," said Eleanor.
"Oh, Eleanor, you are such a comfort!" said Lydia, and began to cry.
Eleanor had never seen her cry before. She did it very gently, without
sobs, and after a few minutes controlled herself again, and tucked away
her handkerchief and said, "Do you think everyone would hate to have a
car that had killed someone! I shall never drive again, and yet I
couldn't sell it--couldn't take money for it. Will you accept it,
Eleanor? You wouldn't have to drive the way I did, you know."
Eleanor, pleading the shortness of her sight, declined the car.
"You ought to go back and talk to Mr. Wiley, my dear."
Lydia shrugged her shoulders.
"I don't care much what happens to me," she said.
Eleanor hesitated. She saw suddenly that what she was about to say was
the principal object of her visit.
"Lydia, I hope that you will come out all right, but you don't know Dan
O'Bannon as I do, and----"
"You think he will want to convict me?"
"Not you personally, of course. But he believes in the law. He wants to
believe in its honesty and equality. He suffered last month, I know, in
convicting a delivery-wagon driver, and his offense wasn't half as
flagrant as yours. Oh, Lydia, have some imagination! Don't you see that
his own honor and democracy will make him feel it more his duty to
convict you than all the less conspicuous criminals put together?"
A strange change had taken place in Lydia during this speech. At the
beginning of it she had been shrunk into a corner of a deep chair; but
as Eleanor spoke life seemed to be breathed into her, until she sat
erect, grew tense, and finally rose to her feet.
"You mean there would be publicity, political advantage, in sending a
person in my position to prison?"
"Don't be perverse, Lydia. I mean that, more than most men, he will see
his duty is to treat you as he would any criminal. You make it difficult
for me to tell you something that I must tell you. Mr. O'Bannon feels,
I'm afraid, a certain amount of antagonism toward you."
A staring, insolent silence was Lydia's answer.
Eleanor went on: "Do you remember after dinner at the Piers' you told me
about the policeman you had bribed? You asked me not to tell, but I'm
sorry--I can't tell you how sorry--that I did tell. I told Dan. I would
give a good deal if I hadn't, but----"
"My dear," Lydia laughed, but without friendliness, "don't distress
yourself. What difference does it make? I nearly told him myself."
"It makes a great deal of difference. It made him furious against you.
He felt you were debauching a young man trying to do his duty."
"What a prig you make that man out, Eleanor! But what of it?"
"I got an impression, Lydia--I don't know how--that it turned him
against you; that he will be less inclined to be pitiful."
"Pitiful!" cried Lydia. "Since when have I asked Dan O'Bannon for pity?
Let him do his duty, and my lawyers will do theirs; and let me tell you,
Eleanor, you and he will be disappointed in the results."
Eleanor said firmly, "I think you must take back that 'you,' Lydia."
Lydia shrugged her shoulders.
"Well, you say your friend wants to convict me, and you want your friend
to succeed, I suppose. That is success for him, getting people to
prison, isn't it?" She began this in one of her most irritating tones;
and then she suddenly repented and, putting her hand on Eleanor's
shoulder, she added, "Eleanor, I'm all on edge. Thank you a lot for
coming. I think I will go back and tell what you've said to old Wiley."
Eleanor waited to telephone to Fanny Piers and Mrs. Pulsifer, knowing it
would be wise to create a little favorable public opinion. As she went
downstairs the drawing-room door opened and Miss Bennett came softly
out, shutting the door carefully behind her.
"Thank heaven for you, Eleanor!" she said. "You have certainly worked a
miracle." Eleanor looked uncomprehending, and she went on: "At first she
was so naughty to poor Mr. Wiley--would hardly discuss the case at all;
but now since you've talked to her she is quite different. She has even
consented to send for Governor Albee--the obvious thing, with his
friendship and political power."
Eleanor's shoulders were rather high anyhow, and when she drew them
together she looked like a wooden soldier. She did it now as she said
with distaste, "But is this a question of politics?"
"My dear, you know the district attorney is a political officer, and
they say this young man is extremely ambitious. Certainly he would
listen--he'd have to--to a man at the head of the party like Albee. I
feel much easier in my mind. The governor can do anything, and now that
Lydia has come to her senses she is determined to go into court with the
best case possible, and you know how clever she is. Thank you, Eleanor,
for all you have done for us."
Like many workers of miracles, Eleanor went away surprised at her own
powers. The idea of O'Bannon being coerced or rewarded into letting
Lydia off gave her exquisite pain. She felt like warning him to do his
duty, even if it meant Lydia's being found guilty. Yet she sincerely
wanted Lydia saved--meant to go as far as she could to save her. She
knew with what a perfect surface of honesty such things could be done;
how a district attorney, while from the public's point of view
prosecuting a case with the utmost vigor, might leave open some
wonderful technical escape for the defense. It could be done without
O'Bannon losing an atom of public respect. But she, Eleanor, would know;
would know as she saw him conducting the case; would know when a year or
so later, after everyone else had forgotten, he would receive his
reward--some political appointment or perhaps a financial chairmanship.
Albee had great powers in business as well as politics. In her own mind
she formulated the words, "I have the utmost confidence in O'Bannon."
But she knew, too, how all people of passionate, quick temperaments are
sometimes swept by their own desires, and how easily most lawyers could
find rational grounds for taking the position they desired to take. It
would be so natural for any man under the plea of pity for a young woman
like Lydia to allow himself to be subtly corrupted into letting her off.
Eleanor's own position was not simple. She faced it clearly. She was for
Lydia, whatever happened, as far as her conduct went; but in spite of
herself her sympathies swung to and fro. When women like Fanny Piers and
May Swayne said, with a certain relish they couldn't keep out of their
tones and reluctant dimples at the corners of their mouths, "Isn't this
too dreadful about poor Lydia?" then she was whole-heartedly Lydia's.
But when she detected in all her friends--except Bobby, who was frankly
frightened--the belief that they were beyond the law, that nothing could
happen to any member of their protected group, then she felt she would
enjoy nothing so much as seeing one of them prove an exception to the
general immunity.
The coroner held Lydia for the grand jury in ten thousand dollars' bail.
This had been considered a foregone conclusion and did not particularly
distress or alarm Eleanor. What did alarm her was her inability to get
in touch with O'Bannon. In all the months of their quick, intimate
friendship this had never happened before. Press of business had never
kept him entirely away. Now she could not even get him to come to the
telephone.
She was not the only person who was attempting to see him on Lydia's
behalf. Bobby Dorset had made several efforts, and finally caught him
between the courthouse and his office. Bobby took the tone that the
whole thing was fantastic; that O'Bannon was too much of a gentleman to
send any girl to prison, irritating the man he had come to placate by
something frivolous and unreal in his manner--the only manner Bobby
knew.
And then as Lydia's case grew darker Albee came. O'Bannon was in his
study at home, the low-ceilinged room opening off the dining room. It
had a great flat baize-covered desk, and low open shelves running round
the walls, containing not only law books, but novels and early
favorites--Henty and Lorna Doone and many records of travel and
adventure.
Here he was sitting, supposed to be at work on the Thorne case, about
nine o'clock in the evening. Certainly his mind was occupied with it and
the papers were laid out before him. He was going over and over, the
same treadmill that his mind had been chained to ever since he had stood
by Drummond's bedside with Alma Wooley clinging, weeping, to his hand.
Lydia Thorne had committed a crime, and his duty was to present the case
against the criminal. Sometimes of course a district attorney was
justified in taking into consideration extenuating circumstances which
could not always be brought out in court. But in this case there were no
extenuating circumstances. Every circumstance he knew was against her.
Her character was harsh and arrogant. She had already violated the law
in bribing Drummond. First she had corrupted the poor boy, and then she
had killed him. She deserved punishment more than most of the criminals
who came into his court, and his duty was to present the case against
her. He repeated it over and over to himself. Why, he was half a crook
to consider this case as different from any other case--and if she did
get off she wouldn't be grateful. She'd just assume that there had not
been and never could be any question of convicting a woman like herself.
He remembered her bending to look at him under the candle shades of the
Piers' dinner table and announcing her disbelief in the equal
administration of the laws. But yet, if she should come to him--if she
would only come to him, pleading for herself as she had once for a few
minutes pleaded for Evans----He could almost see her there in the circle
of his reading light, close to him--could almost smell the perfume of
violets.
"I hope to God she doesn't come," he said to himself, and desired it
more than anything in life.
At that very moment the doorbell rang. O'Bannon's heart began to beat
till it hurt him. If she were there he must see her, and if he saw her
he must again take her in his arms, and if--it was his duty to present
the case against her.
There was a knock on his door, and his mother entered ushering in
Governor Albee. Great and wise men came from East and West to see her
son, her manner seemed to say.
"Well, O'Bannon," said the governor, "I haven't seen you since--let me
see--the 1916 convention, wasn't it?"
The younger man pulled himself together. He was not a politician for
nothing, and he had control, almost automatically, of a simple, friendly
manner.
"But I've seen you, governor," he answered. "I went in the other day to
hear your cross-examination on that privileged-communication point. I
learned a lot. We're all infants compared with you when it comes to that
sort of thing."
"Oh"--Albee gave one of his straight-armed waves of the band--"everyone
tells me you have your own method of getting the facts. I hear very fine
things of you, O'Bannon. There's an impression that Princess County
will soon be looking for another district attorney."
Mrs. O'Bannon stole reluctantly away, closing the door behind her. The
two men went on flattering each other, as each might have flattered a
woman. Both were now aware that a serious situation was before them.
They began to talk of the great party to which they belonged. The
governor mentioned his personal responsibility--by which he meant his
personal power--as a national committeeman. He spoke of an interview
with the leader of the party in New York--the purveyor of great
positions.
"He's going to put the chairmanship of this new commission up to me.
It's not so much financially--seventy-five hundred--but the opportunity,
the reputation a fellow might make. It needs a big man, and yet a young
one. I'm for putting in a young man."
That was all. The governor began after that to speak of his coming
campaign for the Senate, but O'Bannon knew now exactly why he had come.
He had come to offer him a bribe. It was not the first time he had been
offered a bribe. He remembered a family of Italians who had come to him
frankly with all their savings in a sincere belief that that was the
only way to save a son and brother. They had gone away utterly unable to
understand why their offering had been rejected, but with a confused
impression that district attorneys in America came too high for them. He
had not felt any anger against their simple effort at corruption--only
pity; but a sudden furious anger swept him against Albee, so smooth, so
self-satisfied. Unanalytic, like most hot-blooded people--who in the
tumult of their emotions are too much occupied to analyze and when the
tumult ceases are unable to believe it ever existed--O'Bannon did not
understand the sequence of his emotions. For an instant he was angry,
and then he felt a sort of desperate relief. At least the question of
his attitude in the case was settled. Now he must prosecute to the
utmost of his ability. One couldn't let a sleek, crooked old politician
go through the world thinking that he had bribed you--one couldn't be
bribed.
He leaned his brow on his hand, shielding his whole face from the light,
while he drew patterns on the blotting paper with a dry pen. The
governor broke off with an appearance of spontaneity.
"But I mustn't run on like this about my own affairs," he said. "I came,
as perhaps you guessed, about this unfortunate affair of poor Miss
Thorne. I don't know if you know her personally----"
He paused. He really could not remember. He believed Lydia had mentioned
having seen the man somewhere.
"I've met her once or twice," said O'Bannon.
"Well, if you've seen her you know that she's a rare and beautiful
creature; but if you don't know her you don't know how sensitive she
is; sheltered and proud; doesn't show her deep, human feelings."
A slight movement of the district attorney's hand brought his mouth and
chin into the area of illumination. Their expression was not agreeable.
"No," he said, "I must own I did not get all that."
"This whole thing is almost killing her," Albee went on. "Really I
believe that if she has to go into court--well, of course she must go
into court, poor child, and hear it all gone over and over before a
jury. Imagine how anyone--you or I would feel if we had killed a man,
and then add a young woman's natural sensitiveness and pity. You can
guess what she is going through. I've sat with her for hours. It's
pitiful--simply pitiful. Anything you can do, O'Bannon, that will make
it easier for her I shall take as a personal favor to me, a favor I
shall never forget, believe me."
The governor smiled his human, all-embracing smile, almost like a
priest. There was a moment's silence. Albee's experience was that there
usually was a moment while the idea sank in.
Then the younger man asked with great deliberation, "Just what is your
interest in this case, Governor Albee?"
Perfectly calm himself, Albee noted with some amusement the strain in
the other's tone. He had expected the question--a natural one. It was
natural the fellow should wish to be assured that the favor he was
about to do was a real one, a substantial one, something that would be
remembered. He would be taking a certain chance, considering the
newspaper interest and all the local resentment over the case.
Reelection might be rendered impossible. Albee thought to himself that
Lydia would forgive a slight exaggeration of the bond between them if
that exaggeration served to set her free.
"Well, that's rather an intimate question, Mister District Attorney," he
said. "To most people I should answer that she is a lady whom I esteem
and admire; but to you--in strictest confidence--I don't mind saying
that I have every hope and expectation of making her my wife." And he
added less solemnly, "What are you young fellows thinking of to let an
old man like me get ahead of you, eh?" Bending forward he slapped the
other man on the shoulder.
O'Bannon stood up as if a mighty hand had reached from the ceiling and
pulled him upright. The action was all that was left of the primitive
impulse to wring Albee's neck.
"There is nothing I can do to help Miss Thorne," he said. "You know
enough about criminal procedure to know that. The case against her is
very strong."
"Oh, very strong--in the newspapers," said the governor with another of
his waves of his hand. "But you mustn't let your cases be tried in the
newspapers. I always made it a rule never to let the newspapers
influence me in a case."
"I have a better rule than that," said the other. "I don't let anything
influence me except the facts in the case." He was still standing, and
Albee now rose too.
"I see," he said, not quite so suavely as before. "You mean you go ahead
your own way and don't mind making enemies."
"I sometimes like it," answered O'Bannon.
"Making them is all right." Albee looked right at him. "Taking the
consequences of doing so isn't always so enjoyable. Good night."
When the sound of the governor's motor had died away O'Bannon went back
to his desk. His mother had long ago gone upstairs, and the house was
quiet. Disgust and anger were like a poison in his veins. So that vile,
sleek old man was to have her? Love was out of the question? She did not
even have the excuse of needing money! What a loathsome bargain! What a
loathsome woman! To think he had allowed himself to be stirred by her
beauty? He wouldn't touch her with his little finger now if she were the
last woman in the world. Albee? Good God! There must be thirty-five
years between them. Someone ought to stop it. She would be better in
prison than giving herself to an old man like that. She was no ignorant
child. She knew what she was doing. If he were the girl's brother or
father he'd rather see her dead.
It was after midnight when he set to work on the papers in the case. He
worked all night. The old servant bringing Mrs. O'Bannon her breakfast
in the early morning reported Mr. Dan as being up and away. He had come
into the kitchen at six for a cup of coffee, his face as white as that
sheet and his eyes nearly out of his head.
This was the afternoon that Eleanor selected to take the matter into her
own hands and come to his office. She came late in the afternoon. It was
after six. She saw his car standing in the street and she knew he was
still there. She went in past the side entrance to Mr. Wooley's shop, up
the worn wooden stairs, through the glass door with its gold letters,
"Office of the District Attorney of Princess County." The stenographers
and secretaries had gone. Their desks were empty, their typewriters
hooded. O'Bannon was standing alone in the middle of the room with his
hat and overcoat on, as if he had been caught by some disagreeable
thought just in the moment of departure.
Eleanor's step made no sound on the stairs. He looked up in surprise as
she opened the door, and as their eyes met she knew clearly that he did
not want to see her. There was something almost brutal in the way that
he looked at her and then looked away again, as if he hoped she might be
gone when he looked back. If she had come on her own business she would
have gone. As it was, she couldn't. She came in, and closing the door
behind her she leaned against the handle.
"I'm sorry to bother you, Dan," she said, "but I must talk to you about
Lydia Thorne."
"Miss Thorne's friends are doing everything they can to prevent the
preparation of a case against her. They take all my time in interviews,"
he answered.
"Who else has been here?" asked Eleanor with a sinking heart.
"Oh, Bobby Dorset has been here. That interview was brief."
"And Governor Albee?"
O'Bannon looked at her with eyes that suddenly flared up like torches.
"Yes, the old fox," he said.
There was a pause during which Eleanor did not say a word, but her whole
being, body and mind, was a question; and O'Bannon, though he had become
this strange, hostile creature, was yet enough her old friend to answer
it.
"If you have any influence with Miss Thorne tell her to keep politics
out of it--to get a good lawyer and to prepare a good case."
Eleanor saw that Albee's mission had failed. She would have rejoiced at
this, except that the hostility of O'Bannon's manner hurt her beyond the
power of rejoicing. She was not like Lydia--stimulated by enmity. She
felt wounded and chilled by it. She told herself, as women always do in
these circumstances, that there was nothing personal about his
attitude, but there was something terribly personal in her not being
able to change his black mood.
"She has a good lawyer--Wiley. Who can be better than Wiley?" she asked.
"He's often successful, I believe."
He began snapping out the light over the desk--a hint not too subtle.
Eleanor started twice to say that most people believed that no jury
would convict a girl like Lydia, but every phrase she thought of sounded
like a challenge. They went downstairs. Ordinarily he would have offered
to drive her home, although her own car was waiting for her. Now he took
off his soft hat and was actually turning away when she caught him by
the sleeve. His arm remained limp, almost humanly sulky, in her grasp.
"I've never known you like this before, Dan," she said.
"You must do me the justice to say," he answered, "that lately I have
done my best to keep out of your way."
Eleanor dropped his arm and he started to move away.
"Tell me one thing," she said. "The grand jury will indict her?"
"It will."
She nodded.
"That is what Mr. Wiley thinks."
"And he also thinks, I suppose," said O'Bannon, "that no jury will
convict her?"
"And what do you think?"
"I think," he answered, so slowly that each word fell clearly, "that a
conviction can be had and that I shall get it."
Eleanor did not answer. The chauffeur was holding open the door of her
car, and she walked forward and got into it. She had learned the thing
she had come to learn--a knowledge that the stand he took was an
honorable one. She was glad that his hands were clean, but in her left
side her heart ached like a tooth. He seemed a stranger to
her--unfriendly, remote, remote as a man struggling in a whirlpool would
be remote from even the friendliest spectator on the bank.
A few days later the grand jury found a true bill against Lydia. That
was no surprise even to her friends. Wiley and Albee had both prepared
her for that. The crime for which she was indicted, however, came as a
shock. It was manslaughter in the first degree. Albee was, or affected
to be, pleased. It proved they were bluffing, he said.
"It may cost you a little more on Wiley's bill," he said. "It costs a
little more, I suppose, to be acquitted of manslaughter than of criminal
negligence; but on the other hand it may save you a thousand-dollar
fine. A jury might conceivably find you guilty of a crime for which you
could be fined, but not of one for which the only punishment is
imprisonment."
Bobby thought the indictment showed conclusively that there was some
crooked work going on, and wanted the district attorney's office
investigated. Most of Lydia's friends began to feel that this was really
carrying the thing too far.
Thus New York.
In the neighborhood of Wide Plains it was generally known that O'Bannon
and Foster were working early and late, and that the district attorney's
office was out to get a conviction in the Thorne case.