JERRY STOKES was a member of Her Majesty's civil service. To put it more
plainly, he was the provincial hangman. Not a man in all Canada, he used
to boast with pardonable professional pride, had turned off as many
famous murderers as he had. He was a pillar of the constitution, was
Jerry Stokes. He represented the Executive. And he wasn't ashamed of his
office, either. Quite on the contrary, zeal for his vocation shone
visible in his face. He called it a useful, a respectable, and a
necessary calling. If it were not for him and his utensils, he loved to
say to the gaping crowd that stood him treat in the saloons, no man's
life would be safe for a day in the province. He was a practical
philanthropist in his way, a public benefactor. It is not good that foul
crime should stalk unpunished through the land; and he, Jerry Stokes,
was there to prevent it. He was the chosen instrument for its salutary
repression. Executions performed with punctuality and despatch; for
terms, apply to Jeremiah Stokes, Port Hope, Ontario.
[Illustration: "HE WAS A PUBLIC BENEFACTOR."]
Not that philanthropy was the most salient characteristic in Jerry's
outer man. He was a short and thick-set person, very burly and
dogged-looking; he had a massive, square head, and a powerful lower jaw,
and a coarse, bull neck, and a pair of stout arms, acquired in the
lumber trade, but forcibly suggestive of a prize-fighter's occupation.
Except on the subject of the Executive, he was a taciturn soul; he had
nothing to say, and he said it briefly. Silence, stolidity, and a marked
capacity for the absorption of liquids without detriment to his centre
of gravity, physical or mental, were the leading traits in Mr. Stokes'
character. Those who knew him well, however, affirmed that Jerry was "a
straight man"; and though the security was perhaps a trifle doubtful, "a
straight man" nevertheless he was generally considered by all who had
the misfortune to require his services.
It was a principle with Jerry never to attend a trial for murder. This
showed his natural delicacy of feeling. Etiquette, I believe, forbids an
undertaker to make kind inquiries at the door of a dying person. It is
feared the object of his visits might be misunderstood; he might be
considered to act from interested motives. A similar and equally
creditable scruple restrained Jerry Stokes from putting in an appearance
at a court of justice when a capital charge was under investigation.
People might think, he said, he was on the look-out for a job. Nay,
more; his presence might even interfere with the administration of
justice; for if the jury had happened to spot him in the body of the
hall, it would naturally prejudice them in the prisoner's favour. To
prevent such a misfortune--which would of course, incidentally, be bad
for trade--Mr. Stokes denied himself the congenial pleasure of following
out in detail the cases on which he might in the end be called upon to
operate--except through the medium of the public press. He was a
kind-hearted man, his friends averred; and he knew that his presence in
court might be distasteful to the prisoner and the prisoner's relations.
Though, to say the truth, in thus absenting himself, Mr. Stokes was
exercising considerable self-denial; for to a hangman, even more than to
all the rest of the world, a good first-class murder case is replete
with plot-interest.
[Illustration: THE PRISONER.]
Every man, however, is guilty at some time or other in his life of a
breach of principle; and once, though once only, in his professional
experience, Jerry Stokes, like the rest of us, gave way to temptation.
To err is human; Jerry erred by attending a capital trial in Kingston
court-house. The case was one that aroused immense attention at the time
in the Dominion. A young lawyer at Napanee, it was said, had poisoned
his wife to inherit her money, and public feeling ran fierce and strong
against him. From the very first, this dead set of public opinion
brought out Jerry Stokes' sympathy in the prisoner's favour. The crowd
had tried to mob Ogilvy--that was the man's name--on his way from his
house to jail, and again on his journey from Napanee to Kingston
assizes. Men shook their fists angrily in the face of the accused; women
surged around with deep cries, and strove to tear him to pieces. The
police with difficulty prevented the swaying mass from lynching him on
the spot. Jerry Stokes, who was present, looked on at these irregular
proceedings with a disapproving eye. Most unconstitutional, to dismember
a culprit by main force, without form of trial, instead of handing him
over in due course of law to be properly turned off by the appointed
officer!
So when the trial came on, Jerry Stokes, in defiance of established
etiquette, took his stand in court, and watched the progress of the case
with profound interest.
The public recognised him, and nudged one another, well pleased. Farmers
had driven in with their waggons from the townships. All Ontario was
agog. People stared at Jerry, and then at the prisoner. "Stokes is
looking out for him!" they chuckled in their satisfaction. "He's got no
chance. He'll never get off. The hangman's in waiting!"
The suspected man took his place in the dock. Jerry Stokes glanced
across at him--rubbed his eyes--thought it curious. "Well, I never saw a
murderer like him in my born days afore," Jerry philosophised to
himself. "I've turned off square dozens of 'em in my time, in the
province; and I know their looks. But hanged if I've come across a
murderer yet like this one, any way!"
"Richard Ogilvy, stand up: are you guilty or not guilty?" asked the
clerk of assigns.
And the prisoner, leaning forward, in a very low voice, but clear and
distinct, answered out, "Not Guilty!"
He was a tall and delicate pale-faced man, with thoughtful grey eyes and
a high white forehead. But to Jerry Stokes' experienced gaze all that
counted for nothing. He knew his patients well enough to know there are
murderers and murderers--the refined and educated as well as the coarse
and brutal. Why, he'd turned off square dozens of them, and both sorts,
too, equally. No; it wasn't that--and he couldn't say what it was--but
as Richard Ogilvy answered "Not Guilty" that morning a thrill ran cold
down the hangman's back. He was sure it was true: he felt intuitively
certain of it.
From that moment forth, Jerry followed the evidence with the closest
interest. He leaned forward in his place, and drank it all in anxiously.
People who sat near him remarked that his conduct was disgusting. He was
thirsting for a conviction. It was ghastly to see the hangman so intent
upon his prey. He seemed to hang on the lips of the witnesses for the
prosecution.
But Jerry himself sat on, all unconscious of their criticism. For the
very first time in his life, he forgot his trade. He remembered only
that a human soul was at stake that day, and that in one glimpse of
intuition he had seen its innocence.
Counsel for the Crown piled up a cumulative case, very strong and
conclusive against the man Ogilvy. They showed that the prisoner had
lived on bad terms with his wife--though through whose fault they had
lived so, whether his or hers, wasn't very apparent. They showed that
scenes had lately occurred between them. They showed that Ogilvy had
bought poison at a chemist's in Kingston on the usual plea, "to get rid
of the rats." They showed that Mrs. Ogilvy had died of such poison.
Their principal witness was the Napanee doctor, a man named Wade, who
attended the deceased in her fatal illness. This doctor was intelligent,
and frank, and straightforward; he gave his evidence in the most
admirable style--evidence that told dead against the prisoner in every
way. At the close of the case for the Crown, the game was up: everybody
in court said all was finished: impossible for Ogilvy to rebut such a
mass of damning evidence.
Everybody in court--except Jerry Stokes. And Jerry Stokes went home--for
it was a two days' trial--much concerned in soul about Richard Ogilvy.
It was something new for Jerry Stokes, this disinterested interest in an
accused criminal; and it took hold of him with all the binding and
compelling force of a novel emotion. He wrestled and strained with it.
All night long he lay awake, and tossed and turned on his bed, and
thought of Richard Ogilvy's pale white face, as he stood there, a
picture of mute agony, in the court-house. Strange thoughts surged up
thick in Jerry Stokes' soul, that had surged up in no other soul among
all those actively hostile spectators. The silent suffering in the man's
grey eyes had stirred him deeply. A thousand times over, Jerry said to
himself, as he tossed and turned, "That man never done it." Now and
again he dozed off, and awoke with a start, and each time he woke he
found himself muttering in his sleep, with all the profound force of
unreasoned conviction, "He never done it! he never done it!"
Next morning, as soon as the court was open, Jerry Stokes was in his
place again, craning his bull-neck eagerly. All day long he craned that
bull-neck and listened. The public was scandalised now. Jerry Stokes in
court! Jerry Stokes scenting blood! He ought to have kept away! This was
really atrocious!
Evidence for the defence hung fire sadly. To say the truth, Ogilvy's
counsel had no defence at all to offer, except an assurance that he
didn't do it. They confined themselves to suggesting a possible
alternative here, and a possible alternative there. Mrs. Ogilvy might
have taken the rat-poison by mistake; or this person might have given it
her somehow unawares, or that person might have had some unknown grudge
against her. Jerry Stokes sat and listened with a sickening heart. The
man in the dock was innocent, he felt sure; but the case--why, the case
was going dead against him!
[Illustration: "JERRY WATCHED HIM CLOSELY."]
Slowly, as he listened, an idea began to break in upon Jerry Stokes'
mind. Ideas didn't often come his way. He was a thick-headed man, little
given to theories, and he didn't know even now it was a theory he was
forming. He only knew this was the way the case impressed him. The
prisoner at the bar had never done it. But there had been scenes in his
house--scenes brought about by Mrs. Ogilvy's conduct. Mrs. Ogilvy, he
felt confident from the evidence he heard, had been given to
drink--perhaps to other things; and the prisoner, for his child's sake
(he had one little girl of three years old), was anxious to screen his
wife's shame from the public. So he had suggested but little in this
direction to his counsel. The scenes, however, were not of his making,
and he certainly never meant to poison the woman. Jerry Stokes watched
him closely as each witness stood up and told his tale, and he was
confident of so much. That twitching of the lips was no murderer's
trick. It was the plain emotion of an honest man who sees the
circumstances unaccountably turning against him.
There was another person in court who watched the case almost as closely
as Jerry himself, and that person was the doctor who attended Mrs.
Ogilvy and made the _post-mortem_. His steely grey eyes were fixed with
a frank stare on each witness as he detailed his story; and from time to
time he gave a little satisfied gasp, when anything went obviously
against the prisoner's chances. Jerry was too much occupied, however,
for the most part, in watching the man in the dock to have any time left
for watching the doctor. Once only he raised his eyes and caught the
other's. It was at a critical moment. A witness for the defence, under
severe cross-examination, had just admitted a most damaging fact that
told hard against Ogilvy. Then the doctor smiled. It was a sinister
smile, a smile of malice, a smile of mute triumph. No one else noticed
it. But Jerry Stokes, looking up, observed it with a start. A shade
passed over his square face like a sudden cloud. He knew that smile
well. It was a typical murderer's.
"Mind you," Jerry said to himself, as he watched the smile die away, "I
don't pretend to be as smart a chap as all these crack lawyer fellows,
but I'm a straight man in my way, and I know my business. If that doctor
ain't got a murderer's face on his front, my name isn't Jeremiah Stokes;
that's the long and the short of it."
He looked hard at the prisoner, he looked hard at the doctor. The longer
and harder he looked, the more was he sure of it. He was an expert in
murderers, and he knew his men. Ogilvy hadn't done it; Ogilvy couldn't
do it; the doctor might; the doctor was, at any rate, a potential
murderer. Not that Jerry put it to himself quite so fine as that; he
contented himself with saying in his own dialect, "The doctor was one of
'em."
Evidence, however, went all against the prisoner, and the judge, to
Jerry's immense surprise, summed up upon nothing except the evidence.
Nobody in court, indeed, seemed to think of anything else. Jerry rubbed
his eyes once more. He couldn't understand it. Why, they were going to
hang the man on nothing at all but the paltry evidence! Professional as
he was, it surprised him to find a man could swing on so little! To
think that our lives should depend on such a thread! Just the gossip of
nurses and the tittle-tattle of a doctor with a smile like a murderer's!
[Illustration: "IT WAS A SINISTER SMILE."]
At last the jury retired to consider their verdict. But they were not
long gone. The case, said everybody, was as clear as daylight. In the
public opinion it was a foregone conclusion. Jerry stood aghast at that.
What! hang a man merely because they thought he'd done it! And with a
face like his! Why, it was sheer injustice!
The jury returned. The prisoner stood in the dock, now pale and
hopeless. Only one man in court seemed to feel the slightest interest in
the delivery of the verdict. And that one man was the public hangman.
Everybody else knew precisely how the case would go. But Jerry Stokes
still refused to believe any jury in Canada could perpetrate such an act
of flagrant injustice.
"Gentlemen of the jury, do you find the prisoner, Richard Ogilvy, Guilty
or Not Guilty of wilful murder?"
There was a slight rhetorical pause. Then the answer rang out, in
quietly solemn tones: "We find him Guilty. That is the verdict of all of
us."
Jerry Stokes held his breath. This was appalling, awful! The man was
innocent. But by virtue of his office he would have to hang him!