The story of the American Ambassadress was not the only one related on
this night.
Sir Henry Marquis himself added another, in support of the contention of
his guest... and from her own country.
The lawyer walked about the room. The restraint which he had assumed was
now quite abandoned.
“That's all there is to it,” he said. “I'm not trying this case for
amusement. You have the money to pay me and you must bring it up here
now, tonight.”
The woman sat in a chair beyond the table. She was young, but she looked
worn and faded. Misery and the long strain of the trial had worn her
out. Her hands moved nervously in the frayed coat-cuffs.
“But we haven't any more money,” she said. “The hundred dollars I paid
you in the beginning is all we have.”
The man laughed without disturbing the muscles of his face. “You
can take your choice,” he said. “Either bring the money up here now,
to-night, or I withdraw from the case when court opens in the morning.”
“But where am I to get any more money?” the woman said.
The lawyer was a big man. His hair, black and thin, was brushed close to
his head as though wet with oil; his nose was thick and flattened at
the base. The office contained only a table, some chairs and a file for
legal papers. Night was beginning to descend. Lights were appearing in
the city. The two persons had come in from the Criminal Court after the
session for the day had ended.
The woman seemed bewildered. She looked at the man with the curious
expression of a child that does not comprehend and is afraid to ask for
an explanation.
“If we had any more money,” she said, “I would bring it to you, but the
hundred dollars was all we had.”
Then she began to explain, reiterating minute details. When the tragedy
occurred and her husband was arrested by the police they had a small
sum painfully saved up. It was now wholly gone. Like persons in profound
misery, she repeated. The man halted the recital with a brutal gesture.
“I'll not discuss it,” he said. “You can bring the money in here before
the court convenes in the morning, or I withdraw from the case.”
He went over to the file, took out a packet of legal papers and threw
them on the table.
“All right, my lady!” he said, “perhaps you think your husband can get
along without a lawyer. Perhaps you think the devil will save him, or
heaven, or Cinderella in a pumpkin coach!” There was biting irony in the
bitter words.
A sudden comprehension began to appear in the woman's face. She realized
now what the man was driving at. The expression in her face deepened
into a sort of wonder, a sort of horror.
“You think he's guilty!” she said. “You think we got the money and we're
trying to keep it, to hide it.”
The lawyer turned about, put both hands on the table and leaned across
it. He looked the woman in the face.
“Never mind what I believe; you heard what I said!”
For a moment the woman did not move. Then she got up slowly and went
out. In the street she seemed lost. She remained for some time before
the entrance of the building. Night had now arrived. Crowds of people
were passing, intent on their affairs, unconcerned. No one seemed to see
the figure motionless in the shadow of the great doorway.
Presently the woman began to walk along the street in the crowd without
giving any attention to the people about her or to the direction she was
taking. She was in that state of mental coma which attends persons in
despair. She neither felt nor appreciated anything and she continued to
walk in the direction in which the crowd was moving.
Some block in the traffic checked the crowd and the woman stopped. The
block cleared and the human tide drifted on, but the woman remained. The
crowd edged her over to the wall and she stood there before the
shutter of a shop-window. After a time the crowd passed, thinned and
disappeared, but the woman remained as though thrown out there by the
human eddy.
The woman remained for a long time unmoving against the shutter of the
shop-window. Finally she was awakened into life by a voice speaking to
her. It was a soft, foreign voice that lisped the liquid accents of the
occasional English words:
“Ma pauvre femme!” it said; “come with me. Vous etes malade!”
The woman followed mechanically in a sort of wonder. The person who had
spoken to her was young and beautifully dressed in furs that covered her
to her feet. She had gotten down from a motorcar that stood beside the
curb--one of those modern vehicles, fitted with splendid trappings.
Beyond the shop-window was a great cafe. The girl entered and the woman
followed. The attendants came forward to welcome the splendid visitor as
one whose arrival at this precise hour of the evening had become a sort
of custom. She gave some directions in a language which the woman did
not understand, and they were seated at a table.
The waiters brought a silver dish filled with a clear, steaming soup and
served it. The girl threw back her fur coat and the dazed woman realized
how beautiful she was. Her hair was yellow like ripe corn and there were
masses of it banked and clustered about her head; her eyes were blue,
and her voice, soft and alluring, was like a friendly arm put around the
heart.
The miserable woman was so confused by this transformation--by the
sudden swing of the door in the wall that had admitted her into this
new, unfamiliar world--that she was never afterward able to remember
precisely by what introductory words her story was drawn out. She found
herself taken up, comforted and made to tell it.
Her husband had been a butler in the service of a Mr. Marsh, an
eccentric man who lived in one of the old downtown houses of the
city. He was a retired banker with no family. The man lived alone. He
permitted no servants in the house except the butler. Meals were sent
in on order from a neighboring hotel and served by the butler as the man
directed. He received few visitors in the house and no tradespeople were
permitted to come in. There seemed no reason for this seclusion except
the eccentricities of the man that had grown more pronounced with
advancing years.
It was the custom of the butler to leave the house at eight o'clock in
the evening and return in the morning at seven. On the morning of
the third of February, when the butler entered the house, as he was
accustomed to do at eight o'clock in the morning, he found his master
dead.
The woman continued with her narrative, speaking slowly. Every detail
was vividly impressed upon her memory and she gave it accurately,
precisely.
There was a narrow passage or hall, not more than three feet in width,
leading from the butler's pantry into a little dining-room. This
dining-room the old man had fitted up as a sort of library. It was
farther than any other room from the noises of the city. His library
table was placed with one end against the left wall of the room and he
sat with his back toward the passage into the butler's pantry. On the
morning of the third of February he was found dead in his chair. He had
been stabbed in the back, on the left side, where the neck joins to
the shoulder. A carving-knife had been used and a single blow had
accomplished the murder.
It was known that on the evening before the old banker had taken from a
safety-deposit vault the sum of $20,000, which it was his intention
to invest in some securities. This money, in bills of very large
denominations, was in the top drawer on the right side of the desk. The
dead man had apparently not been touched after the crime, but the drawer
had been pried open and the money taken. An ice-pick from the butler's
pantry had been used to force it. The assassin had left no marks,
finger-prints or tell-tale stains. The victim had been instantly killed
with the blow of the knife which lay on the floor beside him.
The butler had been arrested, charged with the crime, and his trial was
now going on in the Criminal Court. Circumstantial evidence was strong
against him. The woman spoke as though she echoed the current comment of
the courtroom without realizing how it affected her. She had done what
she could. She had employed an attorney at the recommendation of a
person who had come to interview her. She did not know who the person
was nor why she should have employed this attorney at his suggestion,
except that some one must be had to defend her husband, and uncertain
what to do, she had gone to the first name suggested.
The girl listened, putting now and then a query. She spoke slowly,
careful to use only English words. And while the woman talked she made
a little drawing on the blank back of a menu card. Now she began to
question the woman minutely about the details of the room and the
position of the furniture where the tragedy had occurred, the desk,
the attitude of the dead man, the location of the wound, and exact
distances. And as the woman repeated the evidence of the police officers
and the experts, the girl filled out her drawing with nice mathematical
exactness like one accustomed to such a labor.
This was the whole story, and now the woman added the final interview
with the attorney. She made a sort of hopeless gesture.
“Nobody believes us,” she said. “My husband did not kill him. He was at
home with me. He knew nothing about it until he found his master dead
at the table in the morning. But there is only our word against all the
lawyers and detectives and experts that Mr. Thompson has brought against
us.”
“Who is Mr. Thompson?” said the girl. She was deep in a study of her
little drawing.
“He's Mr. Marsh's nephew, Mr. Percy Thompson.”
The girl, absorbed in the study of her drawing, now put an unexpected
question.
“Has your husband lost an arm?”
“No,” she said, “he never had any sort of accident.”
A great light came into the girl's face. “Then I believe you,” she said.
“I believe every word.... I think your husband is innocent.”
The girl was aglow with an enthusiastic purpose. It was all there in her
fine, expressive face.
“Now,” she said, “tell me about this nephew, this Mr. Percy Thompson.
Could we by any chance see him?”
“It won't do any good to see him,” replied the woman. “He is determined
to convict my husband. Nothing can change him.”
The girl went on without paying any attention to the comment. “Where
does he live--you must have heard?”
“He lives at the Markheim Hotel,” she said.
“The Markheim Hotel,” repeated the girl. “Where is it?”
The woman gave the street and number. The girl rose. “That's on my way;
we'll stop.”
The two-went out of the cafe to the motor. The whole thing, incredible
at any other hour, seemed to the woman like events happening in a dream
or in some topsy-turvy country which she had mysteriously entered.
She sat back in the tonneau of the motor, huddled into the corner, a rug
around her shoulders. The flashing lights seemed those of some distant,
unknown city, as though she were transported into the scene of an
Arabian tale.
The motor stopped before a little shabby hotel in a neighboring
cross-street, and the footman, in livery beside the driver, got down at
a direction of the girl and went up the steps. In a few moments a man
came out and descended to the motor standing by the curb. He was
about middle age. He looked as though Nature had intended him, in the
beginning, for a person of some distinction, but he had the dissipated
face of one at middle age who had devoted his years to a life of
pleasure. There were hard lines about his mouth and a purple network of
veins showing about the base of his nose.
As he approached the girl, leaning out of the open window of the
tonneau, dropped her glove as by inadvertence. The man stooped,
recovered it and returned it to her. The girl started with a perceptible
gesture. Then she cried out in her charming voice,
“Merci, monsieur. I stopped a moment to thank you for the flowers you
sent me last night. It was lovely of you!” and she indicated the bunch
of roses pinned to her corsage.
The man seemed astonished. For a moment he hesitated as though about
to make some explanation, but the girl went on without regarding his
visible embarrassment.
“You shall not escape with a denial,” she said. “There was no card and
you did not do me the honor to wait at the door, but I know you sent
them--an usher saw you; you shall not escape my appreciation. You did
send them?” she said.
The man laughed. “Sure,” he said, “if you insist.” He was willing to
profit by this unexpected error, and the girl went on:
“I have worn the roses to-day,” she said, “for you. Will you wear one of
them to-morrow for me?”
She detached a bud and leaned out of the door of the motor. She pinned
the bud to the lapel of the man's coat. She did it slowly, deliberately,
like one who makes the touch of the fingers do the service of a caress.
Then she spoke to the driver and the motor went on, leaving the amazed
man on the curb before the shabby Markheim Hotel with the rosebud pinned
to his coat--astonished at the incredible fortune of this favor from an
inaccessible idol about whom the city raved.
The woman accepted the enigma of this interview as she had accepted the
wonder of the girl's sudden appearance and the other, incidents of this
extraordinary night. She did not undertake to imagine what the drawing
on the menu meant, the words about the one-armed man, the glove dropped
for Thompson to pick up, the rose pinned on his coat; it was all of a
piece with the mystery that she had stumbled into.
When the motor stopped and she was taken through a little door by an
attendant into a theater box, she accepted that as another of these
things into which she could not inquire; things that happened to her
outside of her volition and directed by authorities which she could not
control.
The staging of the opera refined and extended the illusion that she had
been transported out of the world by some occult agency. The wonderful
creature that had taken her up out of her abandoned misery before the
sordid shop-shutter appeared now in a fairy costume glittering with
jewels. And the gnomes, the monsters and goblins appearing about her
were all fabulous creatures, as the girl herself seemed a fabulous
creature.
She sighed like one who must awaken from the splendor of a dream to
realities of which the sleeper is vaguely conscious. Only the girl's
voice seemed real. It seemed some great, heavenly reality like the
sunlight or the sweep of the sea. It filled the packed places of the
theater. She sang and one believed again in the benevolence of heaven;
in immortal love. To the distressed woman effacing herself in the corner
of the empty box it was all a sort of inconceivable witch-work.
And it was witch-work, as potent if not as amply fitted with dramatic
properties as the witchwork of ancient legend.
The daughter of an obscure juge d'instruction of the Canton of Vaud,
singing in a Swiss meadow, had been taken up by a wealthy American,
traveling in Switzerland on an April morning-old, enervated with the sun
of the Riviera, and displeased with life. And this rich old woman, her
rheumatic fingers loaded with jewels, had transformed the daughter of
the juge d'instruction of the Canton of Vaud into a singing wonder that
made every human creature see again the dreams of his youth before him
leading into the Elysian Fields.
And to the girl herself this transformation also seemed the wonder
of witch-work. Her early life lay so far below in a world remote and
detached; a little house in a village of the Canton of Vaud with
the genteel poverty that attended the slender salary of a juge
d'instruction, and the weight of duties that accumulated on her
shoulders. Her father's life was given over to the labors of criminal
investigation, but it was a field that returned nothing in the way of
material gain. Honorable mention, a medal, the distinction of having his
reports copied into the official archives, were the fruits of the man's
life. She remembered the minutely exhaustive details of those reports
which she used to copy painfully at night by the light of a candle.
The old man, absorbed by his deductions, with his trained habits of
observation and his prodigious memory, never seemed to realize the
drudgery imposed upon the girl by his endless dictation.
“To-morrow,” the heavenly creature had said softly, like a caress, in
the woman's ear when an attendant had taken her through the little
door into the empty box. But the to-morrow broke with every illusion
vanished.
The woman sat beside her husband in the dismal court-room when the court
convened. The judge, old and tired, was on the bench. A sulphurous,
depressing fog entered from the city. The court-room smelled of a
cleaner's mop. The jury entered; and a few spectators, who looked as
though they might have spent the night on the benches of the park out,
side, drifted in. The attorneys and the officials of the court were
present and the trial resumed.
Every detail of the departed, evening was, to the woman, a mirage except
the brutal threat of the attorney, uttered before she had gone down into
the street. This threat, with that power of reality which evil things
seem always to possess, now materialized. After the court had opened,
but before the trial could proceed, the attorney for the defendant rose
and addressed the court.
He spoke for some moments, handling his innuendoes with skill. His
intent was to withdraw from the case. He realized that this was an
unusual procedure and that the course must be justified upon a high
ethical plane. He was a person of acumen and of no inconsiderable skill
and he succeeded. Without making any direct charge, and disclaiming any
intent to prejudice the prisoner and his defense, or to deprive him of
any safeguard of the law, he was able to convey the impression that
he had been misled in undertaking the defense of the case; that
his confidence in the innocence of the accused had been removed by
unquestionable evidence which he had been led to believe did not exist.
He made this explanation with profound regret. But he felt that, having
been induced to undertake the defense by representations not justified
in fact, and by an impression of the nature of the case which
developments in the court-room had not confirmed, he had the right to
step aside out of an equivocal position. He wished to do this without
injury to the prisoner and while there was yet an opportunity for him to
obtain other counsel. The whole tenor of the speech was the right to be
relieved from the obligation of an error; an error that had involved him
unwittingly by reason of assurances which the developments of the case
had now set aside. And through it all there was the manifest wish to do
the prisoner no vestige of injury.
After this speech of his attorney the conviction of the man was
inevitable. He sat stooped over, his back bent, his head down, his
thin hands aimlessly in his lap like one who has come to the end of
all things; like one who no longer makes any effort against a destiny
determined on his ruin.
The thing had the overpowering vitality which evil things seem always
to possess, and the woman felt helpless against it; so utterly, so
completely helpless that it was useless to protest by any word or
gesture. She could have gotten up and explained the true motive behind
this man's speech; she could have repeated the dialogue in his office;
she could have asserted his unspeakable treachery; but she saw with an
unerring instinct that against the skill of the man her effort would be
wholly useless. With his resources and his dominating cunning he would
not only make her words appear obviously false, but he would make them
fasten upon her a malicious intent to injure the man who had undertaken
her husband's defense; and somehow he would be able, she felt, to divert
the obliquity and cause it to react upon herself.
This was all clear to her, and like some little trapped creature of
the wood that finds escape closed on every side and no longer makes any
effort, she remained motionless.
The judge was an honorable man, concerned to accomplish justice and not
always misled by an obvious intent. The proceeding did not please him,
but he knew that no benefit, rather a continued injury, would result to
the prisoner by forcing the attorney to go on with a case which it
was evident that he no longer cared to make any effort to support. He
permitted the man to withdraw. Then he spoke to the prisoner.
“Have you any other counsel?” he asked.
The prisoner did not look up. He replied in a low, almost inaudible
voice.
“No, Your Honor,” he said.
“Then I shall appoint some one to go on with the case,” and he looked up
over the docket before him and out at the few attorneys sitting within
the rail.
It was at this moment that the woman, crying silently, without a sound
and without moving in her chair, heard behind her the voice which she
had heard the evening before, when, as now, at the bottom of the pit,
she stood before the shutter of the shop-window.
“Will it be necessary, monsieur le judge?”
It was the same wonderful, moving, heavenly voice. Every sound in the
court-room suddenly ceased. All eyes were lifted. And Thompson, sitting
beside the district-attorney, saw, standing before the rail in the
court-room, the splendid, alluring creature that had called him out
of the sordid lobby of the Hotel Markheim and entranced him with an
evidence of her favor. Unconsciously he put up his hand to feel for
the bud in the lapel of his coat. It had remained there--not, as it
happened, from her wish, but because he dare not lay the coat aside.
In the interval of intense interest arising at the withdrawal of the
attorney from the case the girl had come in unnoticed. She might have
appeared out of the floor. Her voice was the first indication of her
presence.
The judge turned swiftly. “What do you mean?” he said.
“I mean, monsieur,” she answered, “that if a man is innocent of a crime,
he cannot require a lawyer to defend him.”
The judge was astonished, but he was an old man and had seen many
strange events happen along the way of a criminal trial.
“But why do you say this man is innocent,” he said.
“I will show you, monsieur,” and she came around the railing into the
pit of the court before his bench. She carried in her hand the menu
upon which, at the table in the cafe the night before, she had made a
drawing of the scene of the homicide.
The extraordinary event had happened so swiftly that the attorney for
the prosecution had not been able to interpose an objection. Now the
nephew of the dead man spoke hurriedly, in whispers, and the attorney
arose.
“I object to this irregular proceeding,” he said. “If this person is a
witness, let her be sworn in the usual manner and let her take her place
in the witness-chair where she may be examined by the attorney whom the
court may see fit to appoint for the defense.”
It was evident that Mr. Thompson, urging the prosecutor, was alarmed.
The folds of his obese neck lying above the collar of his coat took on
a deeper color, and his mouth visibly sagged as with some unexpected
emotion. He felt that he was becoming entangled in some vast, invisible
net spread about him by this girl who had appeared as if by magic before
the Hotel Markheim.
The judge looked down at the attorney. “I will have the witness sworn,”
he said, “but I shall not at present appoint anybody to conduct an
examination. When a prisoner before me has no counsel, I sometimes look
after his case myself.”
He spoke to the girl. “Will you hold up your hand?” he said.
“Why, yes, monsieur,” she said, “if you will also ask Mr. Thompson to
hold up his hand.”
“Do you wish him sworn as a witness?” said the judge.
The girl hesitated. “Yes, monsieur,” she said, “if that is the way to
have him hold up his hand.”
Again Thompson was disturbed. Again he spoke to the prosecutor and again
that attorney objected.
“We have not asked to have Mr. Thompson testify in this case,” he said.
“It is true Mr. Thompson is concerned about the result of this trial. He
is the nephew of the decedent and his heir. It is only natural that he
should properly concern himself to see that the assassin is brought to
justice.”
He spoke to the girl. “Do you wish to make Mr. Thompson your witness?”
he said.
And again she replied with the hesitating formula:
“Why, yes, monsieur, if that is the way to cause him to hold up his
hand.”
The judge turned to the clerk. “Will you administer the oath to these
two persons?” he said.
Thompson rose. His face was disconcerted and slack. He hesitated, but
the prosecutor spoke to him. Then he faced the judge and put up his
hand. Immediately the girl cried out:
“Look, monsieur,” she said. “It is his left hand he is holding up!”
Immediately Thompson raised the other hand. “I beg your pardon, Your
Honor,” he muttered. “I am left-handed; I sometimes make that mistake.”
And again the girl cried out: “You see... you notice it... it is true,
then... he is left-handed.”
“I see he is left-handed,” said the judge, “but what has that to do with
the case?”
“Oh, monsieur,” she said, “it has everything to do with it. I will show
you.”
She moved up on the step before the judge's bench and laid the menu
before him. The attorney for the prosecution also arose. He wished to
prevent this proceeding, to object to it, but he feared to disturb the
judge and he remained silent.
“Monsieur,” she said, “I have made a little drawing... I know how such
things are done.... My father was juge d'instruction of the Canton
of Vaud. He always made little drawings of places where crimes were
committed.... Here you will see,” and she put her finger on the
card, “the narrow passage leading from the butler's pantry into the
dining-room used for a library. You will notice, monsieur, that the
writing-table stood with one end against the wall, the left wall of the
room, as one enters from the butler's pantry. It is a queer table. One
side of it has a row of drawers coming to the floor and the other side
is open so one may sit with one's knees under it. On the night of the
tragedy this table was sitting at right angles to the left wall, that
is to say, monsieur, with this end open for the writer's knees close up
against the left wall of the room. That meant, monsieur, that on this
night Mr. Marsh was sitting at the table with his back to the passage
from the butler's pantry, close up against the left wall of the room.
“Therefore, monsieur,” the girl went on, “the man who assassinated Mr.
Marsh entered from the butler's pantry. He slipped into the room along
the left wall close up behind his victim.... Did it not occur so.”
This was the evidence of the police officials and the experts. It was
clear from the position of the desk in the room and from the details of
the evidence.
“And, monsieur,” she said, “will you tell me, is it true that the stab
wound which killed Mr. Marsh was in the shoulder on the side next to the
wall?”
“Yes,” said the judge, “that is true.”
The prosecutor, urged by Thompson, now made a verbal objection. The
case was practically completed. The incident going on in the court-room
followed no definite legal procedure and could not be permitted to
proceed. The judge stopped him.
“Sit down,” he said. He did not offer any explanation or comment. He
merely silenced the man and returned to the girl standing eagerly on the
step before the bench.
“The wound was in the base of the man's neck at the top of the left
shoulder on the side next to the wall,” he said. “But what has this fact
to do with the case?”
“Oh, monsieur,” she cried, “it has everything to do with it. If the
assassin who slipped along the wall had carried the knife in his right
hand, the wound would have been on the right side of the dead man's
neck. But if, monsieur, the assassin carried the knife in his left hand,
then the wound would be where it is, on the left side. That made me
believe, at first, that the assassin had only one arm--had lost
his right arm--and must use the other; then, a little later, I
understood.... Oh, monsieur, don't you understand; don't you see that
the assassin who stabbed Mr. Marsh was left-handed?”
In a moment it was all clear to everybody. Only a left-handed man could
have committed the crime, for only a left-handed man standing close
against the left side of a room above one sitting at a desk against
that wall could have struck straight down into the left shoulder of the
murdered man. A right-handed assassin would have struck straight down
into the right shoulder, he would not have risked a doubtful blow,
delivered awkwardly across his body, into the left shoulder of his
victim.
The girl indicated Thompson with her hand. “He did it; he's left-handed.
I found out by dropping my glove.”
Panic enveloped the cornered man. He began to shake as with an ague.
Sweat like a thin oil spread over his debauched face and the folds of
his obese neck. With his fatal left hand he began to finger the lapel
of his coat where the faded rosebud hung pinned into the buttonhole. And
the girl's voice broke the profound silence of the court-room.
“He has the money, too,” she said. “I felt a bulky packet when I gave
him the flower out of my bouquet last night.”
The big, thin-haired lawyer, leaving the courtroom after his withdrawal
from the case, stopped at a window arrested by the amazing scene: The
police taking the stolen money out of Thompson's pocket; the woman in
the girl's arms, and the transfigured prisoner standing up as in the
presence of a heavenly angel. This before him... and the splendid motor
below under the sweep of the window, waiting before the courthouse door,
brought back the memory of his biting, sarcastic words:
“... or Cinderella in a pumpkin coach!”
And there occurred to him a doubt of the exclusive dominance of life by
the gods he served.