‘We could get a conviction for piracy, of course. But since ’37,
piracy has ceased to be a hanging offence unless it is accompanied by
murder.’
‘And is the killing of one small boy insufficient to count as murder?’
asked Thornton in the same cold voice.
Mathias looked at him curiously.
‘We can guess at the probabilities of what happened,’ he said. ‘The boy
was undoubtedly taken onto the schooner; and now he can’t be found.
But, strictly speaking, we have no proof that he is dead.’
‘He may, of course, have swum across the Gulf of Mexico and landed at
New Orleans.’
Thornton’s cigar, as he finished speaking, snapped in two.
‘I know this is ...’ began Mathias with professional gentleness, then
had the sense to check himself. ‘I am afraid there is no doubt that we
can personally entertain that the lad is dead: but there is a legal
doubt: and where there is a legal doubt a jury might well refuse to
convict.’
‘Unless they were carried away by an attack of common sense.’
Mathias paused for a moment before asking:
‘And the other children have dropped, as yet, no hint as to what
precisely did happen to him?’
‘None.’
‘Their mother has questioned them?’
‘Exhaustively.’
‘Yet they must surely know.’
‘It is a great pity,’ said Thornton, deliberately, ‘that when the
pirates decided to kill the child, they did not invite in his sisters
to watch.’
Mathias was ready to make allowances. He merely shifted his position
and cleared his voice.
‘Unless we can get definite evidence of murder, either of your boy
or the Dutch captain, I am afraid there is a very real danger of
these men escaping with their lives: though they would of course be
transported.--It’s all highly unsatisfactory, Thornton,’ he went on
confidentially. ‘We do not, as lawyers, like aiming at a conviction for
piracy alone. It is too vague. The most eminent jurists have not even
yet decided on a satisfactory definition of piracy. I doubt, now, if
they ever will. One school holds that it is any felony committed on the
High Seas. But that does little except render a separate term otiose.
Moreover, it is not accepted by other schools of thought.’
‘To the layman, at least, it would seem to be a queer sort of piracy to
commit suicide in one’s cabin, or perform an illegal operation on the
captain’s daughter!’
‘Well, you see the difficulties. Consequently we always prefer to make
use of it simply as a make-weight with another more serious charge.
Captain Kidd, for instance, was not, strictly speaking, hanged for
piracy. The first count in his indictment, on which he was condemned,
sets forth that he feloniously, intentionally, and with malice
aforethought hit his own gunner on the head with a wooden bucket value
eightpence. That is something definite. What _we_ need is something
definite. We have not got it. Take the second case, the piracy of the
Dutch steamer. We are in the same difficulty there: a man is taken on
board the schooner, he disappears. What happened? We can only surmise.’
‘Isn’t there such a thing as turning King’s Evidence?’
‘Another most unsatisfactory proceeding, to which I should be loath to
have recourse. No, the natural and proper witnesses are the children.
There is a kind of beauty in making them, who have suffered so much at
these men’s hands, the instruments of justice upon them.’
Mathias paused, and looked at Thornton narrowly.
‘You haven’t been able, in all these weeks, to get the smallest hint
from them with regard to the death of Captain Vandervoort either?’
‘None.’
‘Well, is it your impression that they do truly know nothing, or that
they have been terrorised into hiding something?’
Thornton gave a gentle sigh, almost of relief.
‘No,’ he said, ‘I don’t think they have been terrorised. But I do think
they may know something they won’t tell.’
‘But why?’
‘Because, during the time they were on the schooner, it is plain they
got very fond of this man Jonsen, and of his lieutenant, the man called
Otto.’
Mathias was incredulous.
‘Is it possible for children to be mistaken in a man’s whole nature
like that?’
The look of irony on Thornton’s face attained an intensity that was
almost diabolical.
‘I think it is possible,’ he said, ‘even for children to make such a
mistake.’
‘But this ... affection: it is highly improbable.’
‘It is a fact.’
Mathias shrugged. After all, a criminal lawyer is not concerned with
facts. He is concerned with probabilities. It is the novelist who is
concerned with facts, whose job it is to say what a particular man did
do on a particular occasion: the lawyer does not, cannot be expected to
go further than to show what the ordinary man would be most likely to
do under presumed circumstances.
Mathias, as he conned these paradoxes, smiled to himself a little
grimly. It would never do to give utterance to them.
‘I think if they know anything I shall be able to find it out,’ was all
he said.
‘D’you mean to put them in the box?’ Thornton asked suddenly.
‘Not all of them, certainly: Heaven forbid! But we shall have to
produce one of them at least, I am afraid.’
‘Which?’
‘Well. We had intended it to be the Fernandez girl. But she seems ...
unsatisfactory?’
‘Exactly.’ Then Thornton added, with a characteristic forward jerk:
‘She was sane enough when she left Jamaica.--Though always a bit of a
fool.’
‘Her aunt tells me that she seems to have lost her memory: or a
great part of it. No, if I call her it will simply be to exhibit her
condition.’
‘Then?’
‘I think I shall call your Emily.’
Thornton stood up.
‘Well,’ he said, ‘you’ll have to settle with her yourself what she’s to
say. Write it out, and make her learn it by heart.’
‘Certainly,’ said Mathias, looking at his finger-nails. ‘I am not in
the habit of going into court unprepared.--It’s bad enough having a
child in the box anyway,’ he went on.
Thornton paused at the door.
‘--You can never count on them. They say what they think you want them
to say. And then they say what they think the opposing counsel wants
them to say too--if they like his face.’
Thornton gesticulated--a foreign habit.
‘I think I will take her to Madame Tussaud’s on Thursday afternoon and
try my luck,’ ended Mathias: and the two bade each other good-bye.
vi
Emily enjoyed the wax-works; even though she did not know that a
wax-work of Captain Jonsen, his scowling face bloody and a knife in
his hand, was already in contemplation. She got on well with Mr.
Mathias. She felt very grown-up, going out at last without the little
ones endlessly tagging. Afterwards he took her to a bun-shop in Baker
Street, and tried to persuade her to pour out his tea for him: but she
turned shy at that, and he had in the end to do it for himself.
Mr. Mathias, like Miss Dawson, spent a good deal of his time and energy
in courting the child’s liking. He was at least sufficiently successful
for it to come as a complete surprise to her when presently he began
to throw out questions about the death of Captain Vandervoort. Their
studied casualness did not deceive her for a moment. He learnt nothing:
but she was hardly home, and his carriage departed, than she was
violently sick. Presumably she had eaten too many cream buns. But, as
she lay in bed sipping from a tumbler of water in that mood of fatalism
which follows on the heels of vomiting, Emily had a lot to think over,
as well as an opportunity of doing so without emotion.
Her father was spending a rare evening at home: and now he stood unseen
in the shadows of her bedroom, watching her. To his fantastic mind, the
little chit seemed the stage of a great tragedy: and while his bowels
of compassion yearned towards the child of his loins, his intellect was
delighted at the beautiful, the subtle combination of the contending
forces which he read into the situation. He was like a powerless
stalled audience, which pities unbearably, but would not on any account
have missed the play.
But as he stood now watching her, his sensitive eyes communicated to
him an emotion which was not pity and was not delight: he realised,
with a sudden painful shock, that he was afraid of her!
But surely it was some trick of the candle-light, or of her
indisposition, that gave her face momentarily that inhuman, stony,
basilisk look?
Just as he was tiptoeing from the room, she burst out into a sudden,
despairing moan, and leaning half out of her bed began again an
ineffectual, painful retching. Thornton persuaded her to drink off her
tumbler of water, and then held her hot moist temples between his hands
till at last she sank back, exhausted, in a complete passivity, and
slipped off to sleep.
* * * * *
There were several occasions after this when Mr. Mathias took her out
on excursions, or simply came and examined her at the house. But still
he learnt nothing.
What was in her mind now? I can no longer read Emily’s deeper thoughts,
or handle their cords. Henceforth we must be content to surmise.
As for Mathias, there was nothing for it but to accept defeat at her
hands, and then explain it away to himself. He ceased to believe that
she had anything to hide, because, if she had, he was convinced she
could not have hidden it.
But if she could not give him any information, she remained,
spectacularly speaking, a most valuable witness. So, as Thornton had
suggested, he set his clerk to copy out in his beautiful hand a sort
of Shorter Catechism: and this he gave to Emily and told her to learn
it.
She took it home and showed it to her mother, who said Mr. Mathias
was quite right, she was to learn it. So Emily pinned it to her
looking-glass, and learnt the answers to two new questions every
morning. Her mother heard her these with her other lessons,
and badgered her a lot for the sing-song way she repeated them. But how
can one speak naturally anything learnt by heart, Emily wondered? It
is impossible. And Emily knew this catechism backwards and forwards,
inside and out, before the day came.
* * * * *
Once more they drove into town: but this time it was to the Central
Criminal Court. The crowd outside was enormous, and Emily was bundled
in with the greatest rapidity. The building was impressive, and full of
policemen, and the longer she had to wait in the little room where they
were shown, the more nervous she became. Would she remember her piece,
or would she forget it? From time to time echoing voices sounded down
the corridors, summoning this person or that. Her mother stayed with
her, but her father only looked in occasionally, when he would give
some news to her mother in a low tone. Emily had her catechism with
her, and read it over and over.
Finally a policeman came, and conducted them into the court.
A criminal court is a very curious place. The seat of a ritual quite as
elaborate as any religious one, it lacks in itself any impressiveness
or symbolism of architecture. A robed judge in court looks like a
catholic bishop would if he were to celebrate mass in some municipal
bath-house. There is nothing to make one aware that here the Real
Presence is: the presence of death.
As Emily came into court, past the many men in black gowns writing with
their quill pens, she did not at first see judge, jury, or prisoners.
Her eye was caught by the face of the Clerk, where he sat below the
Bench. It was an old and very beautiful face, cultured, unearthly
refined. His head laid back, his mouth slightly open, his eyes closed,
he was gently sleeping.
That face remained etched on her mind as she was shown her way into the
box. The Oath, which formed the opening passages of her catechism, was
administered; and with its familiar phrases her nervousness vanished,
and with complete confidence she sang out her responses to the familiar
questions which Mr. Mathias, in fancy dress, was putting to her. But
until he had finished she kept her eyes fixed on the rail in front of
her, for fear something should confuse her. At last, however, Mr.
Mathias sat down; and Emily began to look around her. High above the
sleeping man sat another, with a face even more refined, but wide
awake. His voice, when now he spoke a few words to her, was the kindest
she had ever heard. Dressed in his strange disguise, toying with a
pretty nosegay, he looked like some benign old wizard who spent his
magic in doing good.
Beneath her was the table where so many other wigged men were sitting.
One was drawing funny faces: but his own was grave. Two more were
whispering together.
Now another man was on his feet. He was shorter than Mr. Mathias, and
older, and in no way good-looking or even interesting. He in turn began
to ask her questions.
He, Watkin, the defending counsel, was no fool. He had not failed to
notice that, among all the questions Mathias had put to her, there had
been no reference to the death of Captain Vandervoort. That must mean
that either the child knew nothing of it--itself a valuable lacuna in
the evidence to establish, or that what she did know was somehow in
his clients’ favour. Up till now he had meant to pursue the obvious
tactics--question her on the evidence she had already given, perhaps
frighten her, at any rate confuse her and make her contradict herself.
But any one, even a jury, could see through that. Nor was there any
hope, under any circumstances, of a total acquittal: the most he could
hope for was escape from the murder charge.
He suddenly decided to change his whole policy. When he spoke, his
voice too was kind (though it lacked perforce the full benign timbre of
the judge’s). He made no attempt to confuse her. By his sympathy with
her, he hoped for the sympathy, himself, of the court.
His first few questions were of a general nature: and he continued them
until her answers were given with complete confidence.
‘Now, my dear young lady,’ he said at last. ‘There is just one more
question I want to ask you: and please answer it loudly and clearly, so
that we can all hear. We have been told about the Dutch Steamer, which
had the animals on board. Now a very horrible thing has been suggested.
It has been said that a man was taken off the steamer, the captain of
it in fact, onto the schooner, and that he was murdered there. Now what
I want to ask you is this. Did you see any such thing happen?’
Those who were watching the self-contained Emily saw her turn very
white and begin to tremble. Suddenly she gave a shriek: then after
a second’s pause she began to sob. Every one listened in an icy
stillness, their hearts in their mouths. Through her tears they heard,
they all heard, the words: ‘... He was all lying in his blood ... he
was awful! He ... he died, he said something and then he _died_!’
That was all that was articulate. Watkin sat down, thunderstruck. The
effect on the court could hardly have been greater. As for Mathias, he
did not show surprise: he looked more like a man who has digged a pit
into which his enemy has fallen.
The judge leant forward and tried to question her: but she only sobbed
and screamed. He tried to soothe her: but by now she had become too
hysterical for that. She had already, however, said quite enough for
the matter in hand: and they let her father come forward and lift her
out of the box.
As he stepped down with her she caught sight for the first time of
Jonsen and the crew, huddled up together in a sort of pen. But they
were much thinner than the last time she had seen them. The terrible
look on Jonsen’s face as his eye met hers, what was it that it reminded
her of?
Her father hurried her home. As soon as she was in the cab she became
herself again with a surprising rapidity. She began to talk about all
she had seen, just as if it had been a party: the man asleep, and the
man drawing funny faces, and the man with the bunch of flowers, and had
she said her piece properly?
‘Captain was there,’ she said. ‘Did you see him?’
‘What was it all about?’ she asked presently. ‘Why did I have to learn
all those questions?’
Mr. Thornton made no attempt to answer her questions: he even shrank
back, physically, from touching his child Emily. His mind reeled with
the many possibilities. Was it conceivable she was such an idiot as
really not to know what it was all about? Could she possibly not know
what she had done? He stole a look at her innocent little face, even
the tear-stains now gone. What was he to think?
But as if she read his thoughts, he saw a faint cloud gather.
‘What are they going to do to Captain?’ she asked, a faint hint of
anxiety in her voice.
Still he made no answer. In Emily’s head the Captain’s face, as she had
last seen it ... what was it she was trying to remember?
Suddenly she burst out:
‘Father, _what_ happened to Tabby in the end, that dreadful windy night
in Jamaica?’
vii
Trials are quickly over, once they begin. It was no time before the
judge had condemned these prisoners to death and was trying some one
else with the same concentrated, benevolent, individual attention.
Afterwards, a few of the crew were reprieved and transported.
The night before the execution, Jonsen managed to cut his throat: but
they found out in time to bandage him up. He was unconscious by the
morning, and had to be carried to the gallows in a chair: indeed, he
was finally hanged in it. Otto bent over once and kissed his forehead;
but he was completely insensible.
It was the negro cook, however, according to the account in the
_Times_, who figured most prominently. He showed no fear of death
himself, and tried to comfort the others.
‘We have all come here to die,’ he said. ‘_That_’ (pointing to the
gallows) ‘was not built for nothing. We shall certainly end our lives
in this place: nothing can now save us. But in a few years we should
die in any case. In a few years the judge who condemned us, all men now
living, will be dead. _You_ know that I die innocent: anything I have
done, I was forced to do by the rest of you. But I am not sorry. I
would rather die now, innocent, than in a few years perhaps guilty of
some great sin.’
viii
It was a few days later that term began, and Mr. and Mrs. Thornton took
Emily to her new school at Blackheath. While they remained to tea with
the head mistress, Emily was introduced to her new playmates.
‘Poor little thing,’ said the mistress, ‘I hope she will soon forget
the terrible things she has been through. I think our girls will have
an especially kind corner in their hearts for her.’
In another room, Emily with the other new girls was making friends
with the older pupils. Looking at that gentle, happy throng of clean
innocent faces and soft graceful limbs, listening to the ceaseless,
artless babble of chatter rising, perhaps God could have picked out
from among them which was Emily: but I am sure that I could not.
FINIS
FOOTNOTE:
[1] The tiger-shark of the South Seas is of course a very different
cattle.
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:
Italicized text is surrounded by underscores: _italics_.
Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.
Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized.
Archaic or variant spelling has been retained.
New original cover art included with this eBook is granted to the
public domain.