THE UNSUMMONED WITNESS
In the room Jessica had left, the turmoil was simmering down; here and
there a match was struck and showed a circle of brightness. The glimmer
of one of them lit the countenance of a man who had brushed her sleeve
as he entered. It was Hallelujah Jones. The evangelist had prolonged his
stay at Smoky Mountain, for the town, thrilling to its drama of crime
and judgment, had seemed a fruitful vineyard. He had no local interest
in the trial of Hugh Stires, and had not attended its session; but he
had been passing the place when the lights went out and in curiosity had
crowded into the confusion, where now he looked about him with eager
interest.
A candle-flame fluttered now, like a golden butterfly, on the judge's
desk, another on the table inside the bar. More grew along the walls
until the room was bathed in tremulous yellow light. It touched the
profile of the prisoner, turned now, for his look had followed Jessica
and was fixed questioningly on her empty seat. In the unseeing darkness
Harry had held the white carnation to his lips before he drew its stem
through his lapel.
The street preacher's jaw dropped in blank astonishment, for what he saw
before him brought irresistibly back another scene that, months before,
had bit into his mind. The judge's high desk turned instantly to a
chapel altar, and the table back of the polished railing to a communion
table. The minister that had looked across it in the candle-light had
worn a white carnation in his buttonhole. His face--
Hallelujah Jones started forward with an exclamation. A thousand times
his zealot imagination had pictured the recreant clergyman he had
unmasked as an outcast, plunging toward the lake of brimstone. Here it
was at last in his hand, the end of the story! The worst of criminals,
skulking beneath an alias! He sprang up the aisle.
"Wait! wait!" he cried. "I have evidence to give!" He pointed excitedly
toward Harry. "This man is not what you think! He is not--"
Forensic thunder loosed itself from the wrathful judge's desk, and
crashed across the stupefied room. His gavel thumped upon the wood. "How
dare you," he vociferated, "break in upon the deliberations of this
court! I fine you twenty dollars for contempt!"
Felder had leaped to his feet, every sense on the _qui vive_. Like a
drowning man he grasped at the straw. What could this man know? He took
a bill from his pocket and clapped it down on the clerk's desk.
"I beg to purge him of contempt," he said, "and call him as a witness."
The district attorney broke in:
"Your Honor, I think I am within my rights in protesting against this
unheard-of proceeding. The man is a vagrant of unknown character. His
very action proclaims him mentally unbalanced. Beyond all question he
can know nothing of this case."
"I have not my learned opponent's gift of clairvoyance," retorted Felder
tartly. "I repeat that I call this man as a witness."
The judge pulled his whiskers and looked at the evangelist in severe
annoyance. "Take the stand," he said gruffly.
Hallelujah Jones snatched the Bible from the clerk's hands and kissed
it. Knowledge was burning his tongue. The jury were leaning forward in
their seats.
"Have you ever seen the prisoner before?" asked Felder.
"Yes."
"When?"
"When he was a minister of the gospel."
Felder stared. The judge frowned. The jury looked at one another and a
laugh ran round the hushed room.
The merriment kindled the evangelist's distempered passion. Sudden anger
flamed in him. He leaned forward and shook his hand vehemently at the
table where Harry sat, his face as colorless as the flower he wore.
"That man's name," he blazed, "is not Hugh Stires! It is a cloak he has
chosen to cover his shame! He is the Reverend Henry Sanderson of
Aniston!"