FELDER WALKS WITH DOCTOR BRENT
Felder had been among the last to leave the court-room. He was
discomfited and angry. He had meant to make a telling point for the
defense, and the unbalanced imagination of a strolling, bigot gospeller
had undone him. His own precipitate and ill-considered action had
uncovered an idiotic mare's-nest, to taint his appeal with bathos and
open his cause with a farcical anti-climax. He glumly gathered his
scattered papers, put with them the leaf of the newspaper from which the
district attorney had read, and despatched the lot to his office by a
messenger.
At the door of the court-house Doctor Brent slipped an arm through his.
"Too bad, Tom," he said sympathizingly. "I don't think you quite
deserved it."
Felder paced a moment without speaking. "I need evidence," he said then,
"--anything that may help. I made a mistake. You heard all the
testimony?"
The other nodded.
"What did you think of it?"
"What could any one think? I give all credit to your motive, Tom, but
it's a pity you're mixed up in it."
"Why?"
"Because, if there's anything in human evidence, he's a thoroughly
worthless reprobate. He lay for Moreau and murdered him in cold blood,
and he ought to swing."
"The casual view," said the lawyer gloomily. "Just what I should have
said myself--if this had happened a month ago."
His friend looked at him with an amused expression. "I begin to think he
must be a remarkable man!" he said. "Is it possible he has really
convinced you that he isn't guilty?"
Felder turned upon the doctor squarely. "Yes," he returned bluntly. "He
has. Whatever I may have believed when I took this case, I have come to
the conclusion--against all my professional instincts, mind you--that he
never killed Moreau. I believe he's as innocent as either you or I!"
The physician looked puzzled. "You believe Moreau's hand didn't write
that accusation?"
"I don't know."
"Do you think he lied?"
"I don't know what to think. But I am convinced Hugh Stires isn't
lying. There's a mystery in the thing that I can't get hold of." He
caught the physician's half-smile. "Oh, I know what you think," he said
resentfully. "You think it is Miss Holme. I assure you I am defending
Hugh Stires for his own sake!"
"She played you a close second to-day," observed the doctor shrewdly.
"That carnation--I never saw a thing better done."
Felder drew his arm away. "Miss Holme," he said almost stiffly, "is as
far from acting--"
"My dear fellow!" exclaimed the other. "Don't snap me up. She's a
gentlewoman, and everything that is lovely. If she were the reason, I
should honor you for it. I'm very deeply sorry for her. For my part, I'm
sure I wish you might get him off. She loves him, and doesn't care who
sees it, and if he were as bad as the worst, a woman like that could
make a man of him. But I know juries. In towns like this they take
themselves pathetically in earnest. On the evidence so far, they'll
convict fast enough."
"I know it," said the lawyer despondently. "And yet he's innocent. I'd
stake my life on it. It's worthless as evidence and I shan't introduce
it, but he has as good as admitted to her that he knows who did it."
"Come, come! Putting his neck into the noose for mere Quixotic feeling?
And who, pray, in this Godforsaken town, should he be sacrificing
himself for?" the doctor asked satirically.
"That's the rub," said the lawyer. "Nobody. Yet I hang by my
proposition."
"Well, he'll hang by something less tenuous, I'm afraid. But it won't be
your fault. The crazy evangelist was only an incident. He merely served
to jolt us back to the normal. By the way, did you hear him splutter
after he got out?"
"No."
"You remember the story he told the other night of the minister who was
caught gambling on his own communion table? Well, Hugh Stires is not
only the Reverend Henry Something-or-other, but he is that man, too! The
crack-brained old idiot would have told the tale all over again, only
the crowd hustled him.
"There he is now," he said suddenly, as a light sprang up and voices
broke out on the opposite corner. "The gang is standing by. I see your
friend Barney McGinn," he added, with a grim enjoyment. "I doubt if
there are many converts to-night."
Even as he spoke, there came a shout of laughter and warning. The
spectators scattered in all directions, and a stream of water from a
well-directed hose deluged the itinerant and his music-box.
Ten minutes later the street preacher, drenched and furious, was
trundling his melodeon toward Funeral Hollow, on his way to the coast.