AN APPEAL TO CAESAR
The evidence of the first day's trial of the case of the People against
Hugh Stires was the all-engrossing topic that night in Smoky Mountain.
In the "Amen Corner" of the Mountain Valley House it held sway. Among
the sedate group there gathered, there seemed but one belief: that the
accused man was guilty--but one feeling: that of regret. Gravity lay so
heavily upon the atmosphere there that when Mrs. Halloran momentarily
entered the discussion to declare fiercely that "if Hugh Stires was a
murderer, then they were all thieves and she a cannibal" she aroused no
smile. Barney McGinn perhaps aptly expressed the consensus of opinion
when he said: "I allow we all know he's guilty, but nobody believes it."
Late as Smoky Mountain sat up that night, however, it was on hand next
morning, rank and file, when the court convened.
All the previous evening, save for a short visit to the cell of his
client, Felder had remained shut in his office, thinking of the morrow.
In his talk with Harry he had not concealed his deep anxiety, but to
his questions there was no new answer, and he had returned from the
interview more nonplussed than ever. He had wondered that Jessica, on
this last night, did not come to his office, but had been rather
relieved than otherwise that she did not. He had gone to bed heavy with
discouragement and had waked in the morning with foreboding.
As he shook hands with the prisoner in the packed court-room, Felder
felt a keen admiration that his sense of painful impotence could not
overlay. He read in the composed face the same prescience that possessed
him, but it held no fear or shadow of turning. He was facing the
scaffold; facing it--if the woman he loved was right in her
conclusions--in obedience to a set idea of self-martyrdom and with
indomitable spirit. It was inconceivable that a sane man would do this
for a sneaking assassin. It was either aberration or a relentless
purpose so extraordinary that it lay far removed from the ordinary
courses of reasoning. Felder's own conviction had no bolstering of fact,
no logical premise; indeed, as he had admitted to Doctor Brent, it was
thoroughly unprofessional. Even to cite the circumstances on which
Jessica based her belief that Hugh knew the real murderer would weaken
his case. The suggestion would seem a mere bungling expedient to inject
the tantalizing fillip of mystery and unbelievable Quixotic motive,
and, lacking evidence to support it, would touch the whole fabric with
the taint of the meretricious. The sense of painful responsibility and
hopelessness oppressed him, for, so far as real evidence went, he had
entered on this second day of the struggle without a tangible theory of
defense.
As he turned from greeting his client, Felder noted with surprise that
Jessica was not in her place. Not that he needed her further testimony,
for he had drawn from her the day before all he intended to utilize, but
her absence disturbed him, and instinctively he turned and looked across
the sea of faces toward the door.
Harry's glance followed his, and a deeper pain beleaguered it as his
eyes returned to the empty chair. He saw Mrs. Halloran whisper eagerly
with the lawyer, who turned away with a puzzled look. In his bitterness
the thought came to him that the testimony had sapped her conviction of
his innocence--that his refusal to answer her entreaties had been the
last straw to the load under which it had gone down--that she believed
him indeed the murderer of Moreau. To seem the cringing criminal, the
pitiful liar and actor in her eyes! The thought stung him. Her faith had
meant so much!
The ominous feeling weighed heavily on Felder when he rose to continue
the testimony for the prisoner, so rudely disturbed the evening before.
In such a community pettifogging was of no avail. Throwing expert dust
in jurors' eyes would be worse than useless. In his opening words he
made no attempt to conceal the weakness of the defense, evidentially
considered. Stripped of all husk, his was to be an appeal to Caesar.
Through a cloud of witnesses, concisely, consistently--yet with a
winning tactfulness that disarmed the objections of the prosecution--he
began to lead them through the series of events that had followed the
arrival of the self-forgotten man. Out of the mouths of their own
neighbors--Devlin, Barney McGinn, Mrs. Halloran, who came down
weeping--they were made to see, as in a cyclorama, the struggle for
rehabilitation against hatred and suspicion, the courage that had dared
for a child's life, the honesty of purpose that showed in
self-surrender. The prisoner, he said, had recovered his memory before
the accusation and asserted his absolute innocence. Those who believed
him guilty of the murder of Doctor Moreau must believe him also a vulgar
liar and _poseur_. He left the inference clear: If the prisoner had
fired that cowardly shot, he knew it now; if he lied now he had lied all
along, and the later life he had lived at Smoky Mountain--eloquent of
fair-dealing, straightforwardness of purpose, kindliness and
courage--had been but hypocrisy, the bootless artifice of a shallow
buffoon.
It was an appeal sustained and moving, addressed to folk who,
untrammelled by a complex and variform convention, felt simply and
deeply the simplest and deepest passions of human kind. Often, as the
morning grew, Felder's glance turned toward the empty chair near-by, and
more than once, though his active thought never wavered from the serious
business in hand, his subconscious mind wondered. Mrs. Halloran had told
him of the note from Jessica--it had said only that she would return at
the earliest possible moment. The wonder in Felder's mind was general
throughout the court-room, for none who had listened to Jessica's
testimony--and the whole town had heard it--could doubt the strength of
her love. The eyes that saw the empty chair were full of pity. Only the
knot of serious faces in the jury-box was seldom turned that way.
The session was prolonged past the noon hour, and when Felder rested his
case it seemed that all that was possible had been said. He had done his
utmost. He had drawn from the people of Smoky Mountain a dramatic story,
and had filled in its outlines with color, force and feeling. And yet,
as he closed, the lawyer felt a sick sense of failure.
Court adjourned for an hour, and in the interim Felder remained in a
little room in the building, whither Doctor Brent was to send him
sandwiches and coffee from the hotel.
"You made a fine effort, Tom," the latter said, as they stood for a
moment in the emptying court-room. "You're doing wonders with no case,
and the town ought to send you to Congress on the strength of it! I
declare, some of your evidence made me feel as mean as a dog about the
rascal, though I knew all the time he was as guilty as the devil."
The lawyer shook his head. "I don't blame you, Brent," he said, "for you
don't know him as I do. I have seen much of him lately, been often with
him, watched him under stress--for he doesn't deceive himself, he has no
thought of acquittal! We none of us knew Hugh Stires. We put him down
for a shallow, vulgar blackleg, without redeeming qualities. But the man
we are trying is a gentleman, a refined and cultivated man of taste and
feeling. I have learned his true character during these days."
"Well," said the other, "if you believe in him, so much the better.
You'll make the better speech for it. Tell me one thing--where was Miss
Holme?"
"I don't know."
The doctor raised his eyebrows. "Good-by," he said. "I'll send over the
coffee and sandwiches," he added as he turned away.
"She thinks he is guilty!" he said to himself as he walked up the
street. "She thinks he is guilty, too!"