motioned into the comfortable depths Mrs. Harrington and as many other
of the ladies as the car would accommodate, and was whirled away.
*CHAPTER XXXII*
*THE COWARD AND HIS CONSCIENCE*
On the theory that his duty as an escort still survived, Rollie was
given a seat upon the limousine beside Francois; but at the door of the
St. Albans Miss Dounay dismissed him as curtly as if she had quite
forgotten that he was now or ever of any importance to her.
While to escape a breakfast with that thistle-tempered lady on such a
morning would, under ordinary conditions, have been a distinct relief,
this morning it appealed to Rollie as merely palliative. It was a
mercy, but no more. He did not expect to know one single sensation of
real relief until he saw Miss Dounay holding her precious diamonds once
more in her hands. It was his intention, after a hasty breakfast, to
make the swiftest possible transit to the residence of the Reverend John
Hampstead and there secure the loan of a certain key and rush back to
the bank. Within, say, seven minutes thereafter, he anticipated that
this taste of true relief would come to him.
It was twenty minutes past eight as he crossed the wide lobby of the
hotel. His physical condition was far from enviable. He was clad in a
baggy-elbowed, wretchedly wrinkled, and somewhat stained yachting suit.
He had not slept since the night before, in which, he now recalled, he
had not slept at all. During this extended period of wakefulness he had
been upset and out of his orbit. Yet all this while the world had been
rocking along, provokingly undisturbed by his troubles, and right now a
big new day was hurrying on. The cars were banging outside, and the
newsboys were making a devil of a racket about something, their cries
filling the street and ringing vibrantly into the lobby from without.
Everything was strident and noisy, jarring upon his nerves. His first
instinct was a dive for the bar, but he stopped before the door was
reached. He was on a new tack. He resolved not to drink to-day. He
had signed no pledges; but he felt that a highball was not in keeping
with what he proposed to do.
Instead he veered toward the grillroom and ordered a pot of hot, hot
coffee with rolls. To fill the impatient interval between the order and
the service, he snatched eagerly at the morning paper in the extended
hand of a waiter. At the first glance his eyes dilated, and his lips
parted.
When the coffee came, he was still absorbed. The dark liquid was cold
before he swallowed it, mechanically, in great gulps. It was well the
chair had arms, or his body might have fallen from it. His mind was
reeling like a drunken thing as he tried to grasp the process by which a
woman's malice had used him for a vicious assault upon the man who had
saved him when he stood eye to eye with ruin.
Slowly Burbeck's muddled intelligence groped backward over the events of
yesterday. What a fool, he! How clever, she! How demoniacally clever!
No wonder she forgave him so lightly; no wonder she cooed so
ecstatically once she found the diamonds were in the preacher's vault!
No wonder she had made sure that he went upon the yachting party, even
to the point of going herself. It was to keep him out of reach until
her diabolical plot against Hampstead could take effect. And no wonder
she sat bolt and staring at the shore lights all the long night through.
But why did she plot against Hampstead? What was between the clergyman
and herself? Why did Hampstead not strike out boldly and clear himself
at one stroke, by the mere opening of his lips? He not only had not
defended himself, but the papers declared he had a guilty air, that he
fought against the opening of the box, and bore himself in a manner that
convinced even his bondsmen he was guilty.
But the newspaper chanced to relate as an interesting detail how the
minister had quickly recovered his self-possession, to the extent of
rearranging the contents of his box after their handling by Assistant
District Attorney Searle, and that he had even casually destroyed one
paper with the remark that it was something no longer to be preserved.
This almost accidental sentence gave Rollie the strangest feeling of
all. He knew what it must have been that was destroyed,--the evidence
of his own indebtedness, to explain which would inevitably lead to his
exposure. This, too, accounted for the preacher's protest and his
apparent guilty fear. He could not know the diamonds were in the box;
he did know the I.O.U. was there. He had destroyed it at the very
moment when the discovery of the diamonds must surely have convinced him
that the culprit he was shielding had betrayed him like a Judas.
"And yet he stands pat!" breathed Rollie huskily, while the greatest
emotion of human gratitude that his heart could hold swelled his breast
almost to bursting.
"I didn't know they made a man that would stand the gaff like that," he
confessed after a further reflective interval.
Burbeck's first instinct was to rush to the telephone and acquit himself
in the minister's mind of all complicity in the plot; for inevitably
Rollie thought first of himself. But thought for himself recalled the
threat of Marien Dounay. How fiercely she had warned him that his
secret was not his own, but hers! He grasped the significance of her
threat now as she had shrewdly calculated that he would. Let him murmur
a word, let him attempt, no matter how subtly or adroitly, to set in
motion any plan that would loosen the tightening coils about John
Hampstead, and this woman would turn her crazy vengeance on him, would
fasten his crime upon him, would do a baser thing than that,--would make
it appear that he had deliberately placed the diamonds in the minister's
vault, thus causing her innocently to do him this grave injustice. Thus
in his exposure he would not be contemplated with indulgent sadness as a
gentleman weakling who had descended to vulgar crime to make good
another crime as heinous; but, on the contrary, would be regarded
hatefully, repulsively, with loathsome scorn and withering contempt, as
a despicable ingrate base enough to shift his guilt to the shoulders of
the one who had rescued him.
Before this prospect, fear paralyzed every other impulse of his heart,
every faculty of his brain. His head was aching violently. He pressed
his hands against his temples, and wondered how he could get quietly out
of here and where he could fly.
A secluded room of this very hotel suggested the surest isolation. He
got up-stairs to the writing room, where a hastily scrawled note to
Parma, the cashier, made the night upon the Bay the excuse for his
absence from the bank for the day. Another to his mother,--he dared not
hear her voice telling him of what had befallen her beloved
pastor,--that he was too weary even to come home and would sleep the day
out in Oakland, leaving his exact whereabouts unknown to avoid the
possibility of disturbance.
Mustering one final rally of his volitional powers, Rollo approached the
desk and registered as some one not himself before the very eyes of the
clerk, who knew him well and laughingly became accessory to the
subterfuge.
Once within the privacy of his room, the impulse to telephone to John
Hampstead and tell that distracted man a thing which he would be greatly
desiring to know, came again to the young man; but in part exhaustion
and in part cowardice led him to postpone that simple act till he had
slept, rested, thought.
A few minutes later, with shades darkened and clothing half removed, he
buried his feverish head among the pillows and sought to bury
consciousness as well. But the latter attempt was a failure, for the
young man found himself prodded into the extreme of
wakefulness,--thinking, thinking, thinking, until he was all but mad.
Out of all this thinking gradually emerged one solid, unshifting fact.
This was the character of John Hampstead. He, Rollo Burbeck, might be a
shriveling, paltering coward; Marien Dounay might be only a beautiful
fiend; but John Hampstead was a strong, unwavering man. John Hampstead
would stand firm!
Buoying his soul on this idea, Rollie dropped off to feverish slumber.
But the sleeper awoke suddenly with one question hooking at his vitals.
Was any man physically equal to such a strain? Was John Hampstead still
standing firm like the huge human bulwark he had begun to seem?
Shrill cries floated upward from the street, sounding above the
persistent whang of car wheels upon the rails. These were the voices of
the newsboys crying the noon edition.
Rollie rose uncertainly and tottered to the telephone, where he asked
that the latest papers be sent up to him, and awaited their coming in an
ague of suspense and fear.
When they were received, he found little upon the front of either but
the story of the minister's arrest for the theft of the diamonds and the
finding of the jewels in his box, coupled with fresh emphasis upon his
exhibition of the demeanor of a guilty man. It flowed up and down the
chopped-off and sawed-out columns, liberally besprinkled with
photographs of the chief actors in the drama, then turned upon the
second page and spread itself riotously, in various types.
Through these paragraphs the mind of young Burbeck scrambled like a
terrier digging for a rat, pawing his way desperately to make sure of
the answer to his one, all-consuming question: Was the preacher still
standing? The first paper declared accusingly that he was; that, like a
guilty man taking advantage of technicalities, he refused to speak. The
second paper affirmed the same, but with even greater emphasis, though
without the meaner implication.
In the spread-out story there were set forth details and conjectures
innumerable that would have interested and amazed Rollie, if his mind
had been able to grasp them at all; but it was not. It fastened upon
the one thing of ultimate significance in his present water-logged
state. Hugging in his arms the papers which conveyed this supreme
assurance to him, as if they had been the spar to which his soul was
clinging, he rolled over upon the bed with a sigh of intense relief and
sank instantly into long and unbroken sleep.
Hunger wakened him at eight in the evening; but instead of ringing for
food, he asked for the evening papers. Again their message was
reassuring. His nerves were stronger now; his soul was gaining the
respite which it needed. He dispatched a messenger to his home for
fresh linen and a business suit, turned on the water in the bath,
arranged for the presence of a barber in his room in fifteen minutes,
and the service of a hearty dinner in the same place in thirty.
The refreshment of invigorating sleep, plus the spectacle of John
Hampstead, that Atlas of a man, standing rock-like beneath the world of
another's burden, had inspired Rollie sufficiently to enable him to
resume once more the pose of his presumed position in life. To be sure,
he was still under the spell of his fear,--and could not see himself as
yet doing one thing to weaken the pressure upon his benefactor.
For this dastardly inactivity he suffered a flood of self-reproaches,
but stemmed them with reflections upon the irreproachable character of
the minister, and his impregnable position in the community. He
reflected how futile and puerile all the endeavors of the newspapers to
involve this good man in scandal must prove. How ridiculous the idea
that he could be a common thief! How suddenly the wide, sane public,
after a day or two's debauch of excitement, would turn and bestow again
their unwavering confidence upon this man and laurel his brow with fresh
and more permanent expressions of their regard for his high character.
Reflections like this, winged by his own inside knowledge of the true
greatness of the victim, together with the soothing influence of a bath,
the ministrations of a skilled barber, and the sedative effects of a
good dinner, sent young Burbeck to his home somewhere about ten o'clock
in the evening, to all appearances quite his usual, happy-looking self.
The telephone had apprised his mother of his coming, and she had
remained up to meet him.
"Oh, my son!" she murmured happily, as he laid his smooth cheek against
hers and mingled his wavy brown hair with the silvering threads of her
own dark tresses.
The young man gave his mother a gentle pressure of his hands upon her
shoulders, then turned his face and kissed her cheek, but ventured no
word. A sense of blood guiltiness had come upon him at the contact of
her presence.
"Of course you have seen what that woman and the papers are doing to
Brother Hampstead," his mother observed sadly.
"Yes," replied the young man, in a tone as dejected as hers.
"They are tearing his reputation to pieces," the mother went on. "There
is hardly a shred of it left now. Like vultures they are digging over
every detail of his life and putting a sinister interpretation upon the
most innocent things. The worst of it is that even our own people begin
to turn against him. Some of the people for whom he has done the most
and suffered the most are readiest with their tongues to blast his
character. It is a sad commentary upon the way of the world."
"Still," urged Rollie, "the man is strong; his character is so upright;
his purposes are so high and so unselfish that no permanent harm can
come to him. His enemies must sooner or later be confuted, and he will
emerge from all this pother--" Pother: it took great resolution for
Rollie to force so large a fact into so small a word--"a bigger and a
more influential man in the community, even a more useful one than
before."
Mrs. Burbeck listened to this tribute from her beloved son to her
beloved minister with a joy that was pathetic. She had never known him
to speak so heartily, with such unreserved admiration before. It told
her things about the character of her son she had hoped but had not
known. Yet she felt herself compelled to disagree with her son's
conclusions.
"That is where you are wrong, my boy," she said, again in tones of
sadness. "The public mind is a strange consciousness. If it once gets
a view of a man through the smoked glasses of prejudice, it seldom
consents to look at him any other way. Remove to-morrow every vestige
of evidence against Brother Hampstead, and, mark my words! the fickle
public will begin to discover or invent new reasons why, once having
hurled its idol down, it will not put him up again."
"You take it too seriously, mother," suggested Rollie half-heartedly,
after a moment of silence.
"No, I do not," Mrs. Burbeck replied, shaking her head gravely. "The
worst of it is the man's absolute silence. If he would only say
something. There must be some sort of explanation. If he took the
diamonds, there must have been some laudable reason. This morning there
were literally tens of thousands of people hoping for such an
explanation and ready to give to him the benefit of every doubt. There
are fewer such to-night. There will be fewer still to-morrow.
"If somebody else stole them, and Brother Hampstead, to protect the
thief, planned to hold them temporarily while immunity was gained for
the coward, he must see now that he made a terrible mistake, that for
once he has carried his extravagant leniency entirely too far. If this
theory is correct, the thief must have fled beyond the very reach of the
newspapers, or be insane, or a drug fiend, or something like that. I
cannot conceive of any human being so base, or in a position so delicate
that he would not instantly make a public confession to spare his
benefactor."
Rollie had turned and was looking straight at his mother, almost
reproachfully, certainly protestingly, at the torture she was causing
him. She saw this strange look and stopped.
"Oh, my boy," she exclaimed. "You are so sympathetic. How proud, how
selfishly happy it makes me to feel that nothing like this can ever come
upon my son!"
But Rollie's eyes had shifted quickly to a picture on the opposite wall,
and he braced himself desperately against these bomb-like assaults of
his mother upon his position.
"Yes," he said after an interval, "it must be pretty hard on Hampstead."
But though he made this remark seem natural, his brain was again
reeling. With mighty effort he forced himself to give the conversation
another turn by a question which had been fascinating him during the
whole day.
"Tell me," he asked, "how is father taking it?"
"Very hardly," Mrs. Burbeck confessed. "You know your father: so proud,
so exact and scrupulous in all his dealings, with his word better than
the average man's bond, yet not lenient toward the man who errs. He
thinks everybody good or bad, every soul white or black. When Brother
Hampstead was prosecuting law-breakers in court, father was proud of
him; but when he goes off helping jail-birds and fallen women, father is
harsh and utterly unsympathetic.
"Last night when the first charge appeared, father was greatly incensed,
because at last, he said, Brother Hampstead had done the thing he always
feared, brought the church into a notoriety that was unpleasant. This
morning, at the story of the diamonds in the vault, he was dumbfounded.
To-night he talks of nothing but that, whatever the outcome, All
People's shall clear its skirts of the unpleasantness by requesting
Brother Hampstead's resignation."
"Resignation!" Rollie gasped. "Resignation--simply for doing his duty!
Why," he burst out excitedly, "that would be treachery! It would be the
act of Judas. Don't let father do it, mother," he pleaded. "Don't let
him put me in that position!"
A wild look had come into the young man's face as he spoke.
"You? In what position?"
Mrs. Burbeck was surprised at the expression on her son's face.
For a moment Rollie floundered wildly.
"Why, you see--I--I believe in Hampstead. I--I have told the bank that
he is all right, no matter what happens. I don't want my own father
reading him out of the church, do I?"
Mrs. Burbeck's perplexity gave way to smiling comprehension, which was
met by relief and some approach to composure upon the features of her
son, who felt that he had escaped the eddy of an appalling danger.
"Naturally," replied Mrs. Burbeck soothingly. "What a loyal nature
yours is! By the way, Rollie," and the force of a new idea energized
her glance and tone; "it is only half-past ten. Wouldn't it be fine of
you to just run over and give Brother Hampstead a pressure of the hand
to-night, and tell him how loyally your heart is with him in this trying
situation? It would mean so much to him coming from a strong,
successful, young man of the world like you, whose position he must
admire so much!"
Rollie's face went white, and his eyes roved despairingly. It must have
been well for the mother's peace of mind, as it certainly was for his,
that, having asked her question, instead of studying his face while she
waited for the answer, she let her eyes fall to the seal ring she had
given him upon his twenty-first birthday, and busied herself with
studying out again the complexities of the monogram and holding off the
hand itself to see how handsomely the ring adorned it.
"I think I'd rather not to-night, mother," Rollie replied, as if after a
moment of deliberation. "This thing works me up terribly--you can see
that--and I'm a bit short on sleep yet. If I went to see Brother
Hampstead to-night, I'm sure I shouldn't sleep a wink afterward.
Besides, my coming might alarm him. It might make him think his plight
is worse than it is; it would be so unusual."
Again the mother-love surged above any other emotion. "You are right,"
she admitted, caressing his hand. "It was only an impulse of mine,
anyway. You must be tired, poor boy."
"Pretty tired, mother," he confessed truthfully; then stooped and kissed
her upon the cheek and seemed to leave the room naturally enough,
although in his soul he knew that he fled from her presence like a
criminal from his conscience.
*CHAPTER XXXIII*
*THE BATTLE OF THE HEADLINES*
Hampstead was determined not to show the white feather. The morning
after the discovery of the diamonds in his box, he made the effort to go
about his daily duties unconcernedly and even happily, with a smile of
confidence upon his face. His bearing was to proclaim his innocence.
But it would not work. Crowds gaped. Individuals stared. Reporters
hounded. The very people who needed his help and had been accustomed to
receive it gratefully, appeared to shrink from his presence. At the
homes where he called, an atmosphere of restraint and artificiality was
created. He tried to thaw this and failed dismally; it was evident that
the recipients of his attentions also tried, but also failed, for all
the while their doubts peeped out at him.
After half a day the minister gave up and sat at home--immured,
besieged, impounded. He was like a man upon a rock isolated by a
deluge, the waters rolling horizon-wide and surging higher with every
edition of the newspapers.
Oh, those newspapers! John Hampstead had not realized before how much
of modern existence is lived in the newspapers. So amazingly skillful
were they in sweeping away his public standing that the process was
actually interesting. He found himself absorbed by it, viewing it
almost impersonally, like a mere spectator, moved by it, swayed to one
side or the other, as the record seemed to run. The description of the
scene in the vault room, even as it appeared unembellished in Haggard's
paper, overwhelmed him.
"It is the manner of a thief hopelessly guilty," he confessed.
On the other hand, when Haggard's paper in an editorial asked
argumentatively: "Why should this man steal? What need had he for money
in large sums?" John's judgment approved the soundness of such a
defense. "There were a score," affirmed the editorial, "perhaps a
hundred men who had and would freely supply Doctor Hampstead with all
the money necessary for the exigencies of the work to which he
notoriously devoted all his time. As for his personal needs, the man
lived simply. He had no wants beyond his income."
"True--perfectly true. A good point that," conceded Hampstead to
himself.
But that evening one of the San Francisco papers reported that at about
the time the diamonds were stolen, the Reverend Hampstead had approached
various persons in Oakland with a view to borrowing a large sum of money
without stating for what the money was required. The paper volunteered
the conjecture that the minister, through speculation in stocks, had
overdrawn some fund of which he was a trustee, and of which he was
presently to be called upon to give an accounting; hence the desperate
resort to the theft of the diamonds and the temporary holding of them in
his vault, boldly counting on his own immunity from suspicion.
This conjecture was extremely damaging. It skillfully suggested a
logical hypothesis upon which the minister could be assumed to be a
thief; and so high had been the man's standing that some such hypothesis
was necessary.
As Hampstead read this, he felt the viciousness of the thrust. It was
false, but it had the color of an actual incident behind it. Some
clerk, bookkeeper, or secretary to one of the men who had so promptly
enabled him to meet Rollie's defalcation, seeing the comparatively large
sum in cash passed to the hand of the minister, had done a little
thinking at the time and when the arrest came had done a little talking.
Yet the morning papers of the next day had apparently forgotten this
incident. They were off in full cry upon a much more dangerous trail by
digging deeper into the relations between the minister and the actress.
As if from hotel employees, or some one in Miss Dounay's service, one of
them had elicited and put together a story of all the calls that
Hampstead had made upon Miss Dounay in her hotel during the five weeks
she had been at the St. Albans. This story made it appear that the
minister had become infatuated with the actress, and that he had sought
every means of spending time in her company.
It was skillfully revealed that Miss Dounay at first had been greatly
attracted by the personality and the apparent sincerity of the
clergyman; but as her social acquaintance in the city rapidly extended
and the work upon her London production became more engrossing, she had
less and less time for him, and was finally compelled to deny herself
almost entirely to the divine's unwelcome attentions, notwithstanding
which the clergyman still found means of forcing himself upon the
actress. One such occasion, it appeared, had prevented the appearance
of Miss Dounay at a dinner given by a very prominent society lady of the
town, where the brilliant woman was to have been the guest of honor.
Some one had even recalled that the minister was not an invited guest at
the dinner during which the diamonds were stolen. He had presented
himself, it seemed, after the affair was in progress and departed before
its conclusion.
But it was left to one of the evening papers of this day to explode the
climactic story of the series. The writers of the morning story had
been careful to protect the conduct of Miss Dounay from injurious
inference; but now the _Evening Messenger_ went upon the streets with a
story that left Miss Dounay's character to take care of itself, and
purported boldly to defend the minister.
PREACHER NOT THIEF, boldly ventured the headlines. The report declared
that an intimacy of long standing had existed between the minister and
the actress. The public was reminded of what part of it had forgotten
and the rest never knew, that John Hampstead had himself been an actor.
The narrative told how the minister had made his professional debut in
Los Angeles by carrying this same Marien Dounay in his arms in _Quo
Vadis_, night after night, in scene after scene, during the run of the
play; and hinted broadly of an attachment beginning then which had
ripened quickly into something very powerful, so powerful, in fact, that
when Hampstead was playing with the "People's", an obscure stock company
in San Francisco, Miss Dounay had broken with Mowrey at the Grand Opera
House, because he refused to have the awkward amateur in his company,
and had herself gone out to the little theater in Hayes Valley and lent
to its performance the glamour of her name and personality, merely to be
near the idol upon whom her affections had fixed themselves so fiercely.
Actors now playing in San Francisco who had been members of the People's
Stock at the time remembered that the couple succeeded but poorly in
suppressing signs of their devotion to each other, and the stage
manager, now retired, was able to recall how in the garden scene of
_East Lynne_, Miss Dounay had deliberately changed the "business"
between Hampstead and herself in order that she might receive a kiss
upon the lips instead of upon the forehead as the script required.
This mosaic of truth and falsehood related with gustatory detail a
violent quarrel between the two which occurred one night in a restaurant
prominent in the night life of the old city, the result of which was
that Miss Dounay cast off her domineering and self-willed lover
entirely.
"After a few weeks," the article observed soberly, "the broken-hearted
lover surprised his friends by renouncing the stage and entering upon
the life of the ministry as a solace to his wounded affections."
In support of this, it was pointed out that the minister had never
married nor been known to show the slightest tendency toward gallantries
in his necessarily wide association with women.
The glittering achievement of vindication was next attempted by the
_Messenger's_ story. This admittedly was theory, but it was set forth
with confidence and particularity, as follows:
"The return of the actress, in the prime of her beauty and at the very
zenith of her career, upon a visit to California, which had been her
childhood home, not unnaturally led to a revival of the old passion.
For a time the two were running about together as happy as cooing doves.
Then a clash came. This was over the question of the harmonizing of the
two careers. Obviously, Miss Dounay could not be expected to give up
hers, and the minister was now so devoted to his own work that he found
himself unwilling to make the required concession upon his part.
"A serious disagreement resulted. The actress was a woman of high
temper. It had been the custom to deposit her diamonds in the
minister's box as a matter of protection. On the night of the party,
she had committed them to him, as usual. But the next morning, angered
over the clergyman's failure to keep an appointment with her, the
actress, in a moment of reckless passion, had charged him with stealing
them. Under the circumstances, Hampstead, as a chivalrous man, declined
to speak, knowing full well that sooner or later the woman's passion
would relent, and she would release him from the awkward position in
which he stood."
There were holes in this story. At places it did not fit the facts; as
for instance, the minor fact that by common agreement the minister did
not leave the dinner party until considerably after twelve, consequently
at a time when the bank vault was inaccessible. There was also the
major fact that the theft of the diamonds was discovered and reported at
two o'clock in the morning, and not the next day "after the minister's
failure to keep an appointment with the actress had angered her."
But these trifling discrepancies were disregarded by the eager rewrite
man, who threw this story together from the harvesting of half a dozen
leg-weary reporters.
Nor did they matter greatly to Hampstead. He read the story with
whitening lips. He recognized it as the sort of vindication that would
ruin him. It made his position a thousand times more difficult. It was
infinitely harder to keep silence when the very truth itself was
blunderingly mixed to malign him.
Nor did the public mind the discrepancies greatly. The _Messenger's_
story was a triumph of journalism. It was the most eagerly read, the
most convincingly detailed explanation of what had occurred. The public
absorbed it with a sense of relief that at last it had learned how such
a man as John Hampstead could have fallen as he had. The story even
excited a little sympathy for the minister by revealing the unexpected
element of romance in his life. Nevertheless, its publication upon the
evening of the third day after the minister's arrest battered away the
last pretense of any considerable section of the popular mind that,
whatever the outcome of his trial, Hampstead was any longer a man
entitled to public confidence.
Flying rumor, published gossip, and vociferous assault upon one side,
combined with guilty silence upon the other, had absolutely completed
the work of destruction. The reputation of the pastor of All People's
was hopelessly blasted. Even to the minister, sitting alone like a
convict in his cell, this effect was clearly apparent. The question of
whether he was a thief or not a thief had faded into the background of
triviality. The issue was whether he, a trusted minister, while
occupying his pulpit and bearing himself as a chaste and irreproachable
servant of mankind, had yielded to an intrigue of the flesh. The
indictment did not lie in definite specifications that could be refuted,
but in inferences that were unescapable.
The riot of reckless gossip had made the preacher's honor common.
Anything was believable. Each single incident became a convincing link
in the chain of evidence that John Hampstead was an apostate to the
creed and character he espoused.
The minister in his study, his desk and chair an island surrounded by a
sea of rumpled newspapers, harried on every side by doubt and suspicion
so aggressive that it almost forced him to doubt and suspect himself,
laid his face upon his desk.
This was more than he had prayed for. This was no honored cross that he
was asked to bear. It was a robe of shame to be put upon him publicly.
To be sure, it was loose, ill-fitting, diaphanous, but none the less it
was enveloping. It did not blot out, yet it ate like a splotch of acid.
But suddenly the man sat up, and for the first time since the startling
disclosure in the vault room, a look of terror shot into his eyes,
terror mixed with pain that was indescribable. It was a thought of the
effect of this last story upon the mind of Bessie that had stabbed him.
Bessie had grown wonderfully during these five years. She had completed
four years at Stanford and one year of post-graduate work in the
University of Chicago. To-morrow, if he had the date right, she would
be receiving her degree. The beauty of her character and the beauty of
her person had ripened together, until John's imagination could think of
nothing so exquisite in all the universe as Bessie Mitchell. And after
the degree and a summer in Europe, she was coming back to California and
to him! Together they were going to enter upon a life and the making of
a home that was to be rich in happiness for both of them, and as they
fondly hoped, rich in happiness for all with whom they came in contact.
Reflecting that in this last week Bessie would be too busy to read the
newspapers, John had chivalrously thought to tell her nothing of what
was befalling him, that she might set out happily upon her European
journey. But now had come this alleged vindication, which was the most
terrible assault of all, with its disgusting insinuations. He felt
instinctively that Bessie would see that story, because it was the one
of all which she ought not to see. Seeing it, he assured himself, she
would believe it, more fully than any one else would believe it. John
knew that despite his own years of steadfast devotion and despite her
own constant effort to do so, she had never quite wiped out the horrible
suspicions engendered by his confession of the brief attachment for Miss
Dounay. He suspected it was a thing no woman ever successfully wipes
out. This damnable story would revive that suspicion convincingly. It
was inevitable that Bessie should believe that Marien Dounay's presence
had revived the old infatuation, and that he had yielded to its power.
This reflection left Hampstead with his lips pursed, his cheeks drawn,
sitting bolt and rigid like a frozen man.
In this polar atmosphere the telephone tinkled. The minister answered
it with wooden movements and a wooden voice:
"No, nothing to say--yet."
Always the "yet" was added. "Yet" meant the minister's hope for
deliverance. The reporters who had heard that "yet" so many times in
the three days began to find in it something pathetic and almost
convincing. But though the minister had added it this last time from
sheer force of habit, the hope had just departed from him. With his
love-hope gone, there was nothing personally for which John Hampstead
cared to ask the future. Time, for him, was at an end. He was not a
being. He was an instrument.
But as if to remind him for what purpose he was an instrument, he had
barely hung up the 'phone when there was a faint tap at the outer
entrance of his study, followed at his word of invitation by the figure
of a man who, with a furtive, backward glance as if afraid of the
shadows beneath the palm trees, slipped quickly through the narrowest
possible opening, closed the door and halted uncertainly, his eyes
blinking at the light, his hands rubbing nervously one upon the other.
The man was carefully dressed and tonsured. There was every evidence
that to the world he was trying to be his old debonair self, but before
the minister he stood abject and pitiable.
"Rollie!" exclaimed Doctor Hampstead, leaping up.
"She haunted me!" the conscience-stricken man faltered helplessly,
sinking into a chair. "She threatened to denounce me right there in the
bank, if I dared to communicate with you." Again there was that
frightened look backward to the door.
An hour before, when the minister had not yet reasoned out the effect
upon Bessie of this awful story of his alleged relations with the
actress, he would have leaped upon Rollie vehemently, so anxious to know
how the diamonds got into his safe-deposit box as almost to tear the
story from the young man's throat.
But now he had the feeling that there was no longer anything at stake
worth while. All in him that quickened at the sight of his visitor was
a sort of clinical interest in the state of a soul.
As Rollie told his story, the minister gasped with relief to learn that
his own plight was due to no Judas-like betrayal, but that the young man
was, like himself, a victim of this scheming, devilish woman, and he
listened with sympathetic eagerness while the narrator depicted brokenly
the frightful conflict between fear and duty through which he had passed
during the two days gone.
But with the narrative concluded, the duty of each was still plain. The
silence must be kept. Moreover, in this revulsion of feeling from doubt
to active sympathy, the minister perceived that things were going very
hardly with the young man. Knowing Miss Dounay now rather well, he was
able to understand, even without explanation, the paralyzing fear which
had kept Rollie dumb for these three days, and to realize that his
coming even tardily was a sign of some renascence of moral courage.
This perception quickened both the minister's sympathy and his interest
in his duty. He was able to interrogate the young man considerately and
to put him gradually somewhat at his ease, and this so tactfully as to
make it seem to Rollie that, his delay in coming was half a virtue and
that the act of coming itself was a supreme moral victory which gave
promise of greater victories to come.
But it did not require this exhibition of magnanimity to bring young
Burbeck to finish his story with an outpouring of the bitter
self-reproaches he had for two days been heaping upon himself.
"I never realized before what a despicable coward sin or crime can make
of a man," he concluded. "This spectacle of you bearing uncomplainingly
upon your back the burden of my guilt before this whole community sets
something burning in me like a fire. It has given me courage to come
here. Sometimes in the last few hours I have almost had the courage to
come out and tell the truth, to denounce this devilish woman for what
she is, and to take my guilt upon myself."
For a moment Rollie's eyes opened till a ring of white appeared about
the iris, and he shifted his position dizzily.
"But," exclaimed the minister with sudden apprehension and an outburst
of great earnestness, "you must not. You must consider your mother. I
command you to consider her above everything else! I should forbid you
to speak for her sake, if nothing else were involved. I do want you to
become brave enough to take this guilt upon yourself, if circumstances
permit it; but, they do not permit. Besides," and the minister shook
his head sadly, "even that would now be powerless to relieve me from
these awful consequences. I might be proved spotlessly innocent of the
charge of theft, and yet my reputation would still be hopelessly ruined.
It has cost me all, Rollie--all!"
The minister and the penitent, the innocent and the guilty, drew
together for the moment linked by that bond of sympathy which invariably
exists when one man suffers willingly in the cause of another, and is
heightened when the sufferer winces under the pain.
"Even," the minister labored on, "even that hope of Her, of which I told
you the other day, has been torn from me."
Rollie's face turned a more ghastly white.
"That?" he murmured huskily.
"That!" assented the minister, with a grave, downward bend of the head.
"It is too much," groaned the young man in real agony of spirit.
"Nothing, nothing that is at stake is worth that--can be worth that."
For a moment Hampstead was silent.
"To be loyal, Rollie, to be true to the highest duty is worth
everything."
This was what he would have liked to say; it was what he believed; it
was what he meant to demonstrate by his course of action; but for the
moment he could not say it. Instead, he swallowed hard and looked
downward, toying with a paper-knife upon his desk. But his visitor was
going now. There was no reason why he should stay, and the minister, as
he held open the door, was able to say warningly: "Remember! Not one
word for the sake of your mother's life."
"But you," protested the young man, his eyes again staring wildly.
"You are to try not to think of me," declared Hampstead, with low
emphasis, "except as my own steadfastness in my duty--if I am able to be
steadfast--may help you to be steadfast in yours. Rollie! We
understand each other?"
But the young fellow only shook his head negatively with a growing look
of awe and wonder in his eyes, then turned and slipped hastily away. He
did not understand this man--the bigness of him--at all; but he found
himself leaning on him more and more heavily and felt some spiritual
cleansing process digging at the inside of himself like the scrape and
bite of a steam shovel.
As for the minister, once he was free to think of himself alone, he
perceived that Rollie's story had set him free of silence. It supplied
the gap in his knowledge which had made him dumb. There was a real
defense which could now be offered. Now, too, that there was again some
prospect of vindication, he felt his desire for vindication grow.
Up to the present he had waived arraignment on the charge, and had twice
secured the customary two days' postponement of the hearing upon
preliminary examination. But immediate action should now be taken.
Accordingly he located Judge Brennan at his club by telephone and the
Assistant District Attorney Searle at his residence, and without
explanation asked that the time for his arraignment and preliminary
hearing be set as soon as possible.
Next morning the papers presented as the most startling development of
the Hampstead Case the fact that the minister had announced himself
prepared to go to trial, and the preliminary hearing had been set for
Saturday at ten o'clock in Judge Brennan's court room.
Public interest centered, of course, upon the nature of the minister's
defense. There was even observable something like a turn of the tide in
his favor. Rumor, suspicion, and innuendo for the time had played
themselves out. Shrewd managing editors--keen students of mass
psychology that they were--discerned signs that these ebbing
cross-currents of doubt and uncertainty might sweep suddenly in the
opposite direction, and they were alertly prepared to switch the
handling of the news if the popular appetite changed.
*CHAPTER XXXIV*
*A WAY THAT WOMEN HAVE*
Friday for John was a day of impatience, its tedious hours consumed in
turning over and over in his mind the story he would tell upon the
witness stand and the plea he would make to the court for a dismissal of
the complaint against him; when the day was finished, John found his
mind in a rather chaotic state, and it seemed to him that little had
been accomplished.
But if little happened that day in Encina which was of moment to his
cause, there was an interesting sequence of events transpiring in
Chicago, which had at least some relation to the matter; for this was
the day upon which the degrees were being conferred.
The assembly hall of the great university was large, and every seat was
taken. The huge platform was decked, studded, draped and upholstered
with professors, assistant professors and presidents, all in mortar
boards and gowns, the somber black of the latter relieved by the rich
colors of the insignia indicating the rank or character of their
respective degrees.
The presence of all this banked and massed doctorial dignity made the
atmosphere of the hall to reek with erudition. The vast number of
individuals in front felt their puny intellects dwarfed to pigeon's
brains. Hitherto some of them had rather congratulated themselves that
they knew the multiplication table and the rule of three. Now their
instinct was to grovel.
Yet not all of that assemblage were so impressed. Robert Mitchell was
not. Huge of chest, thick-fingered, heavy-shouldered, amiable of his
broad countenance, shrewd of eye, and growing thin of that curly brown
thatch which had been one of Hibernia's gifts to his ensemble, he
surveyed the scene with a critic's air.
Not that Mitchell scorned the pundits of learning. Being the
vice-president of a transcontinental line of railroad and therefore
necessarily a man of wide acquaintance and of wide employment of the
talents of mankind, he knew there were occasions when even he must wait
upon the pronouncements of some spectacled creature of the laboratory.
Still, he could not help reflecting that he would like to see that pale,
gangling pundit on the end try to calculate the exact instant in which
to throw the lever to make a flying switch. He would like further to
see that fellow with a dome that loomed like a water-tank on the desert
try to pick up a string of car numbers as they ran by him on the track,
and see how many he could carry in his head and carry right.
In fact, everything about the function expressed itself to Mitchell in
terms of traffic. Quite a hall, this. The seats in it came from Grand
Rapids, no doubt; or perhaps from Manitowoc. The rate from Grand Rapids
was nineteen cents a hundred or thereabouts; from Manitowoc it was
twenty,--practically an even basis. But on a trans-continental haul
now, to San Francisco for instance, common point rates applied, and
Manitowoc had an advantage of five cents a hundred unless--unless the
Michigan roads rebated the Michigan manufacturers something of their
share in the division of the through rate. Of course, rebates were
illegal; but you never could exactly tell what an originating line might
not do to keep a sufficient amount of business originating. Take his
own line, now, for instance, and borax shipments from the Mojave Desert
as against the Union Pacific with borax shipments from Death Valley.
Thus the mind of the great master of transportation roved on while
professors rose and droned and presented round rolls to never-ending
strings of candidates; but at length there appeared in the serpentine
line going up for Master's degrees one presence which took the glaze of
speculation from the eye of Mitchell.
The world at large has often noted the anomalous fact that a Doctor's
cap and gown does not appear to detract greatly from the masculinity of
a man. If anything, it makes a beard, a brow, or the pale, unprosperous
furze upon a lip look more virile than otherwise; but that same cap and
gown will deceitfully rob a woman of something of the indefinable air of
her femininity. It gives her an ascetic cast, and asceticism is
unwomanly. But there are exceptions. Some types of women's faces look
just a little more fetchingly feminine and bewitchingly alluring under a
mortar-board cap than beneath any other form of headdress.
The eye of the railroad man rested now with benevolence and satisfaction
upon the shapely, ripened figure of such a woman. Glowing upon her
features was a youth and a feminism so vital as to seem that nothing
could overcome them. Her eyes were blue and bright; her hair was brown
and crinkly; while dimples that refused to be subdued by the dignity of
the occasion kept continually upon her features the suggestion of a
smile about to break.
But with these evidences of sunny personality, there went stout hints of
substantial character. The forehead was good and finely arched to stand
for brains. The chin was perhaps a trifle wide to permit the finest
oval to the countenance, but it suggested balance and power, and
proclaimed that what the mind of this young lady planned, her will might
be expected to accomplish. In fact, the young lady stood at this moment
face to face with the consummation of a five years' programme, and five
years is long for youth to hold a purpose.
With swelling satisfaction the railroad man saw the president of the
university now addressing his daughter. It was the same Latin formula
that had been repeated scores of times already this morning; but now
Mitchell made his first effort to grasp it, to reason out its meaning,
all the while greatly admiring his daughter's unfaltering courage under
the fire of these unintelligible phrases.
The somewhat irrepressible Miss Bessie was, indeed, doing very well.
For a moment the dimples had actually composed themselves, and there was
a light of high dignity in the eye, as the candidate extended her hand
for the diploma and stood meekly while the silken collar was placed
about her neck.
"That is a very able man, that Doctor Winton," remarked Mitchell to his
wife. "He has got the same way as the rest of them when he talks; but
what he says is sense."
Since Mitchell did not know at all what the university president had
said, this remark showed that he had fallen back upon his intuitive
judgment of men and had swiftly perceived in the university president
something of the same practical qualities that go to the making of a
business executive in any other walk.
But an excited whisper was just now coming from behind the white-gloved
hand of Mrs. Mitchell. "Oh! look!" that lady exclaimed, "she's got her
box lid on crooked!"
It was true that Miss Bessie by some restless twitch of her head or some
rebellious outburst of a knot of that crinkly hair, had got her mortar
board rakishly atilt. Of course, there were other mortar boards askew,
but Bessie's was individualistically and pronouncedly listed far to
port. And she didn't care. Bessie was so brimming and beaming with the
happiness of life that her whole being was this morning recklessly
atilt.
But that afternoon, at about the hour of three, in the ample suite of
rooms high up on the lake side of the Annex, which had been occupied by
the Mitchells for a week, there was nothing atilt at all about the soul
of Bessie. Her spirits were all a-droop. One single glance around
showed that the busy preparation for the European trip had been
suspended. Wardrobe trunks stood about on end, their contents gaping,
while dresses were draped over screens and chairs and laid out upon
beds; but the packers had ceased their work. Mrs. Mitchell, distracted
between parental love and the fulfillment of long cherished plans, as
well as distressed at the exhibition of petulant and even tearful temper
which her daughter had been displaying for an hour, walked restlessly
from room to room.
"I tell you, it's California for mine!" that young lady affirmed in
school-girlish vernacular, while an impatient foot stamped the floor, a
dimpled hand smote wilfully upon the arm of a huge, brocaded satin
chair, and the blue swimming eyes burned with a rebellious light.
Neither the language nor the mood would seem to become the beautiful
Mistress of Arts; but each testified to the survival of the humanness of
the young woman. In justice to her, however, it must be explained that
she had not begun this upsetting of father's and mother's and her own
cherished plan with impetuous defiances. She had begun gently, with
sighs, with remarks about longing for California. She felt so tired;
she wished she didn't have to travel now. If she could just go back and
walk under the palms and orange trees in dear old Los Angeles; if she
could get one great big bite of San Francisco fog, and see a little
desert and a mountain or two, before starting out for this junky old
Europe, she would be reconciled.
Otherwise, she would not be reconciled. Of course, she would go,--since
they had planned it for so long, and since mamma's heart was set upon
it;--but she would go unreconciled.
Reconciled! Mrs. Mitchell knew perfectly well what reconciled meant,
but she did not know just what Bessie meant by dinging on that word.
After fifteen minutes it appeared that Bessie was through with hints.
She had begun to boldly propose, and then earnestly to plead, and
finally tearfully to demand that the European trip be postponed two
weeks.
"But my child! The trip is all planned. The passages are paid for,
everything is ready," protested Mrs. Mitchell.
"But what's the good of being the slave of your plans? You don't have to
do a thing you don't want to just because you've planned."
Bessie's lip was full and ripe when she pouted and her voice was
freighted heavily with protest and appeal. How pretty her eyelids were
when there was a tear quivering on the lashes like a ball of
quicksilver. And how really enchanting she looked, as with hair a bit
disheveled and color heightening, she went on to argue impetuously:
"What's the good of having a private car? What's the good of being a
vice-president's wife and daughter, if you can't change your mind and go
galloping out to California when you feel like it? Back to your own
home! Back to your own people! Back where the scenery is the grandest
in the world! Back where the sky is high enough that you don't have to
shoulder the zenith out of the way in the morning so that you can stand
up straight and take a full breath."
"Bessie Mitchell!" exclaimed her mother at this juncture, turning on her
offspring accusingly. "What has got into you? Something has! You're
up to something. What is it?"
Bessie brooked her mother's discerning glance and then dodged it, very
much as if that lady had hurled at her the silver-backed hair brush she
held in her hand.
"Why," she exclaimed with an air of injured innocence; "nothing has got
into me. I was just taking one last look at the California papers, and
it made me homesick."
She made a gesture toward a pile of papers that surrounded her chair.
Mrs. Mitchell paused and cerebrated. Somewhere about two o'clock of the
afternoon, Bessie had stepped to the telephone.
"Send me up the last week of San Francisco and Los Angeles papers," she
ordered.
The papers came. She went through the Los Angeles papers first, turning
their pages casually, with occasional comments to her mother. And then
she started the San Francisco file, scanning this time more swiftly and
more casually until upon the very last of them she became suddenly
absorbed in uncommunicative silence; after which the musings and the
sighings had begun, followed by this absurd proposal, this passionate
outburst, and this deadlock of the two women behind entrenchments of
newspapers on the one hand and barricades of trunks upon the other.
As between her strong-willed daughter and her strong-willed self, Mrs.
Mitchell knew that she generally emerged defeated. So far now she had
been defeated--at least to the extent of an armistice. The packers had
been stopped, while the argument went on.
But in the meantime Mrs. Mitchell was violating the rules of war by
bringing up reinforcements. Mr. Mitchell was on his way over from the
Monadnock Building. He would soon settle Miss Bessie; that is, if he
did not make a cowardly and instant surrender, because Mrs. Mitchell
knew well enough he would rather sit on the rear platform of his private
car and watch the miles of steel and cinder stream from under him for
ten hours a day for the rest of his life than visit his native sod for
five minutes.
When Mrs. Mitchell heard her husband's voice in the next room, she
hurried out to fortify him.
Bessie also heard the voice and hurried to the bathroom to remove traces
of tears; for tears were not powerful arguments with her father. Smiles
went farther and faster. Kisses were the deciding artillery.
Father and mother, advancing cautiously upon daughter's position, found
it unoccupied. But the papers were strewn about. Mitchell picked up
the one which lay in the chair. His glance was entirely casual, but
suddenly his blue eye started and then blazed.
"The hell!" he ejaculated, and read eagerly down the column.
"Well, I be damned!" was his next contribution to the silence.
Mrs. Mitchell stared at her husband in amazement. Then, seizing her
reading glass, for a reading glass was so much better form than
spectacles, she glanced over her husband's shoulder, read the headline
and a few words following.
"The deceitfulness of that child!" she ejaculated, an expression of
indignant amazement on her face, while the hand with the reading glass
dropped to her hip, and her eyes were turned upon her husband.
"I always knew that boy's good-heartedness would get him into trouble
some day," the good woman averred after a moment.
"Well," rejoined her husband, in tones sharp with emphasis, "I'd back up
on a freight clear round the world to get him out. Our trip to Europe
is off. We go west on nine to-night."
Mr. Mitchell started for the telephone, and Mrs. Mitchell's eye followed
him approvingly, a look of sympathy and motherliness triumphing over
every other expression upon her face.
Now there wasn't any particular obligation on the part of Robert
Mitchell to John Hampstead. Hampstead had merely worked for Mitchell
through eight years of faithfulness in small things, which was a way
that Hampstead had. But as the Vice-President of the Great Southwestern
looked back, those eight years of faithfulness bulked rather large,
which, again, was a way that Robert Mitchell had.
As to Bessie! But that is a way that women have. The deeper and the
more serious her attachment for John Hampstead had grown, the more
guilefully she had concealed that fact from even the suspicion of her
parents. Yet now her disguise was penetrated, she sobbed it all out on
her mother's shoulder and got the finest, tenderest assurances of
sympathy and enthusiastic connivance that could be vouchsafed by one
woman to another. The Mitchells were that way. Let hearts and
happiness be concerned, and all other considerations of life could ride
on the brake-beams.
*CHAPTER XXXV*
*ON PRELIMINARY EXAMINATION*
But though a very human hope was in his breast, the man who went out to
face a public hearing on Saturday morning upon a charge of felony in the
city where a week before he had been a popular idol, was not the same
man who had stood trembling and bewildered in the vault room.
Rose had noticed first merely a physical change in her brother's
appearance, as from day to day the situation became more intense. She
saw lines deepen on his face, the knot of pain grow again and again upon
his brow, and the whiteness of his skin increase to a point where it
ceased to be white and became a parchment yellow, only paler than his
tawny hair. But later she became conscious that there was taking place
also a spiritual change, a certain rare elevation of the character of
the man, giving at times the eerie feeling that this was not her
brother, but some transfiguration taking place before her eyes.
When John Hampstead appeared in Judge Brennan's court room, something of
this exaltation of character was discernible, even to those who had
known the minister casually. Desiring ardently a happy outcome, the man
revealed in himself something of a new capacity to endure yet further
reverses.
Rose, Dick, and Tayna had been determined to accompany John and to sit
beside him as he faced his accusers; but he forbade this, declaring that
it would be construed by his enemies as an attempt to create sympathy.
Yet, despite the stoutness of the clergyman's hope for justice, the
sight of the court room, of Judge Brennan upon his bench, the clerk and
the official reporter at their desks, Searle, Wyatt, the detectives, the
massed spectators,--packed, craning, curious,--and the vast crowd that
had surged in the streets about the building and in the corridors,
through which way had to be made for him, were all such sinister
reminders of the position in which he stood, that for the time being
they crumpled the very breastwork of innocence itself.
"The case of the People versus John Hampstead," announced the judge in
matter-of-fact tones.
There was a slight movement among the group of attorneys, principals,
officers, and witnesses within the rail and before the long table, as
they either hitched chairs, or leaned forward with eyes and ears
attentive. Outside, the closely packed onlookers breathed short in
hushed expectancy.
"Prisoner at the bar, stand up!"
It was the monotonous, unfeeling voice of the clerk who said this,
himself arising.
Hampstead, accustomed as his own legal battlings had made him to court
formalities and to seeing men arraigned in just this language, failed to
comprehend its significance when addressed to him. For an appreciable
instant of time he sat unheeding, until every eye in the throng and the
glance of every officer of the court stabbing into his face with
inquiring wonder, recalled him to his position. Then he arose hastily,
with traces of confusion which were so instantly repressed that when
necks already craned stretched a little farther, and eyes already
staring set their gaze yet more intently on the tall figure of the man,
they saw his strongly moulded features as gravely impassive as some
weather-blasted granite face upon a mountain.
But for all its massy strength, it was seen again to be a gentle face.
The lips were firmly set, but the expression of the mouth was kindly.
The eyes were fixed upon the clerk who read the charge against him,
while the prisoner listened with a look at once solemn and dutiful, for
it seemed that again John Hampstead had risen equal to the height on
which he stood.
The tableau was an impressive one. It revealed the majesty of man
bowing before the majesty of the law. It seemed to portray at once the
ponderousness and the power fulness of organized government. A woman
who was almost a stranger had touched a tiny lever and set the machinery
of the law in operation against the most shining mark in all the
community; and here was the man, with the guillotine of judgment poised
above his head, answerable for his acts with his liberty and his
reputation.
In feelingless monotones that galloped and hurdled through the maze of
technical phrasings, the clerk read the complaint which charged the
minister with the crime of burglary; then, pausing for breath, he asked
the formal question:
"Is this your true name?"
"It is," the minister replied quietly, but in a voice of vibrant,
carrying quality that must have penetrated to the outward corridor, and
seemed to sweep a sense of moral power to every listener's ear.
The voice was answered by a sigh, involuntary and composite, that broke
from somewhere beyond the rail. The hearing was on. The unbelievable
had come to pass: John Hampstead, pastor of All People's Church, was
actually standing trial like a common felon.
Briefly and casually the Court instructed Hampstead to his rights and
that he was entitled to be represented by counsel of his own choosing,
or to have counsel appointed for him by the Court.
The minister, still standing and speaking with deliberate composure,
thanked the Court for its consideration, but stated that without
disrespect to the legal profession which he greatly honored, he did not
feel that his cause required expert defense; that in his experience he
had acquired a considerable knowledge of court practice and would depend
upon that, trusting his Honor to put him right if he stumbled into
wrong.
The judge nodded comprehension and assent, and the defendant sat down.
"Are the People ready?" inquired the Court.
"We are," answered the crisp, crackly voice of Searle.
"And the defense?"
Hampstead, his arms folded passively, responded with a slight
affirmative bow.
"We will call Miss Alice Higgins," announced Searle, his voice this time
reflecting that sense of the dramatic which hung over the court room
like a cloud, impregnating its atmosphere as if with an electric charge.
The woman known as Marien Dounay had been sitting at the right of
Searle, gowned in tailored black, her person stripped of everything that
looked like ornament. The wide, flat brim of her hat was carefully
horizontal and valanced by a curtain of veiling, which, while black and
large of cord, was wide meshed enough to show that the very colors of
her cheeks were subdued, as if her whole person were in mourning over
the somber duty to which she regretfully found herself compelled. And
yet the beauty of her features, adorned by the black and sweeping
eyebrows and lighted by the smouldering jet of her eyes, was never more
striking than now, when, after standing for a moment, tall and graceful
on the raised platform of the witness chair, she sat down, and leaning
back composedly, swung about to where her glance could alternate between
the eye of the Court who would hear her and that of Searle who would
interrogate.
But though her composure appeared complete, and never upon any stage had
her magnetic presence more completely centered all attention upon itself
than in this melodrama of real life, it was none the less noticeable to
the discerning that she had not glanced at Hampstead, whose sleeve her
arm must have brushed in passing to the witness chair; and that she
still avoided looking where he sat, but six feet distant, his own eyes
resting upon her face with an odd, speculative light in them.
"Please state your name, business occupation or profession, and place of
residence," began Searle, putting the opening interrogatory in the usual
form through sheer force of habit.
"I am an actress by profession. My name is Alice Higgins; my place of
residence is New York City."
"In your profession as an actress and to the public generally you are
known as Marien Dounay?"
"Yes," replied the witness.
"You are the complainant in this action?"
"Yes."
"I will ask you," began Searle, "if you have ever seen this necklace
before?"
He drew from a crumpled envelope that familiar tiny string of fire and
offered it to the witness. Miss Dounay took it, passed it
affectionately through her fingers, during which the brilliance of the
gems appeared to be magnified, and then, holding the necklace by the two
ends, dropped it for a moment upon her bosom,--a touch of naturalness
that was either the height of art or the supreme of femininity.
"They are my diamonds," she replied.
"And what is their value?"
"Twenty-two thousand dollars."
"Lawful money of the United States?"
"Yes."
"Now, Miss Dounay," continued Searle, "will you be kind enough to relate
to the Court when and under what circumstances you first missed your
diamonds."
Miss Dounay told her story briefly and skillfully, with an appearance of
reluctance when she came to relate the circumstances and facts which
pointed to the minister as the thief. She stated that Hampstead had
always shown curiosity regarding the diamonds and had especially
questioned her concerning their value. As a trusted friend, whom she
had known for years, and who during the last several weeks had visited
her frequently and become rather frankly acquainted with her personal
habits and mode of life, he knew where she kept the diamonds. That so
far as she knew, he was the only one of her acquaintances who possessed
this knowledge; that she had worn the diamonds in company with him
during the evening preceding the supper party, at which she appeared
without them; that no one but her guests were in this room in which the
diamonds were kept temporarily, and that no one but him, so far as she
remembered observing, was in that room alone; that it was her custom to
keep the box containing these and other jewels in the hotel safe, and
when, after the departure of her guests, she went to the casket to send
it down-stairs, it was gone.
Her story done, and to the attorney's complete satisfaction, Searle then
put the final formal questions:
"This property was taken against your will and without your consent?"
"Yes."
"This all happened in the City of Oakland, County of Alameda and the
State of California?"
"Yes."
"That is all," concluded the prosecutor.
"Cross-examine," directed the Court, turning to the defendant.
"I have no desire to cross-examine," replied the minister quietly, but
again with that vibrant, far-carrying note in his utterance.
"You are excused," said the judge to the actress.
With an expression of relief, Miss Dounay left the stand, still without
once having directed her gaze at the accused, although he continued from
time to time to regard her fixedly with a curious, doubtful look.
"Miss Julie Moncrief," announced the prosecutor.
Red-eyed and frightened, the French maid took the stand. In a trembling
voice, and with at least one appealing glance at the minister, who
appeared to regard her more sympathetically than her own mistress, the
little woman gave her testimony. It told of finding the defendant alone
in this room where the guests had been inspecting the models for the
London production of the play. He was not near the table upon which the
models were displayed, but standing by the chiffonier, with his arm
absently thrown across the corner of it, and the hand within a few
inches of the small drawer in which the diamonds reposed temporarily.
"What part of his body was toward the chiffonier?" asked the prosecutor.
"His back and side."
"Where was he looking?"
"Out toward the room to which the guests had withdrawn."
"As if watching for an opportunity of some sort?" suggested Searle.
Hampstead started, and his eyes kindled, but he did not speak. The
Court, however, did.
"In view of the fact," interposed his Honor, "that Doctor Hampstead is
unrepresented by counsel and taking no advantage of a technical defense,
I will remind you, Mr. Searle, that your last question calls for a
conclusion of the witness. She may testify where he was looking, but
she cannot tell what she thinks his actions implied."
"Of course, your Honor, that is right," confessed Searle quickly. "The
witness is somewhat hesitant and embarrassed, and the form of my
question was inadvertent. Under the circumstances," he added suavely, "I
am being especially careful not to take advantage of the defendant."
"That must be apparent to all, Mr. Searle," the judge palavered in
return.
"Where was he looking?" queried Searle.
Having been properly coached by the attorney's question and his reply to
the judge, the half frightened girl faltered:
"He was looking out, _as if watching for an opportunity_."
Color mounted to the cheeks of the judge. Searle looked properly
surprised. The defendant smiled cynically.
"Strike out that portion of the answer which involves the conclusion as
to why he was looking out," instructed the judge solemnly to the
reporter.
"Certainly," exclaimed Searle apologetically. None the less, he was
satisfied with his manoeuvre. He knew the effect of the little French
girl's conclusion could not be stricken out of the mind of the judge who
had heard it expressed, nor out of the mind of the public before whom he
was in reality trying his case.
"State what further you observed," directed the attorney. "Did you see
him move, or anything?"
"He did not move; he only smiled at me and was still there in the same
position when I went out. A few minutes later, I was surprised to see
him bidding Miss Dounay good night."
"Strike out that the witness was surprised," commanded the Court
sternly, while Julie shivered at the sharpness of Judge Brennan's tone.
"That is all," continued Searle.
"Do you wish to cross-examine?" inquired the judge, directing his glance
to Hampstead.
"I do not," replied the minister.
This time the judge looked surprised, and there were slight murmurings,
rustlings, and whisperings beyond the rail. The faltering testimony of
the little maid had driven another nail deeply in the circumstantial
case against the minister, and he had not made the slightest effort to
draw it out by the few words of cross-examination that might have broken
its hold entirely. He might, for instance, have asked if she saw any
one else alone in this room. But the minister did not ask it.
Searle went on piling up his case. The detectives testified to the
arrest of the minister, to the search of his person and house, and to
the finding of the diamonds in the vault box, after which the jewels
themselves were introduced in evidence and marked: People's Exhibit "A",
while the envelope which had contained them and bore the minister's name
and address upon the corner, became People's Exhibit "B."
Each detective and Wyatt was asked to describe minutely the actions of
the minister from the time when the personal search ending in the
discovery of the safe deposit key was proposed until the time when the
diamonds were exposed to view upon the table in the vault room. By this
means, Searle got before the Court the demeanor of the minister as
indicating a consciousness of guilt.
Relentless in pursuing this line, Searle put on the defendant's own
bondsmen, Wilson, Wadham, and Hayes, compelling them to describe,
although with evident reluctance, the impetuous outburst against the
opening of the box when the bond was being arranged, and the scene in
the vault to which they had been witnesses.
Wilson, chafing at the position into which he was forced, was further
roused when Searle exclaimed suddenly:
"I will ask you if the defendant, on or about the day that these
diamonds were stolen, did not approach you for the urgent loan of a
considerable sum of money."
Wilson glared and was silent.
"Did he, or did he not?" persisted Searle sharply.
"He did," snapped Wilson.
"How did he want it, cash or checks?"
"He wanted cash, but I do not see, Mr. Searle--" he began.
"Excuse me, Mr. Wilson, but I think you do see," replied Searle. "Did
you give it to him?"
"I did," replied Wilson, "and I would have given him more--"
"I ask that a part of this answer be stricken out, your Honor, as
volunteered by the witness, and not in response to the question,"
demanded Searle brusquely.
"I think we should not let ourselves become too technical," replied the
Court, with a chiding glance at Searle, for Mr. Wilson was a person of
some importance in the community.
Searle, slightly huffed, again addressed the witness.
"Did the defendant tell you what he wanted this large sum of money for?"
"No. Furthermore--" began the witness.
"That will do! That will do!" exclaimed Searle rising, and motioning
with his hand as if to stop the witness's mouth. "That is all," he
added quickly. "Cross-examine."
Wilson turned expectantly to Hampstead. He was aching to be permitted
to say more, to offer testimony that would break the force of that which
he had just given. But the minister, comprehending fully the generous
desire of his friend, merely looked him in the eye and shook his head;
for this was one of the trails neither he nor any one else must be
permitted to pursue.
Having asked this series of questions of Wilson about the money,
apparently as an afterthought, which it was not, Searle then recalled
Hayes and Wadham, and put the same questions to them. Each made the
same attempt to qualify and enlarge, but each was carefully held to a
statement which pictured John Hampstead making desperate efforts among
his friends to raise quickly what must have been a very large sum of
money, for an unexplained purpose.
Searle felt this to be the climax of his case.
"The People rest," he exclaimed with dramatic suddenness, sitting down
and inserting a thumb in his arm-hole, while after a defiant glance at
the minister, he turned and scanned the spectators outside the rail for
signs of approval of the skillful handling of their cause by him, their
oath-bound servant.
But the eyes of the spectators were on the defendant, who now stepped to
the platform and stood with upraised right hand before the clerk to be
sworn. As he composed himself in the witness chair, his manner was cool
and even meditative. The central figure in this tense, emotional drama,
which had every significance for himself, he seemed scarcely more than
aware of his surroundings.
"My name," he began deliberately, "is John Hampstead. I am thirty-one
years old, and a minister of the gospel. I reside in the County of
Alameda. I am the person named in this complaint. I was at Miss
Dounay's supper party, although I did not stay to supper. I was
probably in the exact position described by the maid, for I believe her
to be truthful. However, I do not remember the incident, beyond the
fact that the group gradually withdrew from this room, and I remained
there in reflective mood for a short interval. I saw Miss Dounay's
diamonds last that evening when she excused herself from the company to
change her costume. I saw them next the morning after, upon the desk in
my study."
The minister paused. The massed audience leaned forward, intent and
breathless. Now his real defense was beginning. His manner, balanced
and impersonal, was carrying conviction with it. The man was the
defendant--the prisoner at the bar--yet he spoke deliberately, as if not
himself but the truth were at issue.
"They were brought there," the witness was saying, "by a man who told me
that he had stolen them. He appeared to be excited. Indeed, his
condition was pitiable. I advised him to immediately return the
diamonds to Miss Dounay, confess his crime to her, and throw himself
upon her mercy; but there were circumstances which made it impossible
for him to act immediately. That is all."
The minister turned from the Court, whom he had been addressing, and
faced Searle, as if awaiting cross-examination. The audience had
listened with painful interest to the minister's story. The manner of
it had unquestionably carried conviction, but its very unbolstered
simplicity had in it something of the shock which provokes doubt. This
effect was heightened by its extreme brevity and a suggestion of
reticence in the narrative.
"Have you concluded?" asked the Court, reflecting the general surprise.
"I have," replied the minister, with the same quiet voice in which he
had given his testimony.
"Begin your cross-examination," instructed Judge Brennan.
"Who is the man who brought these diamonds to you?" asked Searle,
hurling the question swiftly.
"I cannot tell you," answered the minister gravely.
"Why can you not tell?" The voice of Searle was harshly insistent.
"Don't you know who the man was?"
"I do, most assuredly."
"Why can you not tell it?"
"Because the secret is not mine."
"Not yours?" A sneer appeared on the lips of Searle.
"It came to me by way of the Protestant confessional," explained the
minister.
"The Protestant confessional! What do you mean by that?" barked the
prosecutor.
"Simply," replied the minister, "that the instinct of confession is very
strong in every nature moved to penitence and a hope of reform; so that
every minister and priest of whatever faith becomes the repository of a
vast number of confessions of fault and failure, some trivial and some
grave. I used the term 'Protestant confessional' because the Roman
Catholic Church erects the confessional to a place of established and
formal importance. In most other communions it is merely incidental to
pastoral experience, but none the less it is a factor in all effort at
rehabilitation of character."
"And you will not give the name, even to protect yourself?"
"It is not," replied the witness, "a matter in which I feel that I have
any choice. The confession was not made to me as an individual, but to
me as a minister of God. I will hold that confidence sacred and
inviolate at whatever cost until the Day of Judgment."
Dramatically, though unconsciously, the witness lifted his right hand,
as though he renewed an oath to God.
For the first time, too, the utterance of the defendant had betrayed
personal feeling, and for a moment there was a sheen upon his features,
as of a man who had toiled upward through shadows to where the light
from above broke radiantly upon his brow.
"And you take advantage of the fact that such a confession as you allege
is privileged under the law and need not be testified to by you?"
"As I said before," reiterated the minister, with a calm dignity that
refused to be ruffled by the sneer in the cross-examiner's question, "I
do not feel that the secret is mine."
The impression that at this point the witness was retiring behind
intrenchments that were very strong was no more lost upon Searle than
upon the spectators, and he immediately attacked from another quarter.
"We are to understand, then, Doctor, that your guilty demeanor which has
been testified to by your friends as well as the officers was entirely
because you knew the discovery of the diamonds in your box would lend
color to the charge made against you?"
This was another trail that Hampstead must not allow to be pursued.
"You are at liberty to make whatever interpretation of my demeanor you
wish, Mr. Searle," he replied, a trifle tartly.
"Yes, Doctor Hampstead; we are agreed upon that," rejoined the
prosecutor dryly, at the same time making a gallery play with his eyes.
"You say," Searle continued presently, "it was temporarily impossible
for the man who brought these diamonds to you to return them to Miss
Dounay. Why did you not return them yourself instead of placing them in
your vault to await the convenience of the thief?"
The insulting scorn of the latter part of this question was meant to be
diverting to the audience as well as highly disconcerting to the
witness, but the minister smothered the sneer by replying sincerely and
courteously:
"I felt, Mr. Searle, that my problem was to rebuild in the man a sense
of responsibility to a trust and the courage to act upon a moral
impulse. Wisely, or unwisely, I insisted that the entire procedure of
restoration should devolve upon the penitent himself. His first
spiritual battle was to nerve himself to face the owner of the
diamonds."
"Precisely," observed Mr. Searle smoothly, abandoning the jury rail,
against which he had been leaning, to balance himself upon the balls of
the feet and rub his palms blandly. "And in the meantime, while this
thief was gathering his courage, did your consideration for your friend,
Miss Dounay, impel you to notify her that the diamonds were in your
custody and would be returned to her very soon?"
"Not alone was I impelled to do that," replied the minister; "but the
unfortunate man urged such a step upon me. I declined for the same
reason. My entire course of action was dictated by a desire to make
this man morally stronger by compelling him to assume and discharge his
own responsibilities. I was willing to point out the course; but he
must walk the way alone. I will forestall your next question by saying
that for the same reason I did not notify the police."
Searle was nettled by the easy compactness with which the minister
cemented the walls of his defense more closely by each reply to the
questions in cross-examination.
"You are aware, Mr. Hampstead," he thundered with a sudden change of
tactics, "that the act which you have just set forth, so far from
setting up a defense to this charge, proves you guilty under the law as
an accessory after the fact."
"I am not aware of it," replied the minister, with distinct emphasis.
"My impression was that the law considers not only an act but the intent
of the act. The intent of my act was not to conceal a crime, but to
reconstruct the character of a man."
Searle darted a hasty and apprehensive glance at the massed faces behind
the rail.
"That is all," he exclaimed dramatically, with a cynical smile and an
uptoss of his hands, calculated cleverly to portray his opinion of the
utter lack of standing such replies as those of the minister could gain
him in a court of justice.
Judge Brennan looked at Hampstead. "Have you anything in rebuttal?" he
asked.
"Nothing," replied the minister, arising and stepping down to his chair
at the long table, where he remained standing while the attentive
expression of Court and spectators indicated appreciation that the
climax of the defendant's effort was at hand.
The very bigness of the thing the man was trying to do was in some sense
an attest of character, and here and there among the onlookers ran
little currents of reviving sympathy for the clergyman, who stood
waiting quietly for the moment in which to begin his final effort as an
attorney in his own behalf.
Keenly sensitive to the subtlest emotions of the crowd, he understood
perfectly well that the effect of his testimony had been at least
sufficient to secure a verdict of suspended judgment from the
spectators; and he expected far more from the balanced mind of the
judge; so that it was with a feeling of renewed confidence, almost an
anticipation of triumph, that he prepared to make the final move.
"If the Court please," he began dispassionately, as if pleading for a
cause that had no more than an abstract meaning for himself, "I desire
to move at this time the dismissal of the complaint, upon the ground
that the evidence is insufficient to warrant the holding of the
defendant for trial before the Superior Court."
The minister stopped for breath, and there was another of those strange,
composite sighs from beyond the rail.
"In support of that motion," and a note of growing significance appeared
in the speaker's tone, "I argue nothing, except to ask this Court to
accept as true every word of testimony spoken by every witness heard
upon the stand this morning."
The Court looked puzzled, but the ministerial defendant went on:
"I believe the truth has been spoken by Miss Dounay--by the maid--by the
officers--and by my own friends. Yet the facts testified to may be
true,"--the minister's voice rose,--"and the inference to which they
point be wickedly and damnably false! It is so with this case; for be
it noted that I ask your Honor to consider also that my testimony is
true. It denies no statement; it controverts no fact in the case of the
prosecution. On the contrary, it confirms them; but it also explains
them." Again the defendant's voice was rising. "It confirms the facts,
but it utterly refutes the inference that this defendant at the bar is
guilty. Consider the entire fabric of evidence as a seamless garment of
truth, and you can dismiss the complaint with an untroubled brow.
Reason is satisfied! Justice is done!"
Hampstead paused, and a shade of apprehension came to his face, for his
eye had traveled for a moment to that massed expectancy without the
rail.
"The verdict of your Honor is to _me_"--Hampstead in his growing
earnestness had abandoned the fictional distinction between the pleader
and his client,--"of more than usual importance, for by it hangs the
verdict of the people whose interest is attested by those packed benches
yonder. Without disrespect to your Honor, I can say that I care more
for their verdict than for that of any twelve men in any jury box or any
judge upon any bench.
"But under the circumstances the whole people cannot actually
judge--they can only be my executioners. They have not heard me speak.
They can not look me in the eye, nor observe by my demeanor whether I
speak like an honest man or a contemptible fraud. They see me only
through a cloud of skillfully engendered suspicion. They hear my voice
only faintly amid a clamorous confusion of poisoned tongues. Your Honor
must see for them, and speak for them. Your Honor's verdict will be
their verdict. I tremble for that verdict. I plead for it!
"I ask your Honor to take account of the difficulty of my position,
presuming, as the law instructs the Court to presume, that it is the
position of an innocent person. Bound by the most inviolable vow which a
man can take, I am unable to offer to you a conclusive defense by
presenting the man who committed the crime. He may be in this court
room now, cowering with a consciousness of his guilt and in awe at
beholding its consequences to the one who has helped him. He may be an
officer of this Court; he might be your Honor, sitting upon the bench,
which, of course, is unthinkable--yet no more unthinkable to me than
that I should be charged with this crime. But though he be here at my
very side, I cannot reach out my hand and say: 'That is the man.' I
will not touch him nor look at him. Unless he speaks--and I confess
that there is an outside reason why I should absolutely forbid him to
speak--there is no defense that can be offered, beyond the simple story
I have told you.
"May I not, also, without being accused of egotism, remind your Honor
that if it is decided that I appear sufficiently guilty to warrant a
criminal trial in the Superior Court, my work in this community will be
at an end."
The minister was speaking for the first time with a show of deep
feeling, and an indulgent sneer appeared upon the lips of Searle. This
was not legitimate argument. Yet a mere preacher might not be supposed
to know it, and therefore he, Searle, would magnanimously allow the man
to talk himself out, if his Honor did not stop him.
But the Court was also complaisant, and the minister went on with
passionate earnestness to plead:
"Regardless of the ultimate verdict of a jury, the stigma of a felony
trial will be upon me for life. From this very court room I shall be
taken to your identification bureau. I shall be weighed, stripped,
measured--my thumb prints taken--my features photographed like those of
any criminal!"
As Hampstead proceeded, his speech began to be punctuated with spasmodic
breaks, as if the prospective humiliation was one at which his sensitive
nature revolted violently.
"And those finger prints," he labored--"those measurements--and that
photograph--will become a part--of the criminal records--of the State of
California--for as long as the paper upon which they are made shall
last!"
"No! No!! No!!!" shrilled a hysterical voice that burst out suddenly
and ended as abruptly as it began.
Strangely enough it was the complaining witness who had cried out. She
had risen and stood with hands outstretched protestingly to the
minister, while whispering hoarsely: "It cannot be! It cannot be!"
"Madam!" thundered the minister, viewing the woman sternly, his own
emotion of self-sympathy disappearing at this unexpected sign of
softness in her, while his eyes blazed indignantly: "That is a police
regulation which by long custom has come to have all the force of law.
If you doubt it, your accomplice there will so inform you!"
Hampstead, as he uttered the last words, had shifted his blazing glance
to Searle, who at first disconcerted and endeavoring to pull Miss Dounay
back into her seat, now rose and turned toward the defendant, his own
face aflame, and hot words poised upon his tongue.
But Judge Brennan was rapping for silence.
"Compose yourself, madam!" he ordered sternly.
But before the minister's accusing glance, Miss Dounay was already
dropping back into her chair, and as if in dismay at her outbreak,
buried her face in her hands, while Searle, quivering with fury, snarled
out:
"I resent, your Honor, with all my manhood, the epithet which this
defendant has gratuitously and insultingly flung at me."
"Be seated, Mr. Searle," commanded the judge. "Doctor Hampstead's
position is very distressing. He will withdraw the objectionable
epithet."
"I withdraw it," acknowledged the minister, recovering his poise; yet he
said it doggedly and uncompromisingly, qualifying his withdrawal with:
"But your Honor will take into account that the manner of the
representative of the District Attorney has been offensive to me, though
some of the time veiled by an exaggerated pretense of courtesy. It has
seemed to me the manner of an accomplice of the complaining witness, and
I withdraw the statement more out of respect to this Court than out of
consideration for him."
Searle glared, but resumed his seat, giving vent to his temper in a
violent jerk of his chair as he dropped into it.
"You may conclude your remarks," observed the Court to Hampstead.
"There is nothing to add," replied the minister, after a reflective
interval, "except to urge again that your Honor consider the grave
consequences of yielding to a one-sided view of the case. I ask only
that truth be honored and justice done!"
With this the defendant sat down.
Miss Dounay appeared to have regained her composure, but, white and
still, her glance was now fixed as noticeably upon the face of the
defendant as before she had markedly avoided it.
With a hitch to his vest and a forward thrust of the chin, Searle rose
to attack the plea of the defendant.
"Your Honor may well ask with Pilate: 'What is truth?'" he began, the
manner of his speech showing that while his self-control was admirable,
his mood was that vindictive one into which many a prosecutor appears to
work himself when arising to assail the cause of a defendant.
"However," he prefaced, "I must first apologize to your Honor for the
momentary loss of control on the part of the complaining witness. Your
Honor will realize that her emotions were wantonly and deliberately
played upon by the defendant in a skillful endeavor to create sympathy
for himself. The fact that he succeeded so readily is an eloquent bit
of testimony to the sympathetic nature of this estimable and brilliant
woman, to the ease with which her confidence is gained, and the painful
reluctance with which she performs her duty in this sad case: for any
way we view it, it is a sad case, your Honor, and no one regrets more
than I the harsh words which must be spoken in the course of my own duty
to the people of this county.
"However," and Searle paused for a moment as if both gathering breath
and steeling himself for the vicious assault he proposed to make:
"Addressing myself to the plea of the defendant for a dismissal of this
case, I must say flatly that the motion itself, the argument to support
it, and the testimony upon which it is based, constitute the most
audacious combination of effrontery and offensive egotism to which a
court was ever asked to listen. I congratulate your Honor upon the
patience and self-control with which you have contained yourself while
permitting this defendant to go on from statement to statement,
involving himself deeper in this dastardly crime with every word.
"If, your Honor, in all my days at the bar as a prosecutor, I have ever
looked into the face of a guilty man, it is the face of this man!--this
egotist!--this boastful braggart!--" As Searle hurled each epithet, he
worked his passion higher and shook an offensively, impudently accusing
finger at the defendant; "this hypocrite!--this paddler of the palms of
neurasthenic women!--this associate of criminals!--this shepherd of
black sheep, who now sits here with a sneer upon his lips--lips which
have just committed the most appalling sacrilege by seeking to cloak the
guilt of a dastardly act with the sacred gown of a priest of God!"
As a matter of fact, there was no sneer discernible to any one else upon
the lips of the defendant. At first smiling at the mock-fury into which
Searle was lashing himself, they had become white and bloodless under
the sting of these heaped-up insults. But this last was more than the
man could stand in silence.
"Is my position so defenseless, I ask your Honor," Hampstead
interrupted, "that I am compelled to endure this?"
The judge bestowed a chiding glance upon the attorney, but replied to
the minister:
"A certain liberty is allowed the prosecutor."
"But that liberty should not be a license to defame!" protested the
defendant.
"Am I to be permitted to proceed with my argument or not?" bawled Searle
in his most bullying manner, while he glared at the audacious minister.
"You may proceed," replied the Court, affecting not to notice the
disrespect with which it had been addressed.
Searle continued, lapsing now into an argumentative strain.
"The defendant himself has said that the case against him is without a
flaw. He has had the effrontery to urge that your Honor accept the
testimony against him as true testimony. He has only argued that if we
are to believe the witnesses for the prosecution, we are also to believe
him. I say--I affirm with all the force at my command--that we are not
to believe him at all!
"I ask your Honor to consider first the motive for his testimony. The
man is hopelessly involved. The charge of burglary is a simple one,
compared with the broader indictment of moral profligacy which the whole
community is at this moment prepared to find against him. Ruin stares
him in the face. His pose is shattered. His disguise is penetrated.
If he goes from this court room to the identification bureau of which he
has spoken in his mawkish plea for sympathy, as I believe he will go, he
goes to be catalogued with criminals, and to be damned forever in the
esteem of his neighbors.
"To avert that, would not your Honor expect this defendant to be willing
to perjure himself without a qualm? Will a man who has lived a lie
before a whole community for five years hesitate to add another in an
endeavor to avert his impending fate? Will a man who has stolen the
jewels of his trusted friend hesitate to swear falsely in denial of such
an act? Will a man who has worked upon the sympathy of his friends to
secure large sums of money for a purpose so doubtful that it is
undisclosed-- Will he hesitate to work upon the sympathies here by
words and implications, by innuendoes that are as false to religion as
to fact?
"Your Honor knows that he would not so hesitate. Your Honor knows,
through long familiarity with the law of evidence, that the testimony of
a defendant in his own behalf, because of his intense interest in the
outcome of his case, is always to be weighed with extreme care.
"I believe under such circumstances not only the motives, the springs of
action, but the probable mental processes of the witness are to be taken
into account. I ask your Honor what a defendant involved in the mesh of
circumstantial evidence here presented would probably do under these
circumstances. Your own judgment answers with mine that he would
probably lie, and exactly as this defendant has lied!"
Again Searle turned and shook his long arm with insulting undulations in
the direction of the defendant, after which he continued:
"Turning from probabilities to experience, I ask your Honor out of his
memory of years of service upon the bench, what does the arrested
thief--taken like this one, with the loot in his possession--what does
he do? Why, he either confesses his crime, or he tells you that he is
not the thief but an innocent third party, who unwittingly received the
loot from the man of straw, whom his imagination and his necessities
have created. That latter alternative is the defense of this alleged
minister of the Gospel! He had not the honesty to confess, but tells
instead that same old lie which criminals and felons have been telling
in that same witness chair since this Court was first established.
"Yet this defendant's story has not even the merit of a pretense to
ignorance that the goods he held were stolen goods. He boldly admits
that he knew they were stolen; that he was personally acquainted with
the owner; that he knew the distress of her mind; knew the police
departments of half a dozen cities were searching for the jewels, and
that the newspapers were giving the widest publicity to the facts and
thus joining in the chase for loot and looter. And yet he calmly
permits these diamonds to repose in his vault with never a word or hint
to calm the distress of his friend or relieve the peace officers of
burdensome labors in which they were engaging and the unnecessary
expense which they were thus putting upon the taxpayers who support
them!
"Why, your Honor, if the witness's own story is true, he has given this
Court an abundant ground for holding him to answer to the Superior
Court, not indeed upon the exact charge named in that complaint, but as
an accessory after the fact to said charge.
"But it is not true. To use his own phrase, it is wickedly and damnably
false! So palpably false that it collapses upon the mere examination of
your Honor's mind without argument from me.
"Yet I cannot close without calling attention to the sheer recklessness
with which this thief and perjurer has heightened the infamy of his
position by an act of brazen sacrilege. He has sought to make plausible
his weak, unimaginative lie that he received these goods instead of
stealing them, by pretending that he received them in his capacity as a
religious confessor, under conditions that bound him to a silence which
the voice of God alone could break.
"That, in itself, is a claim that should bring the blush of shame to the
cheek and rouse the hot resentment of every honest minister and of every
honest priest, and make them join with the outraged feelings of honest
laymen and of citizens generally in demanding that justice descend upon
this man and strike him from the pedestal of self-righteous egotism upon
which he stands.
"Turning again for a moment to the question of probabilities: I ask your
Honor if it is probable, even thinkable, that any minister, standing in
the position of regard in which this minister stood last Sunday morning
before the eyes of his people, would deem a crisis like this
insufficient to unseal his lips and absolve him from his confessional
vows? His very duty to his God and to his congregation, to the poor
dupes of his hypocrisy, to say nothing of his duty to himself, would
compel him to go upon the witness stand voluntarily and reveal the name
of the alleged thief!
"Such a consideration again forces upon any unbiased mind the conviction
that this man is not speaking the truth. View him as a thief, and you
suspect that his story is a lie. Try to view him as a minister, acting
honestly and in good faith, and you no longer suspect, but you deeply
and unalterably know that his story is a lie!"
Searle, now at the height of his self-induced passion, as well as at the
climax of his argument, stood bent over, his eyes blazing at the judge,
his face red, his neck swollen, his features working in rage, and his
voice deepening to a bull-like roar, while with an upper-cut gesture of
his clenched fist and right arm, he appeared to lift the words to some
mighty height and hurl them like a thunder bolt of doom.
The minister, sitting with every muscle taut, as he strained under the
viciousness of this assault, felt just before its climax some insensible
cause directing his gaze from the face of his official accuser to that
of his real Nemesis, the actress, and was surprised to see her crouching
like a tigress for a spring, with eyes fixed upon the prosecutor, and a
look of unutterable malice, hate, and loathing in their savage beams.
But with this scene thrown for a moment on the screen of his mind, the
suddenly sobering utterance of Searle indicated that he was concluding
his argument, and the defendant's eyes returned quickly to the
attorney's face.
"For these reasons, your Honor," the man was saying, "so patent and
bristling from the testimony that I need not even have spoken of them in
order to bring them to your attention, I ask you to find that the
offense as charged in the complaint has been committed, and that there
is sufficient cause to believe the defendant guilty thereof, and to
order that he be held to answer before the Honorable, the Superior Court
of the County of Alameda and the State of California."
Searle sat down and wiped his brow,--confident that he had added greatly
to his reputation by a masterly argument which had sealed the fate of a
man, against whom, despite the minister's suspicions, he really had
nothing in the world but that instinct for the chase to which, once a
strong nature gives up, it may find itself led on to excesses that are
the extreme of injustice.
The audience moved restlessly yet silently, shifting cramped muscles
tenderly and rubbing strained eyes; but still alert for the issue of the
scene which in one hour and fifty minutes had been played from one
climax to another.
"You have the opportunity to reply," said the Court, addressing
Hampstead.
"The spirit and the manner of this address is its own reply," answered
the defendant quickly, believing hopefully that it was.
But the audience, more discerning than the defendant, issued the last of
its long-drawn collective sighs, foreseeing that the drama was now at
its inevitable end.
In sharp, machine-like tones, the verdict of Judge Brennan was
pronounced:
"_Held to answer! Bail doubled! Adjourned!_"
The gavel fell sharply, and the eyes of the Court darted a warning
glance beyond the rail as if to forestall a possible demonstration of
any sort. But there was none. A kind of restraint appeared to hold the
court and spectators in thrall. Then the official reporter closed his
notebook with an audible whisk; the clerk, gathering his papers, snapped
them loudly with rubber bands; and the judge arose and started toward
his chambers, while Wyatt moved over and took his place significantly by
the side of Hampstead. As if this broke the spell, there was a
shuffling of many feet, while the minister was immediately surrounded by
his bondsmen and a few friends. The friends pressed his hand and stepped
away into the outgoing crowd; but the bondsmen went with him into the
judge's chambers, where the new surety was quickly executed. After
this, wringing the hand of each of the three men feelingly, Hampstead
asked to be excused.
"I have an humiliating experience to undergo," he explained, with a
meaningful glance at Detective Larsen who, representing the Bureau of
Identification, stood waiting. "I prefer to face that humiliation
alone."
"I understand," exclaimed Wilson, his face flushing. "It is a damned
outrage! I didn't know such a thing could be done. I thought every man
was presumed innocent until proven guilty! Instead of that, they put
him in the Rogues' Gallery!"
"You are as innocent as an angel from heaven," averred the white-bearded
Wadham extravagantly, as he laid an affectionate hand upon the shoulder
of the younger man.
"You are, indeed," echoed Hayes, his voice hoarse with emotion. "I
confess again that we doubted for a time, but your character rises
triumphant to the test."
The minister was unwilling to trust himself to further speech; for his
disappointment with the verdict had been great, and the sympathetic
loyalty of these trusted friends made self-control difficult, so with
only a nod of comprehension, he turned quickly to where Detective Larsen
waited.
It was nearly one hour later when the minister, clothed again, stepped
out upon the street. Behind him was his record in the criminal history
of the State of California. He had seen his name go into the card index
with a wife murderer on one side of him and the author of an
unmentionable crime upon the other. With the sickening memory of his
loathsome ordeal searing his brain he was only half-conscious of the
clatter and bang of the busy city life about him. Mercifully the gaping
crowd had dispersed. Hurrying people went this way and that, intent
upon their own concerns. But a newsboy, intent, too, on his concerns,
thrust the noon edition of _The Sentinel_ before the minister's eyes.
Seeking the headline by habit, as the eyes of the victim turn to the
torturing irons, he read in letters as black and bold as any he had seen
that week, the verdict of Judge Brennan.
"HELD TO ANSWER!"
Instinctively Hampstead paused, like a man in a daze, then passed his
hand before his eyes to blot the black letters from his sight. In the
identification bureau, the meaning of those three words had just been
defined to the most sensitive part of his nature in abhorrent and
revolting terms. The sight of that headline to be flaunted on every
street corner was like seeing these words, with their loathsome
connotation, spread upon a banner that arched over the whole sky of life
for him. It overwhelmed him with a sense of the public obloquy to which
he was now to be subjected.
On the street car, as he rode homeward, the minister felt the eyes of
the people upon him,--curiously he knew, derisively he imagined; yet
some were in reality sympathetic. The conductor, as he took the
clergyman's nickel, touched his hat respectfully, thus subtly indicating
that there was some vestige of religious character still outwardly
attaching to his person. And a workman, his tools in his hand and the
stain of his craft upon his clothes, leaned over and touched the
minister upon the arm.
"My boy was playing the ponies in Beany Webster's place," he said. "You
saved him for me. I don't care what else you done; if they ever got me
on the jury, there's one would never convict you of anything."
The minister recognized the friendliness of the remark with a cordial
smile, and put out his hand to grasp gratefully the soiled one of the
toiler. That handclasp was immensely strengthening to him. He felt as
if he had taken hold of the great, steadying hand of God.
*CHAPTER XXXVI*
*A PROMISE OF STRENGTH*
Late in the afternoon of this day, which, it will be remembered, was
Saturday, the minister had three callers in tolerably prompt succession.
The first to appear was the Angel of the Chair, hailing the minister
with a smile as if, instead of disgrace, he had achieved a triumph.
Hampstead's sad face lighted with sheer joy at her manner. It was such
a relief that she had not come to commiserate him. His mood was
extremely subtle. It irritated him to be pitied; it stung him to be
doubted. He only wanted to be believed and to be encouraged by those who
did believe him. This fragile blossom of a woman who, with all her
gentleness and weakness, had yet in her breast the battling spirit of
the martyrs of old, touched just the right note, as after an interval of
sympathetic silence, she asked gently, with a voice full of the
tenderest consideration, "Can you--can you see it to the end?"
"To the end?"