to waver; and I don’t mind confessing that I have never been able to
withstand Michael Tobin from the first hour I met him.
“‘I’ve only seen the man twice,’ said he; ‘but if he doesn’t carry a
drop of the Celt under his waistcoat, Cork was not my birthplace.’
“‘Have you seen him in court?’
“‘Not I. The first time I saw him he was addressing a few well-chosen
remarks, quoting the pagan philosophers, to a select gathering of the
unemployed in Hyde Park. M’Murdo was with me. “My hat,” said he,
“that’s a fellow called Northcote; he’s at the bar. A nice place for
a barrister, isn’t it?” “Personally,” said I, “I don’t care a curse
about the place, but I’d give ten years of my life to have his voice.”
There the thing was booming like an organ, and we stayed half an hour
listening to rhetoric that might have come out of Burke.’
“‘And the second time?’
“‘I have only the haziest recollection of the occasion. Where it was
I can’t recall, but the mob orator was paraphrasing “Hamlet” to gain
facility of expression. But I remember thinking, “My son, you will be
bursting upon an astonished world one of these fine afternoons, and
then we shall all be complaining about your luck for being born so
gifted.”’
“And so, my dear Northcote, to round up a long story, thus it was I
came to stand in your chambers, dinnerless, at a quarter-past ten of a
winter’s night.”
As is not uncommon with those who possess mental energy, the solicitor,
under the stimulus of wine and events, had an immense volubility.
During this recital the claret had circulated freely between his
companion and himself. Both their faces were flushed, and, moreover,
the emotions which had been excited in the young advocate had filled
him with a kind of vertigo.
“After all,” said he, resting his forehead on his hand and staring into
vacancy, “it is most probably Tobin who is the genie.”
“Set a thief to catch a thief,” laughed the solicitor. “Michael Tobin
and yourself are well matched--a pair of deuced odd fellows.”
“In any case,” persisted Northcote, “if a genie you are, you would say
you are a genie in spite of yourself.”
“I say nothing at all when it comes to genies,” said the solicitor with
emphasis. “I don’t know anything about them; they are not in my line.
They don’t trouble the common lawyer in the pursuit of his bread. What
does trouble him is time, for time is money.”
The solicitor took out his watch, a thing of value.
“Twenty past eleven,” he said. “There’s a fortune awaiting the fellow
who invents an automatic brake to slip on old Father Time. I’ve got to
get out to Norbiton to-night,--I promised my little girl, and she will
be sitting up. But before I go I wish you would cast your eyes over
your brief, and tell me precisely what you think about it.”
The solicitor handed to Northcote the document tied with red tape, and
called again for the waiter.
“You’ll have a liqueur?--they’ve got some white curaçao that might
be worse. And perhaps some coffee might help us at this stage.
Fortunately, this is the one place in London where they know how it’s
made. And, Alphonse, you might bring some of those fireworks that you
call cigars.”
VIII
EQUITY A FRUIT OF THE GODS
By the time the waiter had returned, the young advocate was addressing
himself to the bundle of papers with a remarkable energy. Already a
fierce mental excitement had stirred him. His senses, overstimulated by
a wine of great potency, and by a too sudden reaction from a state of
actual bodily starvation, a fever had been kindled in his frame. And
those high ambitions which had reconciled him to existence through so
long a period of the most abject penury, yet whose only home had been
his wild dreams, had suddenly, at the touch of the magic wand of the
enchanter, acquired a name and a local habitation.
It was no wonder that to the eyes of the solicitor, that cool, mature,
and rather cynical man of the world, this young man, in whom strong and
deep emotions had been let loose, soon became an object of scientific
interest. Mr. Whitcomb felt himself to be even a little disconcerted by
the feverish manner in which the young advocate tossed about the pages
of his brief. As he came to note the vivid pallor of the face before
him, the burning of the eyes, the twitching of the lips, he felt a
qualm of uneasiness. Perchance it had been neither wise nor kind to be
so lavish of the Château Margaux. Blood which had been deteriorated by
a course of insufficient food was only too likely to be over-charged
by an unaccustomed accession of heat. Already it had seemed to be
waxing too high.
“Here is your liqueur,” said Mr. Whitcomb, with a slight perturbation,
“and here’s a cigar I’ve chosen for you. And here’s a nice black coffee
that may steady you a bit.”
“Thanks, thanks,” muttered Northcote, nodding his head in a mechanical
manner.
The solicitor gulped his liqueur, and cut off the end of his cigar.
“Well, old boy,” he said, letting a somewhat whimsical gaze fall upon
the man who sat opposite, “do you feel like giving us a bit of a run
for our money at the hour of ten-thirty at the Central Criminal Court
on Friday morning next, or would you prefer that the chance should be
offered to Harris?”
The advocate swallowed his coffee.
“You will have a run for your money all right,” said he, “on Friday
morning next. Upon my soul, I believe you have given me a start with
the most fascinating case in the world.”
The solicitor pursed up his lips in an expression of genial
contradiction.
“If you find fascination in a thing like that,” he said, “you must look
very deep. The whole business is sordid, atrocious, bestial. The crime
is brutal and perfectly commonplace.”
“Is it not a mere question,” said the advocate, “of the fashion in
which one uses one’s eyes, of the plane over which one permits them to
stray?”
“There is only one plane, my friend,” said the solicitor, “over which
an attorney permits _his_ eyes to stray. That is the obvious diurnal
one of matter-of-fact common sense.”
“Yet it may happen,” Northcote rejoined, “that the plane of
matter-of-fact common sense may not be identical in the eyes of
attorney and advocate.”
“Is not the hour somewhat advanced for a Socratic dialogue?” said the
solicitor.
“Also,” persisted Northcote, “the plane of matter-of-fact common sense,
in whatever it may consist, may not prove identical in the eyes of the
jury and the judge; also in the eyes of the person who committed the
crime, and the person who was the victim of it.”
“We are not here to traverse the moral code,” said the solicitor,
“or to enter the domain of abstract reason. The English penal law is
perfectly explicit upon the point at issue, as I think you will find on
Friday.”
Of a sudden Northcote struck the table a violent blow.
“This unhappy woman has been deeply wronged by circumstance,” he said,
with a vehemence that was totally unexpected.
“It will do your case no harm to show that to the jury,” said the
solicitor, sucking quietly at his cigar. “There is not a scrap of
evidence to support such a contention, but it might be of service if it
could be upheld.”
“Is it not here that we enter on the higher function of the advocate’s
art?” said the young man. “Does it not consist in the evocation of that
which lies outside the obvious?”
“You must have it entirely your own way, my dear fellow,” said the
solicitor warily. “I don’t propose to play the rôle of Adeimantus at
this hour of the night. But I don’t mind remarking that you will have
to evoke that which is very far outside the obvious to secure the
acquittal of my client on Friday.”
“That is viewing the subject from the plane of matter-of-fact common
sense which you are content to inhabit?”
“That is so; I can view it from no other. But may I remark in
parenthesis that you are also likely to find the judge and jury
inhabiting that plane on Friday.”
“You permit yourself a greater definiteness than I dare to employ,”
said Northcote. “But the point I would like to fix is this: Assuming
that I am able to evoke that which in your view lies so far outside the
obvious as to be non-existent, will you countenance my so doing in the
prisoner’s interest?”
The solicitor gave a short nervous jerk to his mustache.
“That is a rather extraordinary proposition to advance,” he said
disconcertedly; “and as you are a young man, a beginner, perhaps you
will forgive my saying that I consider you hardly wise to advance it.”
“Because we cannot contrive to keep our corns out of the way, eh? We
would look upon equity as a sort of fruit of the gods, which mankind
may eat of, but may not analyze.”
“I shall not attempt to follow you. But what I would like to say is
this,--and I hope, my dear fellow, you, as an advocate, will not
consider this as a breach of etiquette on the part of your client,--I
don’t like your question at all. In a word, speaking with twenty years’
experience behind me, I hardly think it ought to have been put.”
The accession of somewhat strenuous solemnity to a manner which a
minute ago had been grossly, carelessly genial, filled Northcote with a
heavy mocking laughter.
“I don’t like it at all; oughtn’t to have been put,” Mr. Whitcomb
reaffirmed, with a curious admixture of nervousness and sternness.
“I wonder if I shall ever acquire the most valuable of all the arts,”
said the young man, with an arch smile; “the art of knowing where not
to look.”
“That art comprises the first law of success,” said the solicitor
sententiously.
“I omitted to append a rather important corollary to that extraordinary
proposition of mine,” said Northcote, with a mischievous air. “It is
this: Is the advocate entitled to evoke what is non-existent in the
eyes of his client, providing it has an existence in his own?”
“I hope to be spared anything further upon the subject,” said the
solicitor. “I don’t aspire to be a casuist; I’m a common lawyer. But I
feel I am entitled to say this: use this subtlety of yours on Friday to
a full advantage, and you will have no cause to regret having done so.”
“Yes, it’s the voice of the genie, right enough,” said the young man,
in a hollow voice, as he toyed with an empty wine-glass.
“And I feel I am also entitled to say,” said the solicitor, with
emphasis, “since your mind appears to be exercised by the question,
that when an advocate accepts a brief, his whole duty is to his client.”
“And in the case of this unfortunate woman, will serve the interests
of his client by securing her acquittal?”
“Unquestionably.”
“If the ends of justice are thereby defeated?”
“Well, since you force one to say it, the interests of the prisoner’s
attorney may not always be coincident with those of justice.”
“My dear Adeimantus, that is well said,” the young man exclaimed. “Yet
I have your assurance that the interests of client and advocate should
be always identical?”
“Yes, I think you are entitled to say that,” said the solicitor;
“although understand, if you please, I speak entirely in my capacity as
an attorney.”
“From which I gather that as a unit of mankind, as a subscriber to
the common equity, you reserve to yourself the right to appease your
private gods subsequently in your own private fashion?”
“I suppose one does.”
“And in the meantime, you and I, attorney and advocate, must compass
the liberation of this foul murderess, must, if we can, give her back
to society?”
“Personally, I shall be content if we enable her to escape the extreme
penalty.”
“You balk my question.”
“Pray have it as you choose. Thank God, I am only a common lawyer!”
“My dear Samuel Whitcomb,” said the young man, peering at him with
gaunt eyes, “you would do well to get down here and now on your knees,
and thank Him for a dispensation of that kind.”
IX
THE BRIEF WITHDRAWN
“Waiter!” called the solicitor at this point. “More coffee, if you
please. Let it be hot and strong.” Turning to Northcote, he added: “Our
minds have grown so subtle with that claret we’ve got to find out where
we are.”
“Narcotics are not usually the friends of truth,” said his companion.
“My worthy Samuel Taylor,” laughed the solicitor, “I hope you will not
forget I want to get to Norbiton to-night.”
“There is one other point,” said the young man imperturbably, “on which
I wish to render myself clear.”
Mr. Whitcomb permitted himself a shrug of unmistakable expostulation.
“What, another!” he muttered under his breath. “This fellow is the
devil!”
“I do not propose to take the line of insanity.”
Northcote spoke with a quietness which seemed to deepen the
reverberation of Mr. Whitcomb’s subsequent exclamation.
“Then you hang her!”
“On the contrary,” said Northcote, “I promise an acquittal.”
For a moment the solicitor was robbed of speech by this extraordinary
announcement.
“Upon my word,” he exclaimed, with a more manifest impatience than
any he had yet shown, “you can hardly have read your brief. There is
nothing to extenuate the crime; and the evidence of it is overwhelming.”
“Circumstantial, apparently.”
“You must know that in a capital charge the prosecution relies almost
invariably upon circumstantial evidence.”
“So much the worse for it in this particular instance.”
“I am at a loss to understand.” The solicitor spoke in accents of
alarm. “There is not a man living who could overthrow the present
evidence.”
The young man smiled darkly. The symptoms of his inebriation had
yielded to the clarifying influence of a liqueur and two cups of strong
black coffee. His calmness was now forming a memorable contrast to the
marked excitement of the older man.
“My dear Mr. Whitcomb,” he said, “I suggest, as you wish to get to
Norbiton, that we adjourn this discussion until Friday evening, by
which time Emma Harrison, _alias_ Cox, _alias_ Marshall, will be
restored to society.”
“Such an undertaking is entirely reckless,” said the solicitor bluntly.
“Quite the last thing that Tobin himself would attempt would be to
upset the theory of the prosecution. The chain of evidence could not
be more complete. Even he, in the opinion of many the most brilliant
common law man we have at the present moment at the bar, would be
content to urge extenuating circumstances, and call witnesses in their
support.”
“Since you have seen fit to entrust the conduct of this case to me,”
said Northcote, “I shall beg to be conceded as free a hand as would
have been conceded to Michael Tobin.”
“Is your request quite reasonable?” said the solicitor. “Tobin has
years of experience and success behind him.”
“You can trust me not to attempt more than I can perform,” said
Northcote.
“Really, sir,” said Mr. Whitcomb, genuinely alarmed by such an
obduracy, “I cannot admit your right, in the circumstances in which you
stand at present, to overstep the bounds that are so clearly indicated
by persons of experience.”
“I take this brief into court free of all restriction,” was the young
man’s rejoinder.
“That one can hardly consent to,” said the solicitor. “Would you say it
is quite legitimate to make such a stipulation? We have our witnesses
on the line of insanity, and we must ask to have them called.”
“But do you not see,” said Northcote, “that if we call those witnesses
we admit the theory of the prosecution, and cut the ground from under
our own feet?”
“Certainly, certainly. One would have thought that so much would be
self-evident.”
“Yet you sought me out in the capacity of a fighter. I take it that had
you not desired to fight you would have gone straightway to Harris.”
“I can only admit the possibilities of a fight within limits. The
woman’s guilt is established beyond question; our only concern is to
mitigate its degree.”
“For my own part,” said the advocate, “I am not prepared to accept
your proposition. To my mind, so far is the woman’s guilt from being
already established, that I am prepared to give an undertaking that it
never will be established.”
The solicitor drummed his fingers on the table-cloth.
“I should like Tobin to hear you say that. I wish you had been at the
police-court when the case came before the magistrate. There is enough
evidence to hang an archdeacon.”
“Very likely. But we shall be getting back to those abstract principles
for entertaining which I have already suffered reproof.”
The solicitor gave an uneasy eye to his watch.
“You force me to deliver an ultimatum,” said he, in an uncompromising
tone. “Please have the goodness to give an undertaking to conduct the
defence on the lines indicated by Tobin, or return the brief.”
A wave of blood surged through the brain of the young advocate. A
dismal sickness overspread his veins. Tantalus was about to pluck away
that which he had fasted and prayed for before he could take it in his
grasp.
“You have entrusted it to me already,” he said, in a dull, dry voice.
“In a case of this magnitude,” said the solicitor, with an almost
brutal precision, “I reserve to myself the right to alter my mind. You
have forced me to issue an ultimatum. Accept or reject it, whichever
you choose.”
The solicitor called for his bill in a hectoring manner, and threw a
bank-note on the waiter’s salver.
The young advocate, in the meantime, buttoned the brief in the
breast-pocket of his somewhat threadbare black coat.
“What is your decision?” said the solicitor, regarding the young man
with an insolent coolness.
“You can’t have back your brief,” said Northcote. “You gave it to me.”
“It can only be held conditionally,” said Mr. Whitcomb, “and the
conditions are perfectly easy to accept.”
“The brief was delivered unconditionally into my keeping,” said
Northcote, in an arid voice. “And,” he added, with a sudden gleam of
the eyes as an overpowering recollection of his destiny came back to
him, “you will have no reason to regret your act.”
Before the solicitor had framed a reply the waiter had returned with
the receipted bill.
“Keep the change,” said the solicitor, “and call a hansom.”
The waiter withdrew.
“Do I take it,” said the solicitor, with an incisive drawl in his
speech as he turned to Northcote, “that you have said no?”
“I have said no in the first place to your restrictions,” said
Northcote, looking him full in the eyes, “and in the second to your
ultimatum.”
“Then with all possible reluctance I must ask you to have the goodness
to return the brief.”
“With an equal reluctance I feel I must decline to do so,” said
Northcote, speaking through tight lips.
For a moment the solicitor was taken aback by this pointblank refusal.
“But--but--” he stammered, “surely this is most unprofessional. Such a
thing has never happened to me in all my twenty years of practice.”
“And I don’t suppose,” rejoined the young advocate, “it will
ever happen to you again. But suppose we leave the plane of our
professionalism, step down from our platform, and approach the
prejudices of each other in a rational spirit.”
“No more argument, I beseech you,” said the solicitor sternly; “I’ve
got to get to Norbiton. Return the brief, and we will say no more. You
are not the man for this case. You have a bee in your bonnet; you have
too many brains. I think none the worse of you, mind; I respect you;
you have your ideas; one day they may prove valuable, but not in common
law. You have mistaken your _métier_, that is all. We will say you are
above your work; at any rate, with all deference to Michael Tobin, I
shall prefer to see Harris holding briefs of ours before a common-sense
English jury and a matter-of-fact English judge when it comes to the
capital charge.”
“If you are present in court on Friday,” said Northcote, “you will find
that I, not Harris, will still be holding the brief you entrusted to my
care.”
“Upon my word,” muttered the solicitor to himself, “this fellow is a
madman, a lunatic. I dare say he’s been starving so long that a square
meal has turned his brain.”
Involuntarily his eyes began to traverse the face of the man who sat
bolt upright with arms folded at the other side of the table. It was
excessively pale, flushed with wine and conversation, and strangely,
exquisitely mobile. It had a kind of gaunt delicacy, but the obvious
traces of suffering were permeated by a remarkable power. The features
were irregular yet not unpleasing, the nose was straight and incisive,
the eyes deep and luminous, the mouth large and full-lipped. The
general expression was sombre, because it was so bluntly dominating,
yet it was rendered memorable by many subtle qualities. Clearly it was
one of those faces which to see was never to forget.
Mr. Whitcomb, in spite of his desire to get to Norbiton, and the severe
tests to which his constitutional arrogance as an immensely successful
man of the world had been subjected, owed too much to his trained
powers of observation to lay them aside at a moment so remarkable.
“This fellow is cut to a big pattern,” was his mental comment. “That is
a splendid mask for an advocate. Upon my soul, if he were not so mad
I think I should be inclined to back him heavily. Yet I believe he is
literally starving.”
The solicitor rose abruptly from the table to dispel his reverie.
“Rather than you should feel you have ground for complaint,” said he
abruptly, as if touched by compassion, “I shall ask you to allow me to
advance half of your fee; and to-morrow I will send you some other sort
of work.”
Mr. Whitcomb unrolled a note for ten pounds and gave it to Northcote.
“Now,” he said, “kindly return the brief and I will go.”
Northcote crumpled up the note and thrust it in his pocket.
“I accept half my fee,” said he, “not as a bribe, but as a retainer.
By this means I pledge myself to conduct the case to its appointed
issue.”
“Pray do not let us misunderstand one another,” said the solicitor,
with a sense of being trapped. “This brief is withdrawn definitely; I
ask you to return it to me. I give you ten pounds as a solatium for
losing your fee.”
“I cannot construe the situation in that fashion,” said the young man
calmly.
“This is not a question of construction,” said the solicitor, with his
anger beginning to announce itself; “it is a question of hard fact.
Your brief is withdrawn.”
“And I,” said Northcote, with expansive bluntness, “do not submit to
its withdrawal.”
Before this _impasse_ which had presented itself in a manner so
definite, the solicitor, whose patience had been strained beyond the
breaking-point, could only take refuge in a series of imprecations.
“Fellow’s drunk,” he muttered. “Shall have to see him first thing
to-morrow. But it is most irritating that he should refuse to give up
the papers when time is so short. It looks like an application for a
postponement after all.”
The solicitor turned for the last time to the advocate.
“It is a quarter-past twelve,” he said brusquely, “and I am going home.
And I would like to urge you to gain reflection by the aid of a few
hours’ sleep, because I shall look for that brief to be delivered at my
offices at a quarter-past ten to-morrow morning. Good night.”
He held out his hand; Northcote ignored it.
“You appear to impugn my sobriety,” said the latter, “and that is a
pity, because in all my life I have never felt my mind to be quite
so clear as it is to-night. Perhaps it is not fair to expect you to
appreciate the point at which I have arrived, and why it is impossible
for me to restore your brief.” He pressed his hands over the bundle of
papers in his coat. “You see your brief is my destiny.”
A final expression of somewhat forcible disapproval escaped Mr.
Whitcomb, and he moved away to the room in which he had deposited his
hat and coat.
As an attendant was assisting to envelop the solicitor’s portliness in
these articles, it annoyed him to find that Northcote had followed him.
“Why not spare one this trouble to which you are putting one?” he said
reproachfully. “Why not be moderately reasonable about it?”
“Ah, you see,” said Northcote with a smile, as he presented the
ticket for his own extremely time-worn hat and coat, “even a thing so
primitive as ‘the moderately reasonable’ must submit itself to the
peculiarly elusive mental plane one is doomed to inhabit.”
“Peace! peace!” said the solicitor. “No more of that!”
“Attorney and advocate, judge and jury,” said the young man, as he
rummaged in vain among his pockets to find a tip for the attendant,
“justice and equity, the prisoner at the bar and the victim of
circumstance,--one and all are to be poised upon the same arbitrary
moral elevation, to submit to the mandates of a tribunal which is the
creation of that egregiously warped and time-serving thing upon which
we bestow the name of The Majority.”