_Justice Nods._
Jack Wolvert did not put in an appearance at dinner and Mrs. Atterbury
explained that he was suffering from one of his severe headaches and
had taken an opiate. Her manner gave no indication that she possessed
an inkling of the truth, but Betty's apprehensions were not lulled
into a false security. That Wolvert had not immediately betrayed her
in blind rage argued that he was biding his own time for a personal
revenge all the more complete and she realized that when the hour came
she could expect no mercy.
Madame Cimmino's dull eyes glowered at her in undiminished animosity
and suspicion, but she forced herself to a show of civility in the
presence of her hostess; and in the greater danger which menaced her
Betty gave little heed to the woman who looked upon her as a rival.
The following day, however, Wolvert reappeared, his debonair, ironic
spirit of raillery unquenched. There was an unaccustomed pallor on his
dark face and it was noticeable that he held one arm stiffly, but to
Madame Cimmino's solicitous queries he responded only with a petulant
shrug.
Throughout the morning meal he kept up a running fire of facetious
comment directed with suave impertinence at Betty and she seized
the first opportunity to retire to her work in the library. She had
anticipated this attitude on his part but her nerves were beginning
to play her false and she wondered despairingly how long the crisis
would be delayed. For the first time she felt a doubt of herself; not
that her resolution should falter but lest her strength fail under the
strain and at the crucial moment sheer weakness rob her purpose of its
fulfillment.
Mrs. Atterbury followed her into the library as she seated herself
before the desk.
"Not that this morning, my dear." She shook her head with a slow smile.
"The letters must wait. Have you ever been in a courtroom, Betty?"
"No." The girl turned to her, wonderingly. "There is a county
court house at home, but I have never been inside it. Do people go
here--women, I mean--unless----?"
She faltered and Mrs. Atterbury completed the question for her.
"Unless they are prisoners or witnesses, you mean? Indeed, yes! There
are seats apportioned off for spectators and a particularly grewsome
and revolting murder trial will bring out as many feminine auditors as
a fashionable divorce. As you know, I personally avoid all horrors, but
there is a case now before the Bar which presents some very interesting
features to a student of human nature. A poor wretch named Huston is on
trial for the murder of his wife, who by all accounts richly deserved
to be done away with. Would you mind running down there for an hour
this morning, my dear? Do you think you could venture into the presence
of a murderer without succumbing to hysterics?"
"I think so," the girl responded quietly. "In all probability I may
have been in the presence of one before this, without knowing it."
"What a strange thought!" Mrs. Atterbury eyed her keenly. "You have an
odd philosophy all your own, as I have discovered; but what put such an
idea into your head, Betty!"
"The very people one passes in the street may have murder in their
hearts or upon their consciences. Who can tell?" Betty paused and drew
a deep breath. "Consider the number of murder mysteries which are never
solved; this Breckinridge case, for instance."
"What do you mean?" Mrs. Atterbury shifted her gaze to the window.
"Haven't you been reading about it in the papers?" persisted the girl,
inwardly quaking at her own temerity, but determined to discover if
the woman before her would betray any knowledge of what had taken
place beneath her roof. "They call it the greatest sensation of years."
"I remember the name, but I carefully avoided the details." Her
employer observed coolly. "That sort of thing repels me and it is not
from any interest in this present trial that I am sending you there
this morning. There will be a man in the courtroom who has a message
for me and for certain reasons, as on the other occasions when you
have acted for me, it is inadvisable for me to appear personally in
the transaction. I have tested you, my dear, and I feel that you
are to be trusted, at least as far as is compatible with my oath.
We are all members of a powerful secret organization working for
broad humanitarian ends. I need not assure you that there is nothing
unlawful about it, for you can realize that I would not lend my name
or influence to any purpose no matter how charitable, the methods of
which could be questioned. It is necessary, however, for diplomatic
and political considerations, that the work shall proceed as quietly
as possible until the strained relations which exist between certain
European powers shall have been adjusted. That is all I am at liberty
to tell you now, but later everything will be made plain to you, and
you will never regret the slight services you have rendered."
"I am sure that I shall not," Betty remarked quietly. "It is good of
you to take me into your confidence, Mrs. Atterbury, and you know that
I will respect it, but it was unnecessary as far as I am concerned. It
is enough for me that you wished me to go upon these errands."
"You are a model!" There was unusual warmth in her tone, but her eyes,
as they rested upon the girl, narrowed with a slow, amused contempt.
"Unquestioning obedience is rare and you will find it a valuable asset.
Now, my dear, I shall want you to be in the courtroom by eleven. Dress
very plainly; your old dark cloak will do. Present this card at the
door and you will be ushered into a seat which has been reserved for
you. Remain until court adjourns at the end of the morning session and
hang back until you are among the last of the spectators to leave. A
man will approach you as before and give you a letter for me. Take no
more notice of him than you did of the others, and come straight home.
You must use the public conveyances, as the car is being overhauled,
but I will direct you when you are ready."
The route laid down to her was even more circuitous than that of the
previous Sunday and Betty followed it faithfully, keeping a sharp
lookout for a possible trailing taxicab, but those which surrounded her
in the mazes of traffic seemed bent solely on their own affairs and
nowhere did she glimpse the kindly, keen gray eyes of Herbert Ross.
However, the idle artisan was again beneath the lamp-post at the gate
and a man in overalls with a plumber's kit emerged from a house midway
of the block and sauntered after her, boarding the same car. When she
mounted the steps of the courthouse, after many changes of conveyance
and crosstown divergencies, a man brushed against her with a swift
glance at her scarred cheek. Without the kit of tools and buttoned into
a greatcoat which covered him to his knees, she yet had no difficulty
in recognizing in him the erstwhile plumber's assistant, and Betty's
lips tightened.
Others, then, besides Ross held her under espionage, and the mysterious
words of the little dressmaker, Miss Pope, flashed across her memory:
"Before you know it you'll be caught, too, and you'll never be able to
get free!" Had Mrs. Atterbury employed her in these errands not only
for their accomplishment but to identify her secretary irrevocably with
the organization of which she had spoken? Was she to be scapegoat as
well as catspaw? The price she must pay for her temerity was looming
more sinisterly before her with each passing hour, but her will was all
the more indomitably fixed. Though she stood within the very shadow of
the law she would still fight on.
Finding her way with some difficulty to the grand jury room, Betty
presented her pass to the gray-haired doorman. She had received it in a
sealed envelope from Mrs. Atterbury and had made no attempt to tamper
with it, but as the court attendant extricated the card and read the
words pencilled upon it he eyed her with amazement, in which an added
respect was mingled, and without a word led her to a seat apart from
the other spectators.
It was near the press rail, facing the jury box and almost on a line
with the Bench, beside a narrow aisle leading to a single door. Betty
seated herself and once again her mission was temporarily forgotten in
absorbed interest in the scene before her.
She had no difficulty in picking out the prisoner; a mild-faced,
sandy-haired little man, shrunken and bowed in his place beside his
lawyers. Just back of him sat a slender woman in rusty black, whose
face was hidden from Betty's gaze and whose tremulous hand reached out
in pathetic tenderness to the man before her.
Betty looked again at the prisoner and the puzzled look in her eyes
gave place to a flash of recognition. She leaned forward in her chair,
agape with amazement and startled interest, until the consciousness of
shrewd glances from the assembled representatives of the press made her
draw back in belated caution.
Vaguely, almost subconsciously, she observed the stolid jury and
the stern, inflexible countenance of the judge. The faces of the
spectators, too, passed before her in meaningless review, not one
impressing itself individually upon her agitated mind.
As the case progressed, and witness succeeded witness, it became
evident that the whole defense hinged upon an alibi which the
prisoner's attorneys found difficulty in proving. The testimony offered
was inconclusive and the prosecutor riddled it with ease or blasted it
with deftly turned ridicule.
The hideous story was gradually unfolded in all its revolting detail,
and Betty's heart sank within her as the evidence, circumstantial, but
damning, was heaped upon the prisoner's bowed head. The little woman
behind him did not waver in her attitude of protective tenderness and
something in her tremulous, almost furtive, gestures appealed to Betty
as being vaguely familiar, although the face was still turned from her.
A particularly brilliant shaft of ironic wit from the prosecutor
created a stir of amusement among the spectators and as the clerk
of the court rapped for order, Betty's eyes again sought the judge.
Beneath the huge mural painting of Justice he sat immovable, his thin
lips set in a straight line, his cold, gray eyes fastened with grim
intentness upon the prisoner. No mercy tempered his jurisdiction, she
felt certain; no slightest benefit of a doubt would be permitted to
weigh in the scales for any unfortunate mortal whose life might hang
in the balance. She shuddered, her gaze once more descending to the
little ignominiously isolated group below and at that instant the woman
behind the prisoner turned her head and the cold light from the tall
window fell full upon her face.
It was little Miss Pope! The timid, nervous, self-effacing seamstress
who had warned her of danger and begged her to leave almost beneath the
argus eyes of Mrs. Atterbury, and whose strange words had returned to
the girl's mind within the hour, after a lapse of many eventful days.
What connection could exist between her and the wretched creature at
the Bar? Were Mrs. Atterbury's affairs also somehow involved in this
tragic crisis?
Her employer had declared herself uninterested in the case herself and
no mention had been made of Miss Pope, yet she must have known the girl
would recognize her. The letter was to be delivered by a man; could it
be that it would come from the prisoner himself or one of his friends?
He seemed singularly alone in his trouble and sat as if hypnotized,
gazing straight before him in a dull stupor of misery. Once his eyes
met Betty's and the girl swiftly paled, but there was no consciousness
of recognition in their fixed stare.
Until the morning session ended the girl sat tense and motionless,
listening to the testimony, but only receiving a general impression
of its tenor. A conflict was raging within her, and she faced the
most vital problem which had ever presented itself for her decision.
Heretofore her path, beset with difficulties as it was, had been
plainly marked before her and her will had driven her on relentlessly
over every obstacle, but now she had reached without warning an
insurmountable barrier and she hesitated which course to pursue around
it.
A rustle of papers and shuffling of feet in the press enclosure
and a concerted movement among the spectators aroused her from her
thoughts and apprised her that court had adjourned. The judge rose in
all the awful majesty of his black robes and sweeping down from the
Bench, came toward her along the narrow aisle. Betty noted the stern
preoccupation in his averted eyes and the grim, inexorable set of his
lean, shaven jaw and her vision blurred in pity for the hapless victim
of circumstances whose doom seemed already sealed.
The judge passed her so closely that his robe fluttered against her
knee; then he disappeared through the door which led to his private
chambers. Betty, fumbling for her glove, glanced down into her lap and
then sat as if petrified with her eyes fairly starting from her head.
There upon her knee, half-hidden by her muff, lay a small thick
envelope, its square, blank expanse staring up at her in uncompromising
self-evidence! The judge himself! Mrs. Atterbury's organization must be
indeed powerful when it could command the services of an administrator
of justice!
Betty slipped the envelope into the capacious pocket of her cloak and
rose as if in a trance. The shock of surprise had fairly taken her
breath away and she strove vainly to collect herself as she lingered in
obedience to her employer's instructions until only a few stragglers
remained in the courtroom. Little knots of people had gathered in the
corridor outside and she was threading her way through them when a
convulsive clutch fell upon her arm, and looking up hastily, she found
herself face to face with Miss Pope.
The little dressmaker's eyes were reddened and sunken and she seemed to
have aged many years in the brief period that had elapsed since their
last meeting.
"Miss Shaw!" The name fell from her lips in a quivering whisper.
"You remember me, don't you? I made those dresses for you at Mrs.
Atterbury's----"
"Yes." Betty took her hand in a little sympathetic squeeze. "I remember
you, of course, Miss Pope. I recognized you in the courtroom and I am
so sorry that a friend of yours is in trouble."
"He is my brother, and he is innocent!" The whisper changed to a low
wail, and she clung to the girl's arm as if for support. "Oh, Miss, you
don't know what it means to sit there day after day and listen to them
hounding him to his death, knowing all the time that a word would save
him! But there's nobody to say it, and they'll send him to the chair;
him that never hurt a fly, he was so tender-hearted!"
"Your brother!" Betty murmured. "But the name--?"
"My half-brother, I should say. He's fifteen years younger than me, but
he's all I have in the world and I love him like a mother and sister in
one. Oh, Miss, if you only knew----!"
"We cannot talk here." Betty interrupted the little woman's
grief-stricken outburst and drew her aside nervously. "I have not much
time, I must return almost at once, but I should so like to comfort
you. You look faint and ill; isn't there a lunchroom near where we can
get some coffee?"
"There's a little place just around the corner where I usually go, but
I can't eat. It's just as if my heart had settled up in my throat and
closed it." Her face was working piteously. "I shall go crazy if I
can't talk to somebody, Miss. I feel as if each hour was the end; that
I couldn't go on any longer."
Betty led the way to the modest little restaurant and when they were
seated opposite each other at the narrow, linoleum topped table and the
order given, she leaned compassionately toward her sorrowful guest.
"Tell me what you can, Miss Pope. I sympathize with you deeply, more
deeply than you know, and I would do anything that I could to help you
in your trouble. I have not forgotten that you tried to do me a good
turn, even if you could not explain, and I am grateful."
Miss Pope's faded eyes lighted with sudden interest.
"You're still there, in that house? You haven't been dismissed yet, and
you are free to come and go as you please! Oh, Miss Shaw, keep your
eyes open and think twice of anything you are asked to do. Don't let
yourself be led into what you don't understand. I'm talking too much, I
know, but I can't seem to even think straight these days." She paused,
and the old look of hopeless misery dulled her eyes once more. "Since
Robbie's wife was killed, and they took him away, it seems as if I'd
lived in a nightmare."
"How did it all happen?" asked Betty.
"Robbie and his wife lived apart. She's dead, and the least said about
her the better, but she was a disgrace to a decent man. One morning,
about three months ago, they found her dead in her bed with her head
beaten in. Robbie was questioned, but he didn't know anything about
it, he hadn't seen her in nearly a year. He was left free then and the
police went after another man, but, because they couldn't find him,
they fastened on Robbie again. You heard the evidence this morning,
Miss. He has a temper, for all he's so meek-looking, and he had cause
enough to kill her, Heaven knows, but he never did it, never, although
he had made threats, like anybody who is tried beyond endurance."
She paused in her rapid flow of words and wiped her eyes on a wisp of
handkerchief while Betty sat silent, with every nerve taut.
"There was a terrible snowstorm, the biggest one of the year, on the
night she was killed," Miss Pope went on. "Robbie is the chauffeur for
the King family, of Hempstead; it's Mr. King who is paying for the
defense. He ordered Robbie to take the car into town that night to meet
some folks who were arriving from the West, but Robbie never got there;
he was stalled in a snowdrift all night on a lonely part of the road.
That's why he's got no alibi."
"Did no one see him or talk to him?" Betty's voice was low and strained.
"Only one person and we can't find her. She won't come forward and
speak for him; most likely she forgot all about him an hour after,
although we've advertised and done everything we can."
"Does he know who she is?" Betty asked, her eyes upon her plate.
"No, Miss. It was some little time before he got stalled, when he was
plowing along in the storm through that string of fashionable colonies
on the North Shore that run together with no beginning or end. He
doesn't rightly know where he was, when somebody called out to him and
he stopped to see a young lady beside the road in a little run-about
car that had got stuck. The engine was frozen and Robbie offered to tow
her home, although it would have been a hard job. The young lady said
it wasn't necessary, she didn't mind leaving the car there all night
if he would take her to where she was going; that it wasn't far. She
perched herself up beside Robbie at the wheel and directed him on the
way, and a couple of miles further on he set her down at a big house.
He wouldn't know it again if he saw it, because the snow was driving so
hard against the lights that he could only see a few feet in front of
him. The young lady offered him some money but he wouldn't take it. Oh,
if she'd only come forward now!"
Betty looked up slowly.
"Maybe she will. It isn't too late even now."
"We've about given up hope." Miss Pope shook her head. "Robbie was
in prison waiting for his trial when I came to sew for you, but the
lawyers were so sure the young lady would be found and his name
cleared that I wasn't worrying, except about the disgrace of his being
suspected at all."
"Does Mrs. Atterbury know of your trouble?" The question came as an
afterthought.
"No. The name being different she wouldn't connect it with me, and I
guess she's got enough on her own mind. Why should I have told her?
There would have been no help from her, even if she could have given
it. She's too careful about keeping her own skirts clean."
There was concentrated bitterness in the dreary voice, and Betty
regarded her expectantly; but the little woman's thoughts had evidently
reverted to her own trouble and she said no more.
The girl comforted her as well as she was able, and took leave of her
at the door of the restaurant, to continue her homeward way, sunk in a
horrified perplexity which deepened with each passing moment.
The story she had just heard weighed upon her spirit and she shrank
from thought of the man whose life hung on an unspoken word. Her own
problem had faded into insignificance in the face of this potential
tragedy and had she been personally involved in it, she could not have
hoped more fervently for the prisoner's acquittal, even as she realized
its futility. Would the mysterious young woman speak? Betty herself
wondered.