Lydia had tapped twice on the table—the agreed signal.
By four o'clock the jury was satisfactory to both sides; and then, just as Lydia's nerves were tightened for the beginning of the great game, the court adjourned until ten o'clock the next morning. The judge, looking up from his writing, admonished the jury not to discuss the case with anyone, not even among themselves. The jurors produced unexpected hats and coats like a conjuring trick. The court attendant began shouting "Keep your seats until the jury has passed out," and the whole picture of the court dissolved.
Wiley was whispering to Lydia, "A very nice jury—a very intelligent, reasonable group of men." He rubbed his hands.
Lydia's eyes followed O'Bannon's back as he left the court with Foster trotting by his side.
"I wonder if the district attorney is equally pleased with them," she said.
Bobby Dorset drove back with them and stayed to dinner. Miss Bennett, who had a headache from the hot air and the effort of concentrating her mind, would have been glad to forget the trial, but Lydia and Bobby talked of nothing else. She kept a pad and pencil at hand to note down points that occurred to her. Bobby, with a mind at once acute and trivial, had collected odd bits of information—that the judge was hostile, that the door man said the verdict would be not guilty, and he had never been wrong in twenty-seven years.
Proceedings began the next morning by O'Bannon's opening for the prosecution. Lydia saw a new weapon directed against her that her advisers did not seem to appreciate—O'Bannon's terrible sincerity. His voice had not an artificial note in it. Meaning what he said, he was able to convince the jury.
"Gentlemen of the jury," he began, "the indictment in this case is manslaughter in the first degree. That is homicide without intent to effect death by a person committing or attempting to commit a misdemeanor. The People will show that on the eleventh day of March of this year the defendant, while operating an automobile on the highways of this county in a reckless and lawless manner, killed John Drummond, a traffic policeman, who was attempting to arrest her. Drummond, whose ante-mortem statement will be put in evidence——"
Suddenly Lydia's attention lapsed. This man who was trying to send her to prison had held her in his arms. She saw again the moon and the mist, and felt his firm hand on her shoulder. Memory seemed more real than this incredible reality. Then, just as steel doors shut on the red fire of a furnace, so her mind shut out this aspect of the situation, and she found she was listening—after how long a pause she did not know—to O'Bannon's words.
"——at the entrance to the village the road divides, the right fork turning back at an angle something less than a right angle. Round this corner the defendant attempted to go by a device known as skidding a car; that is to say, still going at a high rate of speed, she turned her wheels sharply to the right and put on her brakes hard enough to lock the back wheels."