Then he changed his tone.
"We've plenty of time to talk about all that," he went on. "Now we must talk about to-morrow. Look here, Archie. Why can't you go on the stand and tell your whole story--just as you've told it to me a hundred times? It convinced me the first time I heard it; maybe it would convince the jury. They'd see that you had cause to kill Kouka!"
"Cause!" exclaimed the boy. "Great God! After the way he hounded me--I should say so! Why, Mr. Marriott, he made me do it, he made me what I am. Don't you see that?"
"Of course I do. And why can't you tell them so?" Marriott was enthusiastic with his new hope.
"Oh, well," said Archie with no enthusiasm at all, "with you it's different. You look at things different; you can see things; you know there's some good in me, don't you?"
It was an appeal that touched Marriott, and yet he felt powerless to make the boy see how deeply it touched him.
"And then," Archie went on--he talked with an intense earnestness and he leaned so close that Marriott could smell the odor of coffee on his breath--"when I talk to you, I know somehow that--well--you believe me, and we're sitting down, just talking together with no one else around. But there in that court-room, with all those people ready to tear my heart out and eat it, and the beak--Glassford, I mean--and the blokes in the box, and Eades ready to twist everything I say; well, what show have I got? You can see for yourself, Mr. Marriott."
Archie spread his hands wide to show the hopelessness of it all.
"Well, I think you'd better try, anyhow. Will you think it over?"
XVIII