“The objection is sustained!” called the judge. “The charge is utterly irrelevant! Order in the court!”
“His first wife’s portrait––is in a glass window––in his yacht!” cried the hysterical Beaubien. Then she crumpled up in a limp mass, and was led from the chair half fainting.
At the woman’s shrill words a white-haired man, dressed in black, clerical garb, who had been sitting in the rear of the room close to the door, rose hastily, then slowly sat down again. At his feet reposed a satchel, bearing several foreign labels. Evidently he had but just arrived from distant lands.
Consternation reigned throughout the room for a few minutes. Then Cass, believing that the psychological moment had arrived, loudly called Carmen Ariza to the stand. The dramatic play must be continued, now that it had begun. The battle which had raged back and forth for long, weary days, could be won, if at all, only by playing upon the emotions of the jury, 230 for the evidence thus far given had resulted in showing not only the defense, but likewise the Beaubien, and all who had been associated with the Simití company, including Cass himself, to be participators in gross, intentional fraud.
The remaining witness, the girl herself, had been purposely neglected by the prosecution, for the great Ames had planned that she must be called by the defense. Then would he bring up the prostitute, Jude, and from her wring testimony which must blast forever the girl’s already soiled name. Following her, he would himself take the stand, and tell of the girl’s visits to his office; of her protestations of love for him; of her embracing him; and of a thousand indiscretions which he had carefully garnered and stored for this triumphant occasion.
But the judge, visibly perturbed by the dramatic turn which the case seemed to be taking, studied his watch for a moment, then Ames’s face, and then abruptly adjourned court until the following day. Yet not until Cass had been recognized, and the hounded girl summoned from her cell in the Tombs, to take the stand in the morning for––her life!
CHAPTER 17
In the days to come, when the divine leaven which is in the world to-day shall have brought more of the carnal mind’s iniquity to the surface, that the Sun of Truth may destroy the foul germs, there shall be old men and women, and they which, looking up from their work, peep and mutter of strange things long gone, who shall fall wonderingly silent when they have told again of the fair young girl who walked alone into the crowded court room that cold winter’s morning. And their stories will vary with the telling, for no two might agree what manner of being it was that came into their midst that day.