Shortly before the Commonwealth was ready to close, rumours went abroad. It was hinted that new and sensational witnesses would take the stand, with revelations as spectacular as the climax of a melodrama.
Boone had followed the evidence with a tense absorption. He had marked the effect of each point; the success or failure of every blow, and he realized what a powerful web was being woven about the man in whom he fully believed. There was no escaping the cumulative and strengthening effect of circumstance built upon circumstance.
He recognized, too, how like a keystone in an arch was the dependence of the State upon proving one thing: that Asa had been present, just after the shooting, and in command of those who barred the doors of the executive building against legitimate search. He took comfort in the fact that so far it had not been established by one sure piece of evidence. Then came the last of the Commonwealth's announced witnesses.
Upon the faces of the attorneys for the prisoner quivered a dubious expression of apprehension—as they waited the promised assault of the masked batteries. The son of the man who had walked at Senator Goebel's side, when he fell, took the stand and told with straightforward directness the story of the five minutes after the shot had sounded. He and a policeman had sought entrance to the building, which presumably harboured the assassin—and mountain men had halted him at the door, under the leadership of one to whom the rest deferred. He described that commander with fulness of detail, and it was as if he were painting in words a portrait of the man in the prisoner's dock.
"I was there as a volunteer—to see that no one who might be guilty escaped from the building," testified the witness with convincing candour. "I noticed one man in particular—because he seemed to be the unofficial leader of the rest. Some one called him Asa."
The man's voice was responsibly, almost hesitantly, grave, and on the faces in the jury box one could read the telling impression of his words.
Then the bearded attorney, whose fame was secure as a heckler of witnesses, rose dramatically from his chair.
"Do you see that man in the courtroom now?"
For a matter of seconds testifier and prisoner gazed with level directness into each other's eyes, while over the crowded courtroom hung a tense pall of stillness.
Then the witness spoke in a tone of bewilderment—his words coming slowly—as though they surprised himself.