MR. WARNER: Your Honor, I move that the case of the People against Callista Blake be dismissed on the following grounds: one, that the prosecution has not demonstrated that the death of Ann Doherty resulted from a criminal action; two, that the prosecution has not, by witnesses, connected the defendant Callista Blake with the death of Ann Doherty beyond a reasonable doubt.
JUDGE MANN: The motion is denied, Mr. Warner. Are there other motions?
MR. WARNER: No, your Honor, not at this time.
JUDGE MANN: The Court stands adjourned until 1 P.M.
[7]
Upon this, by us has she been required to voluntarily declare herself to be, and to have always been, a demon of the nature of a Succubus, which is a female devil whose business it is to corrupt Christians by the blandishments and flagitious delights of love. To this the speaker has replied that the affirmation would be an abominable falsehood, seeing that she had always felt herself to be a most natural woman.
Then her irons being struck off by the torturer, the aforesaid has removed her dress, and has maliciously and with evil design bewildered and attacked our understanding with the sight of her body, the which, for a fact, exercises upon a man supernatural coercion.
BALZAC, The Succubus
I
In the robing room after the noon recess, Judge Mann was assailed by a feeling of being out of place, ludicrously so, dismayingly. The village atheist blundering into a crowd of churchgoers to retrieve his hat; or an explorer required to take part in a tribal ritual without a briefing on the rules. Innocent oversight, by the way, on the part of local chieftains and witchdoctors, for why wouldn't they assume that everybody knew the rules from infancy as they did? What am I doing here?
He could ask the question of Joe Bass and receive an intelligent answer. No good. No use making Joe uneasy about the Judge's state of mind.