"I should have thought of that. Cal would like it. I'll remember to tell her." Beyond the melancholy and desolation of his face she saw Herb Chalmers returning along the row of empty seats. Warner nodded to him morosely. "Herb. All by yourself?"
"I took Vic home." Herb Chalmers showed the dubious tension of a news-bringer. "Cecil, what way does the jury-room face?"
"What way?" The Old Man's eyebrows bunched aggressively in perplexity. "The Court Street side. Why, Herb?"
"They're yawping a Courier extra on the street. Judd died in the hospital a couple of hours ago." He pulled a smeary paper from his overcoat and handed it to Warner, who stared at the splash of black ink and let the thing slither to the floor. "A brass-lunged newsboy, Cecil: 'Blake Case Witness Dies ree aw abowit!'"
"Some fool," Warner said—"some fool in the jury-room is bound to open a window, to let the smoke out."
"He was shouting pretty plain. I could make out the words a block away. Any legal significance, you think?"
"I doubt it, Herb." Warner looked up hopelessly. "Anyway she gains nothing from a mistrial. Likely it wouldn't even go before the same judge, a second time. Everything that could happen," he said. "Malice, chance, blind circumstance, human frailty. Even the malice nobody's fault really—not even T.J.'s. He's something worked by strings."
"They can't find first degree," Edith said, and hated the querulous shake in her voice, its jaded insistence on what she could not know.
"Twenty to life," said Warner.
"She's young," Edith said. "She's very young."