HATS off!"
Through the great white room the cry vibrated, followed instantly by another:
"Hear ye, hear ye, all ye having business with the Court of the General Sessions of the City and County of New York, draw near, give attention and ye shall be heard."
Within the Bar, restless as hyenas awaiting their prey, roamed the district attorneys. Against that Bar, crouching there, were Orr and his associate counsel, restless too, but prepared to spring. To the rear were reporters, the flower of newspaperdom, handsome young men dressed to the ears in resplendent collars and astounding cravats. Back of them were the spectators, a solid mass, ladies of every degree except the high one and, with or without them, men whom you would recognize as first-nighters, others whom you would not recognize at all. To the right of the Bar were witnesses for the prosecution, experts in various matters of which gastronomy evidently was one. To the left was the jury, and above, beneath the amber panoply of the Bench, the Recorder sat, an ascetic Solon.
The atmosphere of the room, high ceiled, close packed, was Senegambian. Without you could see, within you could feel, the heat and eagerness of the autumnal sun.
"Arthur Annandale to the Bar!"
Into the court, as though it were a theatre, the defendant strolled, perfectly groomed, the Tombs pallor on his face but none of its dust on his coat, an air of tranquil boredom about him. At his heels was a keeper. He shook hands with Orr, sat down beside him, turned and gave his hat to the keeper, turned again and looked over to a gated inclosure at the right of the Bench where, in a sort of proscenium box, Sylvia sat with her mother.
The entire settings were those of a play. With this difference, it was real, a drama of mud and blood without orchestral accompaniment. After months of preparation, after days of talesmen baiting, on this Indian Summer forenoon the curtain was rising. The jury it had been a job to get. A full hundred were examined, cross-questioned, challenged and rejected before the dozen were boxed. When the last, the twelfth, a cadaverous individual, was accepted the stage was set.
"May it please the Court; Mr. Foreman and gentlemen of the jury."