VII
THE PENDELTON LEGACY
“I HAVE always considered Bannerman,” said Jack Lanagan, deliberately, “the crookedest judge that ever sat on the bench in San Francisco.”
Attorney Haddon, distinguished in criminal practice, thumped his office table.
“Exactly,” he said. “Have felt that way about it myself. But he seems to have a hold on the people. And he makes capital out of the fact that he ever permits a ‘shyster’ lawyer to practise in his court.”
“Simple,” replied Lanagan. “He doesn’t have to. He does business with Fogarty direct. They take dinner two or three times a week at the St. Germain. Other times they use the telephone. Those are things people don’t know. There aren’t many who do outside of myself. But at that I suppose he might get by with the long-eared public with the explanation that ‘Billy’ Fogarty, bail-bond grafter and chief of the ‘shysters,’ was a schoolmate of his, raised on the same street, and a member of one or two fraternal organisations with him. All of which is true.
“Bannerman,” he continued, “doesn’t bother with small cases. He’s after the big stuff. And I have a hunch that somewhere back of this case there is big graft. He has been against us from the start. And by the Lord Harry,” Lanagan had arisen, his black eyes snapping, “I’ve put several men in jail, but here’s one that I’m going to get out. Peters no more murdered that little child of his than I did. It’s an absolute obsession with me that there is some colossal mystery back of the whole thing; some gigantic conspiracy; and Bannerman’s attitude to-day gives me the first direct line to work on I have had. I am going to work on it again at once.”
Charley Peters, a machinist, twenty-five years of age, had been held to answer by Bannerman that day to the higher court on a charge of murder for slaying his week old son. It was a case that had attracted wide attention when several organisations of women’s clubs took a stand against Peters.
He had married, as was brought out at the preliminary hearing, a woman of the night life, who had made him, to all report, a capable wife. Originally from Oakland, after the marriage he had moved to an isolated little home in the outskirts of the Potrero, where neither he nor his wife were known. Before their child was born they had been overheard by a passing neighbour in a violent quarrel. Peters freely admitted the quarrel, but explained that, on the particular night in question, he had been over-wrought with a particularly hard day’s labour, returned home wearied and worried to find a statement from the doctor for a large amount, and for a moment had become resentful at having another mouth to feed with nothing but debt before him. The quarrel, he said, was quickly made up and the relations of the two were happy up to and after the child was born.
But the prosecuting attorney had made great use of the evidence, Bannerman ruling consistently against the objections of Haddon.