"Now, here are these two pictures," resumed Brooks. "Suppose I were trying this case in court. I'm not sure, but I think I could get them both introduced in evidence, these two pictures. I think they are both germane to this case—don't you? You've been on the bench—we've both read law. Do you think as a judge you could keep a good lawyer from getting these two pictures introduced in evidence in that case?"
"I don't see how you could," said the hoarse voice of Judge Henderson. "It would be altogether immaterial and incompetent."
"Perhaps, perhaps," said Hod Brooks. "That's another good reason why I'd rather try the case here, if it suits you! But just suppose I enlarged this photograph to the exact size of the lithograph on the wall, and suppose I did get them both into evidence, and suppose I unveiled the two at just the psychological moment—I presume you would trust me to do that?
"Now if I hadn't seen you last night just where you were, if I hadn't hoped, from what I saw of you, that you were part man at least—that's how I would try this case! What do you think about it?"
"I think you are practising politics again, and not law," sneered Henderson. But his face was white.
"Yes? Well, I'll tell you, I don't want to see you go to the United States Senate. In the first place, though I agreed not to run at all, I never agreed to help you run. In the second place, I never did think you were a good enough man to go there, and now I think it less than ever. And since you ask me a direct question of political bearing, I'll say that, if the public records—that is to say, the court records and all the newspapers—showed the similarity of these two pictures side by side, the effect on your political future might be very considerable! What do you think?
"Now, if you take you and that boy side by side today," he went on, having had no reply, "the resemblance between you two might not be noticed. But get the ages together—get the view of the face the same in each case—take him at his age and you at something near the same age—and don't you think there is much truth in what I said? The boy has red hair, like me! But in black and white he looks like you!"
Judge Henderson, unable to make reply, had turned away. He was staring out from the window over the courthouse yard.
"Some excitement over there," he said. Hod Brooks did not hear him.
"That face on the wall there, Judge Henderson," said he, "is the face of a murderer! The face of this boy is not that of a murderer. But you murdered a woman twenty years ago—not a man, but a woman—and damn you, you know it, absolutely well! I saw last night that at last you realized your own crime, that crime—you had guilt on your face. I am going to charge you—just as you maybe were planning to charge that boy—with murder, worse than murder in the first degree, if that be possible—worse even than prosecuting your own son for murder when you know he's innocent!