“I wish simply, therefore, to remind you,” the weary voice was saying, “that however unusual, arresting and dramatic the circumstances surrounding the testimony of these last two witnesses may have been, you should approach this evidence in precisely the same spirit that you approach all the other evidence that has been placed before you. It should be submitted to exactly the same tests of credibility that you apply to every word that has been uttered before you—no more and no less.
“One more word and I have done. The degrees of murder I have defined for you. You will govern your verdict accordingly. The sentence is not your concern; that lies with the Court. It is your duty, and your sole duty, to decide whether Susan Ives and Stephen Bellamy are either or both of them guilty of the murder of Madeleine Bellamy. I am convinced that you will perform that duty faithfully. Gentlemen, you may consider your verdict.”
Slowly and stiffly the twelve men rose to their feet and stood staring about them uncertainly, as though loath to be about their business.
“If you desire further instruction as to any point that is not quite clear to you,” said Judge Carver gravely, “I may be reached in my room here. Any of the exhibits that you desire to see will be put at your disposal. You may retire, gentlemen.”
They shuffled solemnly out through the little door to the right of the witness, the small, beady-eyed bailiff with the mutton-chop whiskers and the anxious frown trotting close at their heels. The door closed behind them with a gentle, ominous finality, and someone in the courtroom sighed—loudly, uncontrollably—a prophecy of the coming intolerable suspense.
The red-headed girl wrung her hands together in a despairing effort to warm them. Twelve men—twelve ordinary, everyday men, whose faces looked heavy and stupid with strain and fatigue . . . She pressed her hands together harder and turned a pale face toward the other door.
Susan Ives and Stephen Bellamy had just reached it; they lingered there for a moment to smile gravely and reassuringly at the hovering Lambert, and then were gone, as quietly as though they were about to walk down the steps to waiting cars instead of to a black hell of uncertainty and suspense.
Those in the courtroom still sat breathlessly silent, held in check by Judge Carver’s stern eye. After a moment he, too, rose; for a moment, it seemed that all the room was filled with the rustle of his black silk robes, and then he, too, was gone, with decorum following hard on his heels.
In less than thirty seconds, the quiet, orderly room was transformed into something rather less sedate than the careless excitement of a Saturday-afternoon crowd at a ball park—psychologically they were reduced to shirt sleeves and straw hats tilted well back on their heads. The red-headed girl stared at them with round, appalled eyes.