“It would be more than any one could promise at present; he is acting very singularly”—and Dorothy’s hopes were slain when the judge told the story of the preliminary examination. When she had heard him through, the horrible suspicion came again and refused to be driven away, but she could not bring herself to speak of it to her father. Will a murderer? Oh, no; anything but that!
Not until his daughter had gone away and he had sat down to go thoughtfully over the details again did the judge realize what his championship of Brant would require of him. Then it became evident, with a keen pang of fresh misfortune, that he was bound hand and foot; that any effort made to clear Brant must inevitably result in entangling his own son. As the matter rested, William was free and unsuspected, and George Brant would hang—if the jury so willed. But if by any effort of any one Brant should be proved innocent— The alternative was as plain as the handwriting on the wall of Belshazzar’s banquet hall, and to the full as appalling.
The luncheon hour came and went unheeded, and the autumn afternoon waned toward a cloudy evening, and still the judge plodded wearily back and forth in the narrow space between his writing table and the bookcases, striving with his paternal love as many a father has striven since the day when Abraham the Just was commanded to make trial of his faith. It was the father against the man, and what wonder if, after all the hours of stern conflict, the father won?
“I can not do it,” he said at length, setting his face flintwise against all arguments. “A man’s first duty is to his own flesh and blood. If William were guilty it would be different; though even then I doubt if I could play the Roman. No, Brant must take his chance; I can’t help him.”
So saying, the judge went up to dress for dinner; but his decision did not prevent him from telephoning to Antrim as he came down again, asking the chief clerk to come to the house that evening.
Antrim promised readily enough, the more willingly since he suspected the reason for the summons and hoped to be able to do something in Brant’s behalf. Accordingly, he boarded a car immediately after supper and was presently set down in the Highlands. Isabel met him at the door and would gladly have been plastic; but Antrim was, in his way, a man of one idea at a time, and at that moment he was too full of concern for his friend to think overmuch of his own affair. Whereat Isabel was piqued, and the angel of reconciliation spread its wings and flew away.
“Is your father at home?” Antrim asked, after what Isabel thought was the coldest of greetings.
“Yes, my father is at home, and he is in the library,” she replied, with the accent precise. And when Antrim disappeared she went back to the drawing-room and played many unmusical staccato exercises on the piano.
“Good evening, Harry,” said the judge, greeting his visitor cordially. “Come in and sit down; you have been neglecting us lately.”
Antrim admitted it in one word, not wishing to go a-swimming in that pool.