“Very well. Under such circumstances the least you can do for my friend is to defend him. No one else can do it as well. Your mere presence in court as his counsel may well save his life. Ask yourself the question seriously, Judge Langford, and if your own sense of justice will allow you to refuse, I have nothing more to say.”
The judge leaned back in his chair and stared absently at the handful of fire in the grate. Forsyth’s appeal reopened the question which he thought he had settled once for all the day before, and the arguments for and against began once more to marshal themselves for a fiercer conflict. Before the battle began he made one more effort to postpone it.
“You ignore the fact that I might end by directing suspicion against my own son, Mr. Forsyth.”
“I do. I ignore everything but the question of simple justice and a just man’s obligations.”
The fight was on, and the judge left his chair to pace the floor with his hands behind him and his head bowed. Forsyth had told him no new thing. His duty had been clear enough from the moment of Dorothy’s confession. But the frankness of the editor’s appeal; the grave ruthlessness with which he held the responsibility up as something to be decided apart from personal considerations—a thing affecting justice, and honour, and uprightness—this touched him very nearly. But opposed to this his fatherhood rose up in mighty protest pleading as only paternal love can plead for the supremacy over all abstractions of whatsoever kind or degree. The struggle was long and bitter; and seeing the story of it writing itself in deeply graven lines upon the judge’s face as he paced slowly back and forth, Forsyth had to harden his heart more than once while he awaited the outcome. “It is the father against the man, but the man will win,” he said to himself; and as he prophesied, so it came to pass.
“You have won your cause, Mr. Forsyth.” The judge stopped before the editor’s chair and spoke abruptly. “Go you to the young man and tender him my services, and let me know as soon as may be if he will accept them.”
Forsyth sprang to his feet and wrung the elder man’s hand gratefully.
“God bless you, Judge Langford; it is a noble thing for you to do! Don’t think for a moment that I undervalue the cost. And now let me tell you something which will make your task easier. One of my young men made some experiments last night in the card room at the Osirian. The result proved conclusively that the shot was fired from some point in line with the door; that it could not well have been fired from the chair in which your son was sitting.”
“Thank God for that!” exclaimed the judge fervently; but he added quickly: “I am glad you withheld that—glad you gave me the opportunity to give of my best. You will see Brant at once?”
Forsyth hesitated. “As my friend’s friend, I am entirely at his service and yours. But don’t you think it will be as well if you go to him unannounced?”