"That is precisely what it is, Mr. Hammond, and that is just what Mr. Jones meant it to be! What else did he say?"
"What's the difference?" asked Hammond. "You admit it's all nonsense."
"Not all, Mr. Hammond." Marvin raised his voice and he looked searchingly at the judge. "He said at least one thing that was not nonsense. He said to his wife, 'Mother, these two men are trying to rob you.' Do you remember that, Mr. Hammond? You were all there. Do you remember that he said you and Mr. Thomas were trying to rob Mrs. Jones?"
In order to make his question more impressive, Marvin nodded at Hammond and pointed to Mr. Thomas, and then directed a glance toward Mrs. Jones. Her hands were still folded in her lap and her head bent toward them.
Everett Hammond, his face purple with rage, shouted at Marvin, "I don't propose to sit here and be insulted by a criminal like you!"
Thomas, too, had risen and come forward. Standing on the other side of Marvin and looking down upon him, he exclaimed, with quivering, blue lips: "This is insufferable, your Honor! This gentleman has come here to give disinterested testimony, as a favor, and he is subjected to the insults—"
Judge Townsend interrupted him calmly: "I think the defense has brought out quite clearly that this witness's testimony is not disinterested. This divorce has got to be obtained to give him a deed to the Jones property, hasn't it?"
Thomas grew conciliatory, endeavoring to impress upon the judge that the property sale had nothing to do, at all, with the testimony of Hammond.
"Well, I wouldn't call him exactly disinterested," responded Townsend, with a wise glance.
"Nevertheless, your Honor, I protest against this man's insulting manner," Thomas shouted. "How it is possible for such a person, a person who even now ought to be serving a jail sentence, to be admitted to the bar, I can't see!" He backed to his chair and sat down, taking up a book and slamming it back on the table.