The White Flag

by Gene Stratton-Porter

Jason and Albert Rich made frantic efforts. They exhausted every means possible to them to find whether any one had been seen around the Moreland house at that time. Most of the women in the town did their own work. It was near the noon hour that the pocket book had disappeared. All of the neighbours had been in their kitchens at the time. No one could be found who had seen any one upon the streets that was not a resident going about his business.

A few days later, in a dull daze, Mahala stood in the town court house and heard herself arraigned upon the charge of having stolen three thousand dollars from the residence of Martin Moreland. She listened to the readings of the depositions of Junior Moreland and his wife, who had left on the noon train as arranged on the day of the trouble. She listened to the harsh testimony of Martin Moreland. She saw him glare at his wife. She saw the cruel grip with which he clutched her arm as he pretended carefully to lead her to the witness stand. She saw the shrinking, cowering woman lift a blanched face to the judge, and having been sworn, she heard her testify to having seen her son enter the living room with the pocket book in his hand, to having been told by him what sum it contained as he passed through the kitchen where she was hurriedly preparing dinner. He had explained that the money to pay Mahala was to be taken from it and the remainder was for the expenses of his trip with Edith. She told of hearing his voice as he talked to the two women and of having spoken with him again as he passed back through the dining room and kitchen on the way out. She told of having seen him stand a minute in conversation with the gardener at the back door and then start on his way toward the alley gate to go back to the bank. She could testify to nothing else except entering the room when she had been called after the loss of the pocket book had been discovered.

Pressed by Albert Rich with the question: “Have you any theory, Mrs. Moreland, can you offer any explanation as to how that pocket book might have disappeared?” she hesitated, evidently suffering cruelly, then with dry lips she said: “I have not.”

And again Albert Rich asked her: “Is it your belief that Mahala Spellman, the daughter of Mahlon and Elizabeth Spellman, stole that money?”

She answered promptly: “It is not.”

Pressed again to explain how else it could have disappeared, she answered: “I do not know, but there must have been some other way.”

Then Mahala was asked if there was anything she wished to say. She took the stand and clearly and unwaveringly, she made her testimony. She detailed every occurrence simply and explicitly. She admitted having seen the pocket book, which she described, in Junior’s hands and again in the parlour lying where Edith had told him to place it, when she had been sent to lay the hat she had finished beside the coat. She stoutly denied having touched it.

Under skilful questioning by Albert Rich the facts were developed that it would have been possible for any one who knew that the money was there to have entered the hall quietly, either at the front or side door, and taken it away. In rebuttal the Morelands were prompt with the evidence that no one knew that the money was in the house except Junior and his father, both of whom were occupied at the bank at the time of its disappearance, and the people who had been in the Moreland home, each of whom could be accounted for. Mahala’s lawyer made much of the fact that the money could not be found upon her or in her home, and that she had not been from the sight of the Junior Mrs. Moreland except for the minute when she had laid the finished hat beside the coat.

Anticipating this testimony, Martin Moreland had packed the front seats of the courtroom with his followers. At this statement all of them laughed immoderately. There was confusion in the court. Mahala turned deliberately, and so standing, she slowly searched the room filled with faces on not one of which could she find real sympathy, compassion, or comfort save on the agonized white face of Jason gazing up at her. Then she studied the jury, man by man, and as she did so, she realized that the power and the wealth of Martin Moreland had been lavished upon it.

She turned to the judge, who had been a friend of her father, with whose children she had played, and who had known her all her life.