“Patience,” returned Judge Shortridge.
“That’s no defense,” protested the undertaker. “Whoever heard of a man being acquitted of murder on the grounds of patience?”
“Will it make it any clearer to you if I state that all we have to do is to be patient while the State is trying to prove this absolutely unknown and absolutely unidentified carcass is that of Oliver Baxter? We’ll make ’em prove that it is his skeleton. We’ll make ’em prove to the day just how long it has been out there in the swamp. We’ll be able to prove that Oliver October had in the neighborhood of fifteen thousand dollars on deposit in a Chicago bank and that he spent a lot of it hunting for his father. And, as I said before, we’ll make ’em prove that Oliver Baxter is dead. They’ll have a hell of a time—er—a very difficult time proving that our old friend is dead. For all we know—or anybody else knows—that body may have been out there for ten or fifteen years. Doc Lansing here says it’s possible, and Doctor Robinson the same thing. They can’t, to save their lives, produce a medical expert who will swear positively it was out there only a year and four months. Isn’t that a fact, Doc?”
“Yes,” replied young Lansing. “The processes of disintegration are so—”
“And this skeleton is said to be that of a fairly tall man,” said Mr. Sage, “whereas I should unhesitatingly say that Brother Baxter was not more than five feet six.”
“We must not overlook the fact,” said Lansing, pursing his lips, “that old age may have caused Mr. Baxter’s frame to shrink somewhat from its original stature—er—ah—we all know that he was considerably bent and shriveled and that he was decidedly—er—bow-legged. Now the bone structure of a human being more or less assumes deceptive proportions after—er—the confining tissue, the cartilages and so forth have—ah—we will say disintegrated—permitting the—”
“Ollie was never more than five foot six or seven,” interrupted Mr. Sikes impatiently. “In his stocking feet. Now, as I said before, if I was sure it is Ollie’s corpus delicti they have got and if it could be proved to me that he was murdered by that boy setting over there in the corner, I would be one of the first men to head a mob to string him up to the limb of a tree.”
He glared around the room as if challenging any one present—including Oliver—to question his right to do just what he said he would do—if!
But nobody paid any attention to him. They had heard him say it before.
“I don’t see how you can be so unmoved, so calm, Oliver dear,” whispered Jane in her lover’s ear. “Just think what they are talking about—and as if you were not here at all.”