The Light that Lies

by George Barr McCutcheon

This extraordinary behaviour on the part of the defendant quite naturally irritated—(Mr. Stevens would not say infuriated, although Mr. O'Brien, on cross-examination, tried his level best to make him use the word)—both the witness and Mr. Drew, who felt that their honour had been vilely attacked. They had no difficulty in convincing their partners and other interested persons that the charge was ridiculous and made solely for the purpose of enlisting their sympathy in behalf of one they were now forced to describe as a cowardly criminal and no longer as a misguided unfortunate.

It was then, and then only, that the witness and Mr. Drew took the matter before the Grand Jury and obtained the indictment against the defendant.

Having covered the preliminary stages of the case pretty thoroughly, Mr. Stevens was required to tell all that he knew about the actual misappropriation of the funds. This he did with exceeding clarity and sorrow. However, despite his mildness, he did not leave a shred of Mr. Hildebrand's honour untouched; he had it in tatters by mid-afternoon and at four o'clock, when court adjourned, there wasn't anything left of it at all.

Sampson was gloomy that night. He did not go to sleep until long after two, although he went to bed at eleven—an unspeakably early hour for him. Things certainly looked black for the old man. If Stevens was to be believed, James Hildebrand was a most stupendous rascal. And yet, to look at him—to study his fine, gentle old face, his tired but unwavering eyes, his singularly unrepentant mien—one could hardly be blamed for doubting the man's capacity for doing the evil and reprehensible deed that was laid at his door. Sampson hated to think of him as guilty. More than that, he hated to have Miss Hildebrand think that he thought of him as guilty.

He laid awake for three mortal hours trying to think what Miss Hildebrand meant by looking at him as she did from time to time. Not once but a score of times her gaze met bis—usually after a damaging reply by Mr. Stevens, or some objectionable question by the district attorney—and always she appeared to be intent on divining, if possible, just what its effect would be on him.

Her clear, soft eyes looked straight into his for an instant, and he saw something in them that he took for anxiety. That was all: just anxiety. It couldn't, of course, be anything else—and, why shouldn't she be anxious? Anybody would be under the circumstances. As a matter of fact, he was a little anxious himself, and certainly he was not as vitally interested as she in the welfare of James W. Hildebrand. But after thinking it all over again, he wasn't so sure that it was anxiety. He was forced to believe that she looked confident, almost serene—as if there was not the slightest doubt in her mind that her grandfather couldn't possibly have done a single one of the things that Mr. Stevens accused him of doing.

Sampson was perturbed. He couldn't divest himself of the suspicion that she expected him to also disbelieve every word that the witness uttered. It was most upsetting. He made up his mind that he would not look at her at all on the following day. But even that resolution didn't put him to sleep. Not at all. The more he thought of it, the wider awake he became.

True, she had looked at the other jurors from time to time—especially at the rehabilitated No. 7, the rubicund bachelor and the spectacled No. 12. But he was sure that she did not look at them in the same way that she looked at him, nor as often, nor as long. It seemed to him that even when she looked at the others, she always allowed her glance to return to him for an instant after its somewhat indifferent tour of inspection. He remembered indulging in a rather close and critical inspection of the countenances of his fellow jurors at one time, during a lull in the proceedings, and that calculating but not unkind scrutiny convinced him of one thing: they certainly were not much to look at.

The more he thought about it, the more it was revealed to him that the expression in her eyes was of a questioning, inquiring nature, as one who might be saying to herself: are these men—or this one, in particular—entirely devoid of intelligence?

He was four minutes late in court the next morning, and it was all the fault of the too indulgent Turple. Turple, being a sagacious and faithful menial, respectfully neglected to disturb his master's slumber until after nine o'clock, and as a result Sampson had to go without his breakfast and almost without his shave in order to get down to the court-room in time. Turple received emphatic orders to rout him out of bed at seven o'clock every morning after that, no matter how bitterly he was abused for doing so.