To the great surprise and greater disappointment of the public in attendance upon the trial, Sam Lucas announced, when court opened, that the state would not proceed with the cross-examination of the defendant. Hammer rose with that and stated that the defense rested. He had no more witnesses to call.
Hammer wore a hopeful look over his features that morning, a reflection, perhaps, of his client’s unworried attitude. He had not been successful in his attempt to interview Alice Price, although he had visited her home the night before. Colonel Price had received him with the air of one who stoops to contact with an inferior, and assured him that he was delegated by Miss Price–which was true–to tell Mr. Hammer that she knew nothing favorable to his client’s cause; that her caution in his moment of stress had nothing behind it but the unaccountable impulse of a young and sympathetic girl.
Hammer accepted that explanation with a large corner of reservation in his mind. He knew that she had visited the jail, and it was his opinion that his client had taken her behind the door of his confidence, which he had closed to his attorney. Alice Price knew something, she must know something, Hammer said. On that belief he based his intention of a motion for a new trial in case of conviction. He would advance the contention that new evidence had been discovered; he would then get Alice Price into a corner by herself somewhere and make her tell all she knew.
That was why Hammer smiled and felt quite easy, and 314 turned over in his mind the moving speech that he had prepared for the jury. He was glad of the opportunity which that great gathering presented. It was a plowed field waiting the grain of Hammer’s future prosperity.
Hammer kept turning his eyes toward Alice Price, where she sat in the middle of the court-room beside the colonel. He had marked an air of uneasiness, a paleness as of suppressed anxiety in the girl’s face. Now and then he saw her look toward the door where Captain Taylor stood guard, in his G. A. R. uniform today, as if it were a gala occasion and demanded decorations.
For whom could she be straining and watching? Hammer wondered. Ah, no doubt about it, that girl knew a great deal more of the inner-working of his client’s mind than he did. But she couldn’t keep her secret. He’d get it out of her after filing his motion for a new trial–already he was looking ahead to conviction, feeling the weakness of his case–and very likely turn the sensation of a generation loose in Shelbyville when he called her to the witness-stand. That was the manner of Hammer’s speculations as he watched her turning her eyes toward the door.
Ollie sat beside her mother, strangely downcast for all the brightening of her affairs. Joe had passed through the fire and come out true, although he might have faltered and betrayed her if it had not been for the sharp warning of Alice Price, cast to him like a rope to a drowning man. Like Hammer, like a thousand others, she wondered why Alice had uttered that warning. What did she know? What did she suspect? It was certain, above everything else, that she knew Joe was guiltless. She knew that he was not maintaining silence on his own account.
How did she know? Had Joe told her? Ollie struggled with the doubt and perplexity of it, and the fear which lay deep in her being made her long to cringe there, and shield 315 her face as from fire. She could not do that, any more than she had succeeded in her desire to remain away from court that morning. There was no need for her there, her testimony was in, they were through with her. Yet she could not stay away. She must be there for the final word, for the last sight of Joe’s prison-white face.
She must whip herself to sit there as boldly as innocence and cheat the public into accepting the blanched cheek of fear for the wearing strain of sorrow; she must sit there until the end. Then she could rise up and go her way, no matter how it turned out for Joe. She could leave there with her guilty secret in her heart and the shame of her cowardice burning like a smothered coal in her breast.
It would hurt to know that Joe had gone to prison for her sake, even though he once had stepped into the doorway of her freedom and cut off her light. The knowledge that Alice Price loved him, and that Joe loved her, for she had read the secret in their burning eyes, would make it doubly hard. She would be cheating him of liberty and robbing him of love. Still, they would be no more than even, at that, said she, with a recurring sweep of bitterness. Had Joe not denied them both to her? All of this she turned in her mind as she sat waiting for court to open that somber morning.