At last the examination and cross-examination were finished, and Guy’s counsel began his hopeless task of unravelling this tangled mass of suggestion and coincidence. He had no witnesses to call; the very nature of the case precluded that. All he could do was to cavil over details, to point out possible alternatives, to lay stress upon the absence of direct evidence, and to ask that the jury should give the prisoner the benefit of the doubt, if any doubt at all existed in their minds as to his guilt or innocence. Counsel had meant when he first undertook the case to lay great stress also on the presumed absence of motive; but, after the fatal accident which resulted in the disclosure of Montague Nevitt’s pocket-book, any argument on that score would have been worse than useless. Counsel elected rather to pass the episode by in discreet silence, and to risk everything on the uncertainty of the actual encounter.
At last he sat down, wiping his brow in despair, after what he felt himself to be a most feeble performance.
Then Sir Gilbert began, and in a very tremulous and failing voice summed briefly up the whole of the evidence.
Men who remember Gildersleeve’s old blustering manner stood aghast at the timidity with which the famous lawyer delivered himself on this, the first capital charge ever brought before him. He reminded the jury, in very solemn and almost warning tones, that where a human life was at stake, mere presumptive evidence should always carry very little weight with it. And the evidence here was all purely presumptive. The prosecution had shown nothing more than a physical possibility that the prisoner at the bar might have committed the murder. There was evidence of animus, it was true; but that evidence was weak; there was partial identification; but that identification lay open to the serious objection that all the persons who now swore to Guy Waring’s personality had sworn just as surely and confidently before to his brother Cyril’s. On the whole, the judge summed up strongly in Guy’s favour. He wiped his clammy brow and looked appealingly at the bar. As the jury would hope for justice themselves, let them remember to mete out nothing but strict justice to the accused person who now stood trembling in the dock before them.
All the court stood astonished. Could this be Gildersleeve? Atkins would never have summed up like that. Atkins would have gone in point-blank for hanging him. And everybody thought Gildersleeve would hang with the best. Nobody had suspected him till then of any womanly weakness about capital punishment. There was a solemn hush as the judge ended. Then everybody saw the unhappy man was seriously ill. Great streams of sweat trickled slowly down his brow. His eyes stared in front of him. His mouth twitched horribly. He looked like a person on the point of apoplexy. The prisoner at the bar gazed hard at him and pitied him.
“He’s dying himself, and he wants to go out with a clear conscience at last,” some one suggested in a low voice at the barristers’ table. The explanation served. It was whispered round the court in a hushed undertone that the judge to-day was on his very last legs, and had summed up accordingly. Late in life, he had learned to show mercy, as he hoped for it.
There was a deadly pause. The jury retired to consider their verdict. Two men remained behind in court, waiting breathless for their return. Two lives hung at issue in the balance while the jury deliberated. Elma Clifford, glancing with a terrified eye from one to the other, could hardly help pitying the guiltiest most. His look of mute suffering was so inexpressibly pathetic.
The twelve good men and true were gone for a full half-hour. Why, nobody knew. The case was as plain as a pikestaff, gossipers said in court. If he had been caught red-handed, he’d have been hanged without remorse. It was only the eighteen months and the South African episode that could make the jury hesitate for one moment about hanging him.
At last, a sound, a thrill, a movement by the door. Every eye was strained forward. The jury trooped back again. They took their places in silence. Sir Gilbert scanned their faces with an agonized look. It was a moment of ghastly and painful suspense. He was waiting for their verdict—on himself, and Guy Waring.