"It is sometimes inevitable that the law, whose purpose it is to be just, is terribly unjust. Sometimes the sole clue to a situation which seems to spell inevitable guilt lies in a fact, small in itself, whose significance is such that it cannot be brought forward. This was my case. The fact which would have cleared me could not be told. I became a convict. For six months I was an inmate of the Penitentiary. Then—the way opened to freedom, and I took it. What man would not have done so? I acknowledged no right of the law over my body. I went back to my former life, and took up my old profession here in this city."
"Here!" The Judge muttered, under his breath.
"And in that life I found opening responsibilities. New work called to me. My help was needed. I could not shirk it. I knew the risk always, but I counted it small. And the need was great! With such a work waiting my hand, a labour that no one else, it seemed, could do—one upon which much depended—was I to stand aside, to withhold my effort on the slender chance that discovery might sometime overtake me?"
The speaker seemed to have forgotten the Governor, to have swept all else to one side and to be addressing now only the Judge, in an appeal that touched the older man profoundly. It was, he thought, as though the man's whole soul was crying out in some sense for forgiveness and absolution for an injury unwittingly inflicted.
"The one thing has happened now which must lay the past bare. I must meet this—the scandal, the shame. My life, all that makes life worth living, ends to-night, and I stand before you with the bare soul of a truthful man. You have known me and trusted me. You—and others—have put faith in me...." The voice, for the first time, faltered and fell.
The Judge's head had been bowed, but he lifted it now.
"God alone knows the secrets of our hearts," he said, heavily. "If you were innocent—but of that how can I say? My view of your actions since your escape—those which may affect me—must necessarily hang upon that point. I could believe that you are not a burglar. It may be that knowledge of your true identity will presently convince me of this. And I might be persuaded that your presence in the Craig house that night was no more than an unfortunate coincidence. But the evidence of the shooting appeared at the time irrefutable. I cannot conceive that the mere knowledge of what you are would be likely to affect my belief in that respect. Your statement as to that is not only wholly unsupported, but was—and is—bluntly contradicted by the man who was shot."
He ceased speaking. No word came from the striped figure, only a slight movement of one hand, expressing at once resignation and futility. Then the hand lifted to the mask.
The Governor, however, stayed the action of revealment with a sudden gesture.
"One moment," he said quickly. "We have gone so far, I should like to go a step further—and still forensically, if you please. The question of identity may wait. Do I understand that you deny that you fired that shot?"