“I don’t think that could be managed,” replied Romer, “without some delay. You know, I want to have her plead the moment she gets here, so as to avoid the crush. It’ll only take a few minutes. You’d better come now.”
They followed Romer out of his office, down a long, gloomy corridor, along which knots of people stood, chatting and smoking rank cigars, and into the General Sessions court room—the court room that Arthur had visited a few months before, out of idle curiosity to witness the scene of Mrs. Peixada’s trial.
There were already about forty persons present: a half dozen lawyers at the counsel-table, busy with books and papers; a larger number of respectable looking citizens, who read newspapers and appeared bored—probably gentlemen of the jury; and a residue of damp, dirty, dismal individuals, including a few tattered women, who were doubtless, like those with whom we are chiefly concerned, come to watch the fate of some unfortunate friend. Every body kept very still, so that the big clock on the wall made itself distinctly heard even to the farthest corner of the room. Its hands marked five minutes to eleven. The suspense was painful. It seemed to Arthur that he had grown a year older in the interval that elapsed before the clock solemnly tolled the hour.
Romer had chairs placed for them within the bar, a little to the right of the clerk’s desk, so that they would not be more than six feet distant from the prisoner, when she stood up to speak. Then he left them, saying, “I’ll see whether the judge has got down. I want to ask him to go on the bench promptly, as a favor to me.”
Soon afterward a loud rapping sounded upon the door that led from the corridor, and the officers who were scattered about the room, simultaneously called, “Hats off.”
The judge, with grave and rather self-conscious mien, stalked past our friends, and took his position on the bench. Romer followed at a few paces. He smiled at Arthur, and crossed over to the district-attorney’s table.
There was a breathing space of silence. Then the crier rose, and sang out his time-honored admonition, “Hear ye, hear ye, hear ye, all persons having business with this court,” etc., to the end.
Another moment of silence.
The clerk untied a bundle of papers, ran them over, got upon his feet, and exchanged a few whispered words with the judge. Eventually he turned around and faced the audience.
Ah, how still Arthur’s heart stood, as the clerk cried, in rasping, metallic accents, “Judith Peixada, alias Ruth Ripley, to the bar!”