He arrived at the Old Bailey at a quarter-past ten. He did not allow himself to glance at its profile, nor did he permit his mind to be distracted by one of the thousand details, common, depressing, and of no significance in themselves, yet likely to be so ominous in their effect on high-strung nerves. He passed from the barristers’ robing-room as soon as he could, for beyond everything he wished to avoid contact with his kind. Yet to the majority of those within its precincts he was not even known by name; and he felt himself to be looked on askance by all as a solitary, queer-headed fellow.
On entering the court he used great care in selecting his seat. It was in a situation from which he felt he could command the attention of all present; from which the jury would lose nothing of what he presented to it, and yet be sufficiently removed to be unable to discern the more intimate workings of his personality. Oratory like music demands a certain space and distance in which and at which to reveal itself. Before taking his seat he looked all around him into every part of the building, in order that he might familiarize himself with that which lay about him. Every seat allotted to the public was already in its occupation; the nature of the charge was itself sufficient to stimulate its curiosity in the highest degree. Among the members of the bar the interest was not so great. There was said to be no defence worthy of the name; the crime was of a common kind, presenting neither rare nor curious features; the absence of Tobin, the most brilliant common law advocate among the younger men, had become known; and the case was expected to be disposed of without difficulty. Its main interest in the eyes of the junior bar centred around the man who had been asked to conduct the defence. That one so obscure as Northcote should have been chosen to fill the place of Tobin in a murder case was one of those unexpected things which furnished a theme for the critic’s function; a function which the majority of those in their robes on the benches felt eminently qualified to undertake.
Many were surprised, some were a little grieved, and the ambitious were rather disconcerted that Northcote should be entrusted with a brief of this nature. Obscure as he was in practice, he had acquired a kind of reputation at the bar mess as one who was singularly unsocial in his habits. As the brief in the first instance had been marked with a figure large enough to command the services of Tobin, the defence could not be wholly destitute of means. It was strange that a firm so notoriously astute as Whitcomb and Whitcomb should have handed it to one of no experience when the extremely able counsel they had retained originally had been compelled to throw up the case. There was quite a number assembled in that court who were far more competent to deal with it than this young and unknown practitioner. In the opinion of many, this circumstance was taken as the clearest indication of all that the case had no life in it.
Hardly had Northcote taken his seat in the court when he felt a hand on his shoulder; it belonged to Mr. Whitcomb.
“No nonsense, now,” he said anxiously. “The witnesses are here, and we shall expect you to call them.”
“It is quite impossible for me to alter my line at the last moment,” said Northcote, while every nerve he had in his body seemed to be ticking furiously. “Besides,” he added, in a hoarse whisper, “don’t you see that if they are not called I shall get the last word with the jury, as the attorney is not in the case?”
“Pray, what is the use of that? What will that do for you?”
“You must wait and see,” said the young man, with a red haze before his eyes.
“My dear fellow, I must insist on your calling the witnesses.”
“It is impossible,” said the young man, in a voice the solicitor could hardly hear.