“Well, you are a cool hand, I must say,” exclaimed Mr. Whitcomb, somewhat taken aback. “For a beginner I don’t think I’ve met your equal.”
“What will you lay against an acquittal?”
“I don’t mind laying five hundred to fifty,” said the solicitor.
“Done,” said Northcote.
“If you had asked me this morning before you went into court you might have had five thousand to fifty.”
“Sorry I forgot to mention it, because I was just as sure then as I am now what the result will be.”
“Why you should have this confidence I cannot understand. Really, you know, you haven’t a leg to stand on.”
“Well, well; I am going to leave you now to take a stroll for ten minutes. See you soon.”
Northcote went out into the traffic to take a few mouthfuls of the London air. Fiery chemicals seemed to be consuming his nerves, and his brain was like a sheet of molten flame. But sensations so extreme in nowise distressed him. He felt the exhilaration of this strange yet not unpleasant condition to be the pledge of a harmony between mental and physical passion. It seemed to promise that the overweening consciousness of power that had haunted him for so many weeks in his solitude was about to be fulfilled. The painful self-distrust, the afflicting self-consciousness which had tormented and atrophied his energies in smaller cases had vanished altogether.
As he recalled the achievement of the morning, he felt a glow of exaltation. Looking back upon it his mind had been as clear as a crystal, exquisitely responsive to the will. Every bolt and nut of the complex mechanism had been in perfect order. The very words he had wished to use had sprung to his lips, the very tones in which he sought to embody them had proceeded out of his mouth. So profoundly harmonious had been his mind in its most intimate workings, that he had been able to convey fine shades of meaning to the jury without addressing to them a single word.