“An hour ago you never heard such blasphemy.”
“I would to God the attorney had held this brief!” said Mr. Weekes, desperately.
“You may count on one thing,” said Mr. Topott; “he will never let you hear the last of this. Won’t he chuckle? He will pull your leg about it for the next ten years.”
“I hope you will tell him, Topott,” said Mr. Weekes anxiously, “that he would have done no better.”
“Oh, I don’t say he would have done no better,” said the impartial Mr. Topott. “He would have done better. He would never have let that chap get as far as he did, even if he had had to ascend the bench and take poor old Bow-wow by the tippet. But I do say he also would have had to take his gruel, and he would have lost his verdict.”
“Oh, we have not lost it yet.”
“We shall have lost it in another quarter of an hour.”
XXIX
THE VERDICT
It was a quarter-past seven by the time Mr. Justice Brudenell had concluded his summing-up. Long before he had reached the end, a prediction of the result had formed in every mind. This case which in the beginning had been as clear and strong as the sun at noon had become so vitiated by contact with these legal wits, that by now even its most salient points had become obscure. No jury in the frame of mind of this present one, each component of which had been played upon like the strings of a harp by the hand of a master performer, was in the least likely to convict. There were those who even inclined to the belief that they would not leave the box.
This, however, proved to be an extreme view. They did leave the box, but in exactly nine minutes had returned into court. As slowly they defiled back again into the court with their verdict, the excitement depicted in their looks was painful to observe. Their drawn faces were livid and perspiring; they kept down their heads without glancing to the right or to the left. The foreman, a coal dealer in a small way of business in the Commercial Road, was seized with a violent twitching of the body.