The jury sat near one of the windows, in a semicircle of chairs which had been borrowed from the first and second floors. Pending the resumption of their melancholy work, such of them as could read were reading newspapers containing reports of the first day's proceedings, from two to ten columns long, wherein the scene of the "Mysterious Midnight Tragedy," as one paper called it, was represented in the most ingenious manner by printers' rules cut to show the dimensions of the rooms on the third floor, the position of the fireplace, bed, washstand, chest of drawers, unknown machine in the corner, and other things which had no bearing whatever on the affair. The other jurors, who could not read at all, or had an insuperable aversion to that laborious occupation, were rolling their quids in silence, and looking wise.
At a long table in the centre of the room were seated several young gentlemen, dressed with singular independence of style. From one point of view they looked like actors, bearing about them signs of fatigue, as if from heavy night work. Observed again, they resembled young lawyers of indolent habits and scanty practice, who had just dropped in to watch the case.
From their conversation, no clue to their professional identity could be gathered. They were cracking jokes, propounding conundrums, and telling stories humorously broad to each other. Everything was to them a legitimate amusement. The proceedings of the day before were peculiarly rich in funny reminiscences; and one tall, bright, curly-haired fellow was evoking roars of suppressed laughter by his capital mimicry of two of the dullest witnesses. Another was drawing comic profiles of a sleepy juryman on a scrap of paper. He had previously dashed off a very happy sketch of the coroner, and shown it to that functionary, who had "haw-hawed," and pronounced it "devilish good," and, in turn, presented the young artist with a fine Havana cigar, which he playfully put in his mouth and chewed the end of. Yet there were, about these young gentlemen, signs of business, which an intelligent observer might have easily interpreted. From the outside breast pockets of each of them protruded a number of pencils; and, from their lower side pockets, thick memorandum books with gray covers, or stiffly folded quires of foolscap.
They were the reporters of the press--the gamins and good fellows of literature;--fellows of inexhaustible resources, who carry their wits literally at their fingers' ends;--who can do more than extract sunbeams from cucumbers; for they can make up thrilling facts out of nothing;--who can thread their way through a crowd where a tapeworm would be squeezed to death;--whose writing desk is usually another man's back; and who sketch out a much better speech between an orator's shoulder blades than he is making in front;--whose written language is a perplexity compared with which Greek is a relaxation and Sanscrit a positive amusement;--who deal in adjectives, and know their precise value, and how to administer them, as an apothecary knows the drugs that are boxed and bottled on his shelves;--who are less men than parts of an enormous mill grinding out grist to be branned and bolted in the editorial rooms, made into food in the printing office and press vault, and served up hot for the public's breakfast next morning.
Clever, witty, insatiable fellows they, for whom a planet ought to be set apart, where all the murders are wrapped in impenetrable mystery, and the smallest railroad accidents are frightful catastrophes.
The east side of the room, where the dead body had been found, was preserved inviolate from the broom, mop, and other touch, until the inquest was over. The strange machine stood in its accustomed place, flanked by the screen. It had been extensively handled and looked at, and passed for a new kind of clock. Two large weights (which had fallen to the floor) and the interplaying cogwheels gave force to that conjecture.
A large purple spot on the floor showed where the old man's life had ebbed away. Close by this spot, precisely where it had been picked up, lay the long oaken club with the iron tip, which, it was supposed, had done the dreadful deed. There were small splashes and spots on it too.
The fun of the reporters, the chat of the coroner and his friends, the readings and airy meditations of the jurors, were all suddenly checked by the appearance of Marcus Wilkeson, escorted by two police officers, and Messrs. Overtop and Maltboy, Patching and Tiffles. All five had passed the night in the station house--Messrs. Patching and Tiffles from compulsion, as witnesses, and possible accomplices, and Overtop and Maltboy as guides, philosophers, and friends. All looked seedy and criminal, as if there were something in the atmosphere of station houses to give a man the semblance of a vagabond and an outcast. Marcus Wilkeson was very pale, and, when he looked across the room, as he did upon his entrance, by a singular impulse, and saw the great blood mark and the club on the floor, he trembled with emotion.
The keen eyes of the coroner caught these signs, and he immediately brought in a mental verdict of "guilty." Some of the jury observed the same signs, and thought them suspicious. The reporters looked upon Marcus Wilkeson without emotion or prejudgment. They were so accustomed to seeing murderers, that they regarded them simply as a part of the business community--a little vicious, perhaps, but not so much worse than other people, after all. One reporter, attached to an illustrated paper, dashed off the profile of Marcus Wilkeson, under the cover of his hat, and caught the dejected expression of his face to a nicety.