Caught in a Trap

by John C. Hutcheson

Mr Trump was resolved, according to the dowager’s express wish and his own personal inclination—that fifty pounds rankled sorely in his breast!—to fight the case to the death.

The notice was answered by a peremptory refusal to pay over the trust money.

Whereupon Mrs Hartshorne was invited in judicial parlance through her solicitors to show cause why she should not refund the said sum of twenty thousand pounds.

The rule, “to show cause,” was retorted to by sundry pleas, the first of which averred never indebtedness, and the others that the plaintiff, Allynne Markworth, had coerced the said Susan Hartshorne, falsely termed Susan Markworth, on whose behalf the trust money was claimed, which claim was null and void, and without foundation in the eyes of the law, inasmuch as the said plaintiff “had entered into a conspiracy to obtain the money of a person of unsound mind, under the pretence of going through a marriage ceremony with a person who, in the eye of the law, could not make a binding contract.”

These pleas were replicated, and the whole thing resolved itself into a formal case at law—a very important case of medical jurisprudence, wherein the evidence for the defence was to impeach the sanity of the plaintiffs principal witness.

Everything was at length arranged. The preliminaries of the combat were all settled, and counsel were engaged on either side. The foemen were eager for the fray, a day was fixed for the trial, late in the Michaelmas term, and on the day of battle appointed, the lists would be lined by the partisans of the respectives combatants, who would then enter the arena with visors closed and lances couched—visors of legal dust with which to blind their opponent’s eyes, and not to save their own, and lances of parchment briefs with substantial butts of strong witnesses—to fight the be-wigged and be-gowned battle until either foe should fall. When “God defend the right,” or in the more colloquial language of the prize ring, “may the best man win.”

The case of “Markworth versus Hartshorne” created an immense sensation in legal circles when it was known that a day had been appointed for giving it a hearing.

The issues involved were very intricate; and, as in most cases based on a point of lunacy, the sympathy of the public, who, as yet, knew nothing reliable about the matter, was in favour of Markworth and his wife, the latter of whom would be, it was said, produced in court to testify her own sanity at the time she married the plaintiff.

The whole case, in fact, rested upon this point—whether the marriage was a real marriage or not—that is to say, whether Susan Hartshorne was sane or insane at the time she ran away with Markworth. If she was in her right senses at the time, then the marriage was bonâ fide, and the old dowager would have to hand over the nice little amount of her daughter’s inheritance that was due; if Susan was proved to be imbecile, then the marriage would be void, the dowager would still retain her hold of the twenty thousand pounds, and Markworth be indictable for conspiracy.

It was a civil suit, so to speak, based on criminal ends; so it would go worse with the plaintiff than the defendant should his case fall through.