For a moment, stung by this witness’s defeat of her, she had an impulse to turn about, point her finger at Blake in the audience, and cry out the truth to the court-room and announce what was her real line of defence. But she realized the uproar that would follow if she dared attack Blake without evidence, and she controlled herself.
“That is all, Your Honour,” she said.
Mr. Marcy was dismissed. The lean, frock-coated figure of Mr. Kennedy arose.
“Doctor Sherman,” he called.
Doctor Sherman seemed to experience some difficulty in making his way up to the witness stand. When he faced about and sat down the difficulty was explained to the crowd. He was plainly a sick man. Whispers of sympathy ran about the court-room. Every one knew how he had sacrificed a friend to his sense of civic duty, and everyone knew what pain that act must have caused a man with such a high-strung conscience.
With his hands tightly gripping the arms of his chair, his bright and hollow eyes fastened upon the prosecutor, Doctor Sherman began in a low voice to deliver his direct testimony. Katherine listened to him rather mechanically at first, even with a twinge of sympathy for his obvious distress.
But though her attention was centred here in the court-room, her brain was subconsciously ranging swiftly over all the details of the case. Far down in the depths of her mind the question was faintly suggesting itself, if one witness is a guilty participant in the plot, then why not possibly the other?—when she saw Doctor Sherman give a quick glance in the direction where she knew sat Harrison Blake. That glance brought the question surging up to the surface of her conscious mind, and she sat bewildered, mentally gasping. She did not see how it could be, she could not understand his motive—but in the sickly face of Doctor Sherman, in his strained manner, she now read guilt.
Thrilling with an unexpected hope, Katherine rose and tried to keep herself before the eyes of Doctor Sherman like an accusing conscience. But he avoided her gaze, and told his story in every detail just as when Doctor West had been first accused. When Kennedy turned him over for cross-examination, Katherine walked up before him and looked him straight in the eyes a full moment without speaking. He could no longer avoid her gaze. In his eyes she read something that seemed to her like mortal terror.
“Doctor Sherman,” she said slowly, clearly, “is there nothing you would like to add to your testimony?”
His words were a long time coming. Katherine’s life hung suspended while she waited his answer.