Then, suddenly it was over and, like a douche of icy water, after the burning flow of Kean’s impassioned appeal, came the calm, measured accents of the Judge as he summed up.
By the time he had finished Fayre was once more in the depths of depression and in bad shape to face the long wait while the Jury considered their verdict. He watched them file out feeling as near despair as he had ever been in his life and then settled down to endure a suspense that seemed interminable but which, in reality, lasted just over an hour and a half.
By the time the jury returned, the proceedings seemed to Fayre to have taken on all the unreality of a nightmare. As one in a dream he heard the Judge’s voice break the tense silence of the crowded court.
“Are you all agreed?”
“We are all agreed, My Lord.”
Then, as his numbed brain mechanically registered the fact that the foreman, surprisingly, spoke with a strong Cockney accent instead of the North-country burr he had expected, came the verdict.
“We find the prisoner guilty, My Lord.”
Chapter XXIII
“To be hanged by the neck until you are dead.” The sentence still rang in Fayre’s ears as his taxi sped through the streets on its way to Miss Allen’s lodgings. He could hear the thin, strained voice of the Judge, an old man nearing death himself, but still, after a long experience on the Bench, shaken and appalled at the awful magnitude of the words he was called upon to utter.
Fayre groaned aloud as the full sum of their meaning dawned upon him. Leslie, of whose innocence he was assured, cut off from life just when it was about to mean so much to him and Cynthia!