Convict B 14: A Novel

by R. K. Weekes

"Did not the prisoner suggest that Mrs. Trent would be tired; and did not the deceased answer by a coarse allusion to her state of health?"

The witness was seen to struggle for words—in vain.

"Thank you, that will do."

Upon this followed the luncheon interval. Through the excited crowd Tom carried off his father to a quiet inn near by, where he had ordered lunch. The old man sat over the fire with his basin of soup (he would take nothing else, and did not drink that), shrunken, and silent, and aged. Once he looked up piteously. "What does it mean, Tom? What does it all mean?" Tom could only answer: "I've no idea, sir. Shall I go and see if I can get hold of Kellett?" But Mr. Gardiner shook his head and crouched closer to the fire, muttering: "No, no. Time enough, time enough. We shall hear it all presently." Tom, though he was longing to find the lawyer, durst not leave him.

The court was crowded to its last seat when they reassembled, and Bullard opened for the defense. He was a clever advocate; perhaps a little too clever. He was apt to hint his points instead of making them, to cut and refine his phrases like some fastidious literary artist. This is not the way to get a verdict from plain men accustomed to plain language, clear outlines, the black and white of fact. They do not understand half-tones and intellectual subtleties. On the other hand, Bullard had a reputation for incorruptible honesty; and he rose at times to eloquence.

He began, in his negligent way, to recapitulate the facts, a touch here and there serving to rearrange them to the prisoner's advantage. He did not, he said, propose to deny that his client had thrown the tool; but he submitted that the evidence proved, first, that the death of the deceased was due to the fall and not to the blow; second, that if he had been perfectly sober he would not have fallen. Very lucid was he, very persuasive. But his audience was waiting for what was to come.

"Finally, gentlemen, I hope to show that in throwing that chisel the prisoner was guilty of no crime; rather that he was the necessary unofficial policeman of the moral law. There are still," he went on, dwelling on the words like an epicure, "there are still offenses which are not amenable to ordinary justice, which can be dealt with only by ... punching the offender's head, cramming his words back down his own throat. This was such a case. Look first at the dead man." He broke off to give a summary of Trent's glorious-inglorious career: the ribbon on the one hand, disgrace on the other. "Brilliant promise, you see, marred by a single fault. 'It was never wine with me'—we have that on his own authority; it was a fouler vice. The man was rotten: still showing a fair outside, still preserving some traits of kindliness, but black-rotten within. When a decent man gets a glimpse of that sort of thing, he doesn't stay to argue; he hits out.

"Now in defending the prisoner I was met at first by a singular difficulty. Neither he nor the only known witness of the scene could remember the words which provoked the outbreak. Strange, you will say; most strange; suspicious, even. Surely they could make some sort of rough guess? But no, both persisted; they could not. What pointed the moral was the fact that these two were conferring together at the moment of the prisoner's arrest. It looked like a conspiracy of silence. Now why should they conspire to keep silence? In order to hide some fact damaging to the prisoner. That is the obvious deduction, which of course you have already drawn. And, gentlemen, the prisoner would have left it at that: he would have let your judgment go by default against him, and taken the consequences: you would never have heard the facts, never, but for a totally unexpected circumstance, which came to my knowledge not forty-eight hours ago.

"There was another witness to that scene in the hotel. Unknown to my client or to his friend, another of the guests saw and overheard everything that happened. I shall not attempt to summarize this testimony. I shall leave it in the witness's own words, and I shall leave you to draw your own conclusions; asking you to bear in mind, as you do so, the story of her dealings with the prisoner which you have heard from Mrs. Trent.