Violet bowed in token of a desire to answer these questions in whatever way was necessary to her bargain, and the new deposition proceeded in the same manner and along the lines that Angel had laid down. The clerk hurried because he wanted to get home; the lawyer hurried because he thoroughly disbelieved every word that was written; and, severe as Violet had feared that the ordeal would be, it was over far sooner than she had expected.
Angel, still loyal to his word, saw her safely home.
"Now," he said, as he left her at the areaway, "nobody weell ever any more bother you. Good-night."
He raised his hat and went away, but, as he turned, he pressed into her cold hand a crisp, new bill.
Violet's fingers closed about it silently. She had earned it.
XIX
"FIAT JUSTITIA RUAT CAELUM"
The trial of Rose Légère was precisely the farce that Violet had expected and that Angel had planned. In ninety of such cases out of every hundred, the chief witnesses for the state are suppressed by fear or force, and the prosecution collapses. Thus, in the present instance, had not the newspapers made first-page announcements of the Légère woman's arrest and so attracted to the case the momentary attention of an effervescing moral public, the District Attorney's office would, in fact, have contented itself with submitting the indictment and asking for a verdict of not guilty.
With Violet in the hospital during the session of the Grand Jury, Wesley, now a man of power, had been able to refresh Larry Riley's memory to such a point that, in the hands of the prosecutor, the policeman's evidence was sufficient to insure the finding of a true bill; but when the case was called for trial the situation was vastly changed. The girl that had followed Violet into the net had been cast back into the sea of the city and utterly swallowed up. Violet herself had recanted. The elder inmates of the Légère establishment regarded the law as their natural enemy and, had they been disposed to assist it, could in no wise have been regarded as credible witnesses. The action had, therefore, to rest entirely upon Riley's testimony, and for Riley's testimony there was virtually no corroboration procurable.
"You're a good thing—I don't think," remarked the weary-faced young Assistant District Attorney as, on the morning of the trial, he met Dyker in the corridor of the court. "We shoved this case about five years ahead on the calendar to please you, and the night before it's called your witness comes to my office and eats her deposition."