CHAPTER XI
With keen curiosity Carstairs turned up at the police court to watch the trial of "Sam Lee, of no fixed abode," on a charge of burglary. The prisoner pleaded not guilty, but the evidence was too damning, and he was sentenced to two years' imprisonment.
Carstairs came away with a feeling of relief like a schoolboy on holidays. Any lingering feeling of pity that he had entertained for the man he felt he had wronged, was dispelled by the sight of the hard, savage face in the dock. He studied it closely at his leisure and in the daylight, as the man stood there on his defence, the beau ideal of the Bill Sykes of fiction. A face of very great animal strength, showing extreme tenacity of purpose, and unrestrained passion, in every line of the features; he was considerably thicker and heavier about the chest and shoulders than when Carstairs had met him face to face in the dim light of the dawn in Scotland; the eyes had not the shifty, suspicious expression that one associates with the habitual criminal; they were dark and deep set, protected by massive bony projections all round; eyebrow and cheek bone rose in strong relief above and below; the eye itself was steady and slowly moving, it glowed with a sort of slumbering, malignant hatred; he looked the magistrate and the police and everyone else steadily in the eyes with a surly defiance. This was the child of the moorland and the wood transplanted to the slums, absorbing into the depths of his strong, deep nature the terrible germs of the diseased life of the city. Apparently he didn't see Carstairs, or if he did, he gave no sign of recognition.
The following Sunday Darwen was on shift, but Carstairs went to church all alone, to St James'. On the way out the vicar's wife and two daughters met him. The good lady greeted him effusively.
"And where's Mr Darwen?" she asked. Carstairs observed that both the daughters' eyes seemed to light up with super-added interest as they awaited his reply. "He's on shift," he said.
"How horrid," the elder daughter remarked, "to have to go to—er—business on Sunday."
Carstairs laughed. "Call it work," he said, "sort of thing you take your coat off to."
"But not on Sunday?"
"Well, perhaps a little less than on other days. As a matter of fact it's mostly pretence, just to show you are really ready if necessary. But what you really do is to walk about with your eyes and ears as wide open as they'll go, like the officer of a ship, you know."