“I shall say not guilty, which will be the truth.”
Mr Sniff, as the reader has been told, had already come to the same conclusion. Still, it being the rule of his profession always to assume a man to be guilty till he can prove himself innocent, he felt it was no business of his to assist the magistrate in coming to the decision by stating what he thought. All he had to do was to state what he knew, and meanwhile, if the prisoner choose to simplify matters by pleading guilty, well, why shouldn’t he?
“Please yourself about that. Have you made your entries, Jones? The van will be here directly. See you later on,” added he, nodding to Reginald.
Reginald waited there for the van like a man in a dream. People came in and out, spoke, laughed, looked about them, even mentioned his name. But they all seemed part of some curious pageant, of which he himself formed not the least unreal portion. His mind wandered off on a hundred little insignificant topics. Snatches of the Pilgrim’s Progress came into his mind, half-forgotten airs of music crossed his memory, the vision of young Gedge as he last saw him fleeted before his eyes. He tried in vain to collect his thoughts, but they were hopelessly astray, leaving him for the time barely conscious, and wholly uninterested in what was taking place around him.
The van came at last, a vehicle he had often eyed curiously as it rumbled past him in the streets. Little had he ever dreamed of riding one day inside it.
The usual knot of loungers waited at the door of the police-court to see the van disgorge its freight. Sometimes they had been rewarded for their patience by the glimpse of a real murderer, or wife-kicker, or burglar, and sometimes they had had their bit of fun over a “tough customer,” who, if he must travel at her Majesty’s expense, was determined to travel all the way, and insisted on being carried by the arms and legs across the pavement into the tribunal of justice. There was no such fun to be got out of Reginald as he stepped hurriedly from the van, and with downcast eyes entered by the prisoners’ door into the court-house.
A case was already in progress, and he had to wait in a dimly-lit underground lobby for his summons. The constable who had arrested him was still beside him, and other groups, mostly of police, filled up the place. But he heeded none, longing—oh! how intensely—to hear his name called and to know the worst.
Presently there was a bustle near the door, and he knew the case upstairs was at an end.
“Six months,” some one said.
Some one else whistled softly.