Dramatically Wallace passed his hand over his forehead. The Judge had done the same. So well had he played upon their emotions that he sensed to perfection the proper pause duration....
“No, your Honour,” he said quietly, “she did not die. This little story of real life followed the conventional.... Sometimes God is as good as the dramatist. They told us the meagre details. He didn’t; he had a pressing engagement and slipped away, resuming, I suppose, his ‘reservations’ on his Blue Diamond.... He wasn’t very prepossessing, anyway, from all accounts. Any ten-twenty-thirty dramatist could have given us a more presentable, better manicured hero.”
Wallace sauntered a little.
“This object that tumbled from a box car, sprawled, picked himself up, and then jumped like a cat, was, as a matter of fact, a nobody, an outcast, a crook——”
Casually, it seemed, his hand rested on the bowed shoulder of the broken old man.
“Just a one-eyed yeggman, making his way——”
He got no further. The courtroom was in an uproar and unrestrained applause ran its riotous course. There was none to check it.
His Honour, savagely surreptitious with his handkerchief, finally took command of himself and the situation.
“Mr. Wallace, the Court requires no argument in this case. We will accept the guarantee of future good conduct which you were about to offer, and, if necessary, underwrite it ourselves.... Sentence suspended!”
Then as the Court was adjourned and they crowded about the pair of them, counsel and client, a shouldering, demonstrative throng a dozen deep, the Judge, before retiring stilled them for a brief afterword.