"Shut that door, Eliot," said Morehead. "Now, Flomerfelt, what's your idea?"
Out in the court-room J. Newton Leech, who had prosecuted for the People, left the side of Murgatroyd and went over to Leslie to offer his sympathy.
"Miss Wilkinson, this has been pretty hard on you."
"I don't understand it at all," the girl answered, turning her pale, tired face to his.
"I wouldn't worry," he went on, with something more than mere professional courtesy in his eyes.
And indeed Leech spoke truly when he said that the trial had been most distressing to Leslie. It had been doubly so, perhaps, because of the lack of the usual dramatic features. Forgery, perjury, larceny, ominous charges to be sure, had figured in the case, but their proof consisted in large account books, private memoranda, original reports from the State banking offices, notes, stock transfers, in fact, everything to weary and little to excite.
District Attorney Murgatroyd, like the accusing ghost of Hamlet's father, had stalked silent, brooding, imperturbable, behind his assistant, Leech, dictating nothing openly, but seeing, knowing that no stone was left unturned. For the first two days of the trial the People apparently had made but little inroads upon the integrity of Peter V. Wilkinson; but at the end of that time, some new and powerful influence had made itself felt: shrewd accountants entered the court-room and sat at the Assistant District Attorney's elbow; a financier or two kept at Murgatroyd's side; absolutely unassailable witnesses took the stand.
It was about this time that Morehead had nudged Durand and whispered:
"The Morning Mail and Ougheltree of the National Banks are at work. Here's where our trouble begins."
But although these two practitioners well knew, even at that early stage of the game, that the chances weighed heavily against them, not once did they flinch, not once did they permit the set expression of confidence to leave their faces. On the contrary, they turned to their leader and said: