"Beekman, the jury isn't even nibbling at this stuff. We've got a walk-over."
But Beekman could not bring himself to their point of view. With growing fear he listened to the evidence of the People as it piled up against his client. Nevertheless, Beekman had—just the thing that Morehead had said he had—an unaltering faith in Wilkinson. He was partisan to the last degree. And so quite naturally his intellect rejected the proofs of the People. Not that he did not appreciate their weight, but rather that he didn't believe their truth.
And what a fight he had put up for his client! To this day Beekman's summing up is remembered.
"We didn't make any mistake in getting him," Morehead had told Durand after the address to the jury.
Even Murgatroyd had been moved to admiration by his closing arguments, turning black into white, as he did, because it looked white to him, and the District Attorney had said to his Assistant:
"Leech, you couldn't do that in a thousand years—not the way he does it. And if it were not for public opinion, it is pretty certain that Beekman would get an acquittal from this jury. As it is...."
And not for one moment had Murgatroyd felt that the case was safe until the foreman's tremulous tones had quavered forth upon the heavy air of Sessions.
During the first few minutes of the time that was passed in the ante-room behind closed doors, Beekman's face wore an air of profound dejection. Instead of joining, as was to be expected, in an animated discussion that the others were having, he had taken a seat by himself, and was reproaching himself with dereliction of duty. Imagine, then, his astonishment when presently the little coterie gathered about him and began to laud him for his good work.
"You're a wonder, youngster!" they told him. "And you may consider yourself engaged again right now, if we get a new trial."