By Advice of Counsel Part 16

"What good will that do us?" asked Peckham, glancing up with a scowl from his desk. "She won't testify for us."

"But she'll have to testify if we call her, won't she?" demanded his a.s.sistant.

The district attorney drummed on the polished surface before him.

"We--ell, I suppose so," he admitted hesitatingly. "But you can't just subpoena a woman like that without any warning and put her on the stand and make her testify. It would be too rough!"

"It's the only way to do it!" retorted O'Brien with a sly grin. "If she knew in advance that we were thinking of calling her she'd beat it out of town."

"That's true," agreed his chief. "That's as far as she'd go, too, in defying the law. But I don't much like it. Those Beekmans have a lot of influence, and if she got sore she could make us a heap of trouble!

Besides it's sort of a scaly trick making her give up on him like that."

O'Brien raised his brows.

"Scaly trick! He's a murderer, isn't he? And he'll get off if we don't call her. It's a matter of duty, as I see it."

"All the same, my son, your suggestion has a rotten smell to it. We may have to do it--I don't say we won't--but it's risky business!" replied Peckham dubiously.

"It's a good deal less risky than not doing it, so far as your candidacy next autumn is concerned!" retorted his a.s.sistant. "We won't let her suspect what we're goin' to do; and the last minute I'll call her to the stand and cinch the case! She won't even know who called her! Perhaps I can arrange with Judge Babson to call her on some other point and then pretend to sort of stumble onto the fact of the confession and examine her himself. That would let us out. I can smear it over somehow."

"You'd better," commented Peckham, "unless you want a howl from the papers! It would make quite a story if Miss Althea Beekman got on the rampage. She could have your scalp, my boy, if she wanted it!"

"And McGurk could have yours!" retorted O'Brien with the impudence born of knowledge.

The prosecution of Shane O'Connell, which otherwise might have slowly languished and languis.h.i.+ng died, took on new life owing to the evidence thus innocently delivered into the hands of the district attorney; in fact it became a _cause celebre_. The essential elements to convict were now all there--the _corpus delicti_, evidence of threats on the part of the defendant, of motive, of opportunity, and--his confession. The law which provides that the statement of an accused "is not sufficient to warrant his conviction without additional proof that the crime charged has been committed" would be abundantly satisfied--though without his confession there would have been no proof whatever that the crime charged had been committed by him.

Thus, without her knowing it, Miss Beekman was an essential witness and, in fact, the pivot upon which the entire case turned.

The day of the great sporting event came. With it arrived in full panoply the McGurks, their relatives and followers. All Cherry Hill seemed to have packed itself into Part I of the Supreme Court. There was an atmosphere somehow suggestive of the races or a prize fight. But it was a sporting event which savored of a sure thing--really more like a hanging. They were there to make holiday over the law's revenge for the killing of the darling of the Pearl b.u.t.ton Kids. Peckham personally a.s.sured McGurk that everything was copper-fastened.

"He's halfway up the river already!" he said jocularly.

And McGurk, swelling with importance and emotion, pulled a couple of cigars from his pocket and the two smoked the pipe of peace.

But the reader is not particularly concerned with the progress of the trial, for he has already attended many. It is enough to say that a jury with undershot jaws, who had proved by previous experience their indifference to capital punishment and to all human sympathy, were finally selected and that the witnesses were duly called, and testified to the usual facts, while the Pearl b.u.t.ton Kids and the rest, spitting surrept.i.tiously beneath the benches, eagerly drank in every word. There was nothing for Mr. Tutt to do; nothing for him to deny. The case built itself up, brick by brick. And Shane O'Connell sat there unemotionally, hardly listening. There was nothing in the evidence to reflect in any way upon the honor of the O'Connells in general or in particular. He had done that which that honor demanded and he was ready to pay the penalty--if the law could get him. He a.s.sumed that it would get him. So did the Tutts.

But when toward the end of the third day nothing had yet been brought forward to connect him with the crime Tutt leaned over and whispered to Mr. Tutt, "D'ye know, I'm beginning to have a hunch there isn't any case!"

Mr. Tutt made an imperceptible gesture of a.s.sent.

"Looks that way," he answered out of the corner of his mouth. "Probably they'll spring the connecting evidence at the end and give us the _coup de grace_."

At that moment a police witness was released from the stand and O'Brien stepped to the bench and whispered something to the judge, who glanced at the clock and nodded. It was twenty minutes of four, and the jury were already getting restless, for the trial had developed into a humdrum, cut-and-dried affair.

Miss Beekman sitting far back in the rear of the court room suddenly heard O'Brien call her name, and a quiver of apprehension pa.s.sed through her body. She had never testified in any legal proceeding, and the idea of getting up before such a crowd of people and answering questions filled her with dismay. It was so public! Still, if it was going to help O'Connell--

"Althea Beekman," bellowed Cap. Phelan, "to the witness chair!"

Althea Beekman! The gentle lady felt as if she had been rudely stripped of all her protective clothing. Althea! Did not the law do her the courtesy of calling her even "Miss"? Nerving herself to the performance of her duty she falteringly made her way between the crowded benches, past the reporters' table, and round back of the jury box. The judge, apparently a pleasant-faced, rather elderly man, bowed gravely to her, indicated where she should sit and administered the oath to her himself, subtly dwelling upon the phrase "the whole truth," and raising his eyes heavenward as he solemnly p.r.o.nounced the words "so help you G.o.d!"

"I do!" declared Miss Beekman primly but decidedly.

Behind her upon the court-room wall towered in its flowing draperies the majestic figure of the G.o.ddess of the Law, blindfolded and holding aloft the scales of justice. Beside her sat in the silken robes of his sacred office a judge who cleverly administered that law to advance his own interests and those of his political a.s.sociates. In front of her, treacherously smiling, stood the cynical, bullet-headed O'Brien. At a great distance Mr. Tutt leaned on his elbows at a table beside Shane O'Connell. To them she directed her gaze and faintly smiled.

"Miss Beekman," began O'Brien as courteously as he knew how, "you reside, do you not, at Number 1000 Fifth Avenue, in this city and county?"

"I do," she answered with resolution.

"Your family have always lived in New York, have they not?"

"Since 1630," she replied deprecatingly and with more confidence.

"You are prominent in various philanthropic, religious and civic activities?"

"Not prominent; interested," she corrected him.

"And you make a practise of visiting prisoners in the Tombs?"

She hesitated. What could this be leading to?

"Occasionally," she admitted.

"Do you know this defendant, Shane O'Connell?"

"Yes."

"Did you see him on the twenty-third day of last month?"

"I think so--if that was the day."

"What day do you refer to?"

"The day I had the talk with him."

"Oh, you had a talk with him?"

"Yes."

"Where did you have that talk with him?"

"In the counsel room of the Tombs."

O'Brien paused. Even his miserable soul revolted at what he was about to do.

"What did he say?" he asked, nervously looking away.

Something in his hangdog look warned Miss Beekman that she was being betrayed, but before she could answer Mr. Tutt was on his feet.