Hard Cash Part 121

CHAPTER LIII

SERGEANT SAUNDERS thought it prudent to let the emotion subside before opening the defendant's case: so he disarranged his papers, and then rearranged them as before: and, during this, a person employed by Richard Hardie went out and told him this last untoward piece of evidence. He winced: but all was overbalanced by this, that Skinner had not come to bear witness for the Plaintiff.

Sergeant Saunders rose with perfect dignity and confidence, and delivered a masterly address. In less than ten minutes the whole affair took another colour under that plausible tongue. The tactician began by declaring that the plaintiff was perfectly sane, and his convalescence was a matter of such joy to the defendant, that not even the cruel misinterpretation of facts and motives, to which his amiable client had been exposed, could rob him of that sacred delight "Our case, gentlemen, is, that the plaintiff is sane, and that he owes his sanity to those prompt, wise, and benevolent measures, which we took eighteen months ago, at an unhappy crisis of his mind, to preserve his understanding and his property. Yes, his property, gentlemen; that property which in a paroxysm of mania, he was going to throw away, as I shall show you by an unanswerable doc.u.ment. He comes here to slander us and mulet us out of five thousand pounds; but I shall show you he is already ten thousand pounds the richer for that act of ours, for which he debits us five thousand pounds instead of crediting us twice the sum. Gentlemen, I cannot, like my learned friend, call witnesses from the clouds, from the United States, and from the grave; for it has not occurred to my client strong in the sense of his kindly and honourable intentions, to engage gentlemen from foreign parts, with woolly locks and nasal tw.a.n.gs, to drop in accidentally, and eke out the fatal gaps in evidence. The cla.s.s of testimony we stand upon is less romantic; it does not seduce the imagination nor play upon the pa.s.sions; but it is of a much higher character in sober men's eyes, especially in a court of law. I rely, not on witnesses dropped from the clouds, and the stars, and the stripes--to order; nor even on the prejudiced statements of friends and sweethearts, who always swear from the heart rather than from the head and the conscience; but on the calm testimony of indifferent men, and on written doc.u.ments furnished by the plaintiff', and on contemporaneous entries in the books of the asylum, which entries formally describe the plaintiff's acts, and were put down at the time--at the time, gentlemen--with no idea of a trial at law to come, but in compliance with the very proper provisions of a wise and salutary Act. I shall also lay before you the evidence of the medical witnesses who signed the certificates, men of probity and honour, and who have made these subtle maladies of the mind the special study of their whole life. I shall also call the family doctor, who has known the plaintiff and his ailments, bodily and mental, for many years, and communicated his suspicions to one of the first psychological physicians of the age, declining, with a modesty which we, who know less of insanity than he does, would do well to imitate--declining, I say, to p.r.o.nounce a positive opinion unfavourable to the plaintiff, till he should have compared notes with this learned man, and profited by his vast experience."

In this strain he continued for a good hour, until the defendants case seemed to be a thing of granite. His oration ended, he called a string of witnesses: every one of whom bore the learned counsel out by his evidence in chief.

But here came the grand distinction between the defendants case and the plaintiff's. Cross-examination had hardly shaken the plaintiff's witnesses: it literally dissolved the defendant's. Osmond was called, and proved Alfred's headaches and pallor, and his own suspicions. But then Colt forced him to admit that many young people had headaches without going mad, and were pale when thwarted in love, without going mad: and that as to the L. 14,000 and the phantom, he _knew_ nothing; but had taken all that for granted on Mr. Richard Hardie's word.

Dr. Wycherley deposed to Alfred's being insane and abnormally irritable, and under a pecuniary illusion, as stated in his certificate: and to his own vast experience. But the fire of cross-examination melted all his polysyllables into guesswork and hearsay. It melted out of him that he, a stranger, had intruded on the young man's privacy, and had burst into a most delicate topic, his disagreement with his father, and so had himself created the very irritation he had set down to madness. He also had to admit that he knew nothing about the L. 14,000 or the phantom, but had taken for granted the young man's own father, who consulted him, was not telling him a deliberate and wicked falsehood.

_Colt._--In short, sir, you were retained to make the man out insane, just as my learned friend there is retained.

_Wycherley._--I think, sir, it would not be consistent with the dignity of my profession to notice that comparison.

_Colt._--I leave defendant's counsel to thank you for that. Come, never mind _dignity;_ let us have a little _truth._ Is it consistent with your dignity to tell us whether the keepers of private asylums pay you a commission for all the patients you consign to durance vile by your certificates?

Dr. Wycherley fenced with this question, but the remorseless Colt only kept him longer under torture, and dragged out of him that he received fifteen per cent. from the asylum keepers for every patient he wrote insane; and that he had an income of eight hundred pounds a year from that source alone. This, of course, was the very thing to prejudice a jury against the defence: and Colt's art was to keep to their level.

Speers, cross-examined, failed to conceal that he was a mere tool of Wycherley's, and had signed in manifest collusion, adhering to the letter of the statute, but violating its spirit for certainly, the Act never intended by "separate examination," that two doctors should come into the pa.s.sage, and walk into the room alternately, then reunite, and do the signing as agreed before they ever saw the patient. As to the illusion about the fourteen thousand pounds, Speers owned that the plaintiff had not uttered a word about the subject, but had peremptorily declined it. He had to confess, too, that he had taken for granted Dr.

Wycherley was correctly informed about the said illusion.

"In short," said the judge, interposing, "Dr. Wycherley took the very thing for granted which it was his duty to ascertain; and you, sir, not to be behind Dr. Wycherley, took the thing for granted at second hand."

And when Speers had left the box, he said to Serjeant Saunders, "If this case is to be defended seriously, you had better call Mr. Richard Hardie without further delay."

"It is my wish, my lud; but I am sorry to say he is in the country very ill; and I have no hope of seeing him here before to-morrow."

"Oh, well; so that you _do_ call him. I shall not lay hearsay before the jury: hearsay gathered from Mr. Richard Hardie--whom you will call in person if the reports he has circulated have any basis whatever in truth."

Mr. Saunders said coolly, "Mr. Richard Hardie is not the defendant,"

and flowed on; nor would any but a lawyer have suspected what a terrible stab the judge had given him so quietly.

The surgeon of Silverton House was then sworn, and produced the case book; and there stood the entries which had been so fatal to Alfred with the visiting justices. Suicide, homicide, self-starvation. But the plaintiff got to Mr. Colt with a piece of paper, on which he had written his view of all this, and cross-examination dissolved the suicide and homicide into a spirited attempt to escape and resist a false imprisonment As for the self-starvation, Colt elicited that Alfred had eaten at six o'clock though not at two. "And pray, sir," said he, contemptuously, to the witness, "do you never stir out of a madhouse?

Do you imagine that gentlemen in their senses dine at two o'clock in the nineteenth century?"

"No. I don't say that."

"What _do_ you say, then? Is forcible imprisonment of a bridegroom in a madhouse the thing to give a _gentleman_ a _fact.i.tious_ appet.i.te at _your_ barbarous dinner-hour?"

In a word, Colt was rough with this witness, and nearly smashed him.

Saunders fought gallantly on, and put in Lawyer Crawford with his draft of the insane deed, as he called it, by which the erotic monomaniac Alfred divested himself of all his money in favour of the Dodds. There was no dissolving this deed away; and Crawford swore he had entreated the plaintiff not to insist on his drawing so unheard-of a doc.u.ment; but opposition or question seemed to irritate his client, so that he had complied, and the deed was to have been signed on the wedding-day.

All the lawyers present thought this looked really mad. Fancy a man signing away his property to his wife's relatives!! The court, which had already sat long beyond the usual time, broke up, leaving the defendant with this advantage. Alfred Hardie and his friends made a little knot in the hall outside, and talked excitedly over the incidents of the trial.

Mr. Compton introduced Fullalove and Vespasian. They all shook hands with them, and thanked them warmly for the timely and most unexpected aid. But Green and a myrmidon broke in upon their conversation. "I am down on Mr. Barkington _alias_ Noah Skinner. It isn't very far from here, if you will follow me." Green was as excited as a foxhound when Pug has begun to trail his brush: the more so that another client of his wanted Noah Skinner; and so the detective was doing a double stroke of business. He led the way; it was dry, and they all went in pairs after him into the back slums of Westminster; and a pretty part that is.

Now as they went along Alfred hung behind with Julia, and asked her what on earth she meant by swearing that it was all over between her and him. "Why your last letter was full of love, dearest; what could you be thinking of to say that?"

She shook her head sadly, and revealed to him with many prayers for forgiveness that she had been playing a part of late: that she had concealed her father's death from him, and the fatal barrier interposed.

"I was afraid you would be disheartened, and lose your first cla.s.s and perhaps your trial. But you are safe now, dear Alfred; I am sure the judge sees through them; for I have studied him for you. I know his face by heart, and all his looks and what they mean. My Alfred will be cleared of this wicked slander, and happy with some one----Ah!"

"Yes, I mean to be happy with some one," said Alfred. "I am not one of your self-sacrificing angels; thank Heaven! Your shall not sacrifice us to your mother's injustice nor to the caprices of fate. We have one another; but you would immolate me for the pleasure of immolating yourself. Don't provoke me too far, or I'll carry you off by force. I swear it, by Him who made us both."

"Dearest, how wildly you talk." And with this Julia hung her head, and had a guilty thrill. She could not help thinking that eccentric little measure would relieve her of the sin of disobedience.

After making known to her his desperate resolution, Alfred was silent, and they went sadly side by side; so dear, so near, yet always some infernal thing or other coming between them. They reached a pa.s.sage in a miserable street. At the mouth stood two of Green's men, planted there to follow Skinner should he go out: but they reported all quiet. "Bring the old gentleman up," said Green. "I appointed him six o'clock, and it's on the stroke." He then descended the pa.s.sage, and striking a light led the way up a high stair. Skinner lived on the fifth story. Green tapped at his door. "Mr. Barkington."

No reply.

"Mr. Barkington, I've brought you some money."

No reply.

"Perhaps he is not at home," said Mr. Compton.

"Oh, yes, sir, I sent a sharp boy up, and he picked the paper out of the keyhole and saw him sitting reading."

He then applied his own eye to the keyhole. "I see something black,"

said he, "I think he suspects."

While he hesitated, they became conscious of a pungent vapour stealing through the now open keyhole.

"Hallo!" said Green, "what is this?"

Fullalove observed coolly that Mr. Skinner's lungs must be peculiarly made if he could breathe in that atmosphere. "If you want to see him alive, let me open the door."

"There's something amiss here," said Green gravely.

At that Fullalove whipped out a tool no bigger than a nutcracker, forced the edge in, and sent the door flying open. The room or den was full of an acrid vapour, and close to them sat he they sought motionless.

"Keep the lady back," cried Green, and threw the vivid light of his bull's eye on a strange, grotesque, and ghastly scene. The floor was covered with bright sovereigns that glittered in the lamp-light. On the table was an open book, and a candle quite burnt down: the grease had run into a circle.

And, as was that grease to the expired light, so was the thing that sat there in human form to the Noah Skinner they had come to seek. Dead this many a day of charcoal fumes, but preserved from decomposition by those very fumes, sat Noah Skinner, dried into bones and leather waiting for them with his own Hard Cash, and with theirs; for, creeping awestruck round that mummified figure seated dead on his pool of sovereigns, they soon noticed in his left hand a paper: it was discoloured by the vapour, and part hid by the dead thumb; but thus much shone out clear and amazing, that it was a banker's receipt to David Dodd, Esq., for L.

14,010, drawn at Barkington, and signed for Richard Hardie by Noah Skinner. Julia had drawn back, and was hiding her face; but soon curiosity struggled with awe in the others: they peeped at the Receipt: they touched the weird figure. Its yellow skin sounded like a drum, and its joints creaked like a puppets. At last Compton suggested that Edward Dodd ought to secure that valuable doc.u.ment. "No no," said Edward: "it is too like robbing the dead."

"Then I will," said Compton.

But he found the dead thumb and finger would not part with the Receipt; then, as a trifle turns the scale, he hesitated in turn: and all but Julia stood motionless round the body that held the Receipt, the soul of the lost Cash, and still, as in life, seemed loth to part with it.

Then Fullalove came beside the arm-chair, and said with simple dignity, "I'm a man from foreign parts; I have no interest here but justice: and justice I'll do." He took the dead arm, and the joint creaked: he applied the same lever to the bone and parchment hand he had to the door: it creaked too, but more faintly, and opened and let out this:--

No. 17. BARKINGTON, Nov. 10, 1847.

_Received of_ DAVID DODD, Esq., _the sum of Fourteen Thousand and Ten Pounds Twelve s.h.i.+llings and Six Pence,_

to account on demand