Burnham Breaker Part 46

It came upon those who saw it like an electric flash, and in another moment the crowded room was ringing with applause.

CHAPTER XVII.

GENTLEMEN OF THE JURY.

Sharpman had not seen Ralph's expression and did not know what the noise was all about. He looked around at the audience uneasily, whispered to Craft for a moment, and then announced that he was done with the witness. He was really afraid to carry the examination further; there were too many pit-falls along the way.

Goodlaw, too, was wise enough to ask no additional questions. He did not care to lay grounds for the possible reversal of a judgment in favor of the defendant, by introducing questionable evidence.

But he felt that the case, in its present aspect, needed farther investigation, and he moved for a continuance of the cause for two days. He desired, he said, to find the person known as Rhyming Joe, and to produce such other evidence as this new and startling turn of affairs might make necessary.

Craft whispered to Sharpman that the request should be agreed to, saying that he could bring plenty of witnesses to prove that Rhyming Joe was a worthless adventurer, notorious for his habits of lying; and stoutly a.s.serting that the boy was positively Ralph Burnham. But Sharpman's great fear was that if Rhyming Joe should be brought back, the story of the bribery could no longer be hushed; and he therefore opposed the application for a continuance with all his energy.

The court ruled that the reasons presented were not sufficient to warrant the holding of a jury at this stage of the case for so long a time, but intimated that in the event of a verdict for the plaintiff a motion for a new trial might be favorably considered by the court.

"Then we have nothing further to offer," said Goodlaw.

Sharpman resumed his seat with an air of satisfaction, and sat for full five minutes, with his face in his hand, in deep thought.

"I think," he said, finally, looking up, "that we shall present nothing in reb.u.t.tal. The case, as it now stands, doesn't seem to call for it." He had been considering whether it would be safe and wise for him to go on the witness-stand and deny any portion of Ralph's story.

He had reached the conclusion that it would not. The risk was too great.

"Very well," said the judge, taking up his pen, "then the evidence is closed. Mr. Goodlaw, are you ready to go to the jury?"

Goodlaw, who had been, during this time, holding a whispered conversation with Ralph, arose, bowed to the court, and turned to face the jurors. He began his speech by saying that, until the recent testimony given by the boy Ralph had been produced in court, he had not expected to address the jury at all; but that that testimony had so changed the whole tenor of the case as to make a brief argument for the defence an apparent necessity.

Fortified by the knowledge of the story that Rhyming Joe had told, as Ralph had just whispered it to him, Goodlaw was able to dissipate, greatly, the force of the plaintiff's evidence, and to show how Craft's whole story might easily be a cleverly concocted falsehood built upon a foundation of truth. He opened up to the wondering minds of the jurors the probable scheme which had been originated by these two plotters, Craft and Sharpman, to raise up an heir to the estates of Robert Burnham, an heir of whom Craft could be guardian, and a guardian of whom Sharpman could be attorney. He explained how the property and the funds that would thus come into their hands could be so managed as to leave a fortune in the pocket of each of them before they should have done with the estate.

"The scheme was a clever one," he said, "and worked well, and no obstacle stood in the way of these conspirators until a person known as Rhyming Joe came on the scene. This person knew the history of Ralph's parentage and saw through Craft's duplicity; and, in an unguarded moment, the attorney for the plaintiff closed this man's mouth by means which we can only guess at, and sent him forth to hide among the moral and the social wrecks that const.i.tute the flotsam and the jetsam of society. But his words, declaring Simon Craft's bold scheme a fabric built upon a lie, had already struck upon the ears and pierced into the heart of one whose tender conscience would not let him rest with the burden of this knowledge weighing down upon it. What was it that he heard, gentlemen? We can only conjecture. The laws of evidence drop down upon us here and forbid that we should fully know.

But that it was a tale that brought conviction to the mind of this brave boy you cannot doubt. It is for no light cause that he comes here to publicly renounce his right and t.i.tle to the name, the wealth, the high maternal love that yesterday was lying at his feet and smiling in his face. The counsel for the plaintiff tries to throw upon him the mantle of the eavesdropper, but the breath of this boy's lightest word lifts such a covering from him, and reveals his purity of purpose and his agony of mind in listening to the revelation that was made. I do not wonder that he should lose the power to move on hearing it. I do not wonder that he should be compelled, as if by some strange force, to sit and listen quietly to every piercing word.

I can well conceive how terrible the shock would be to one who came, as he did, fresh from a home where love had made the hours so sweet to him that he thought them fairer than any he had ever known before.

I can well conceive what bitter disappointment and what deep emotion filled his breast. But the struggle that began there then between his boyish sense of honor and his desire for home, for wealth, for fond affection, I cannot fathom that;--it is too deep, too high, too terrible for me to fully understand. I only know that honor was triumphant; that he bade farewell to love, to hope, to home, to the brightest, sweetest things in all this world of beauty, and turned his face manfully, steadfastly, unflinchingly to the right. With the help and counsel of one honest man, he set about to check the progress of a mighty wrong. No disappointment discouraged him, no fear found place in his heart, no distance was too great for him to traverse. He knew that here, to-day, without his presence, injustice would be done, dishonesty would be rewarded, and shameless fraud prevail. It was for him, and him alone, to stop it, and he set out upon his journey hither. The powers of darkness were arrayed against him, fate scowled savagely upon him, disaster blocked his path, the iron horse refused to draw him, but he remained undaunted and determined. He had no time to lose; he left the conquered power of steam behind him, and started out alone through heat and dust to reach the place of justice. With bared, bruised feet and aching limbs and parched tongue he hurried, on, walking, running, as he could, dragging himself at last into the presence of the court at the very moment when the scales of justice were trembling for the downward plunge, and spoke the words that checked the course of legal crime, that placed the chains of hopeless toil upon his own weak limbs, but that gave the world--another hero!

"Gentlemen of the jury, I have labored at the bar of this court for more than thirty years, but I never saw before a specimen of moral courage fit to bear comparison with this; I never in my life before saw such a lofty deed of heroism so magnificently done. And do you think that such a boy as this would lie? Do you think that such a boy as this would say to you one word that did not rise from the deep conviction of an honest heart?

"I leave the case in your hands, gentlemen; you are to choose between selfish greed and honest sacrifice, between the force of cunning craft and the mighty power of truth. See to it that you choose rightly and well."

The rumble of applause from the court-room as Goodlaw resumed his seat was quickly suppressed by the officers, and Sharpman arose to speak.

He was calm and courteous, and seemed sanguine of success. But his mind was filled with the darkness of disappointment and the dread of disaster; and his heart was heavy with its bitterness toward those who had blocked his path. He knew that Ralph's testimony ought to bear but lightly on the case, but he feared that it would weigh heavily with the jury, and that his own character would not come out stainless. He hardly hoped to save both case and character, but he determined to make the strongest effort of which he was capable. He reviewed the testimony given by Mrs. Burnham concerning her child and his supposed tragic death; he recalled all the circ.u.mstances connected with the railroad accident, and repeated the statements of the witnesses concerning the old man and the child; he gave again the history of Ralph's life, and of Simon Craft's searching and failures and success; he contended, with all the powers of logic and oratory at his command, that Ralph Burnham was saved from the wreck at Cherry Brook, and Was that moment sitting by his mother before the faces and eyes of the court and jury.

"Until to-day," he said, "every one who has heard this evidence, and taken interest in this case, has believed, as I do, that this boy is Robert Burnham's son. The boy's mother believed it, the counsel for the defence believed it, the lad himself believed it, his Honor on the bench, and you, gentlemen in the jury-box, I doubt not, all believed it; indeed it was agreed by all parties that nothing remained to be done but to take your verdict for the plaintiff. But, lo! this child makes his dramatic entrance into the presence of the court, and, under the inspired guidance of defendant's counsel, tells his story of eavesdropping, and when it is done my learned friend has the temerity to ask you to throw away your reason, to dismiss logic from your minds, to trample law under your feet, to scatter the evidence to the four winds of heaven, and to believe what? Why, a boy's silly story of an absurd and palpable lie?

"I did not go upon the witness-stand to contradict this fairy tale; it did not seem to be worth the while.

"Consider it for a moment. This youth says he came to my office last night and found me in the inner room in conversation with another person. I shall not deny that. Supposing it to be true, there was nothing strange or wrong in it, was there? But what does this boy whom my learned friend has lauded to the skies for his manliness and honor do next? Why, according to his own story, he steals into the darkness of the outer office and seats himself to listen to the conversation in the inner room, and hears--what? No good of himself certainly.

Eavesdroppers never do hear good of themselves. But he thinks he hears the voice of a person whom no one in this court-room ever heard of or thought of before, nor has seen or heard of since--a person who, I daresay, has existence only in this child's imagination; he thinks he hears this person declare that he, Ralph, is not Robert Burnham's son, and, by way of embellis.h.i.+ng his tale, he adds statements which are still more absurd, statements on the strength of which my learned friend hopes to darken in your eyes the character of the counsel for the plaintiff. I trust, gentlemen, that I am too well known at the bar of this court and in this community to have my moral standing swept away by such a flimsy falsehood as you see this to be. And so, to-day, this child comes into court and declares, with solemn a.s.severation, that the evidence fixing his ident.i.ty beyond dispute or question is all a lie; and what is this declaration worth? His Honor will tell you, in his charge, I have no doubt, that this boy's statement, founded, as he himself says, on hearsay, is valueless in law, and should have no weight in your minds. But I do not ask you to base your judgment on technicalities of law. I ask you to base it simply on the reasonable evidence in this case.

"What explanation there can be of this lad's conduct, I have not, as yet, been ably, fully, to determine.

"I have tried, in my own mind, to throw the mantle of charity across him. I have tried to think that, coming from an unaccustomed meal, his stomach loaded with rich food, he no sooner sank into the office chair than he fell asleep and dreamed. It is not improbable. The power of dreams is great on children's minds, as all of you may know. But in the face of these developments I can hardly bring myself to accept this theory. There is too much method in the child's madness. It looks more like the outcome of some desperate move on the part of this defence to win the game which they have seen slipping from their control. It looks like a deep-laid plan to rob my aged and honored client of the credit to which he is ent.i.tled for rescuing this boy at the risk of his life, for caring for him through poverty and disease, for finding him when his own mother had given him up for dead, and restoring him to the bosom of his family. It looks as though they feared that this old man, already trembling on the brink of the grave, would s.n.a.t.c.h some comfort for his remaining days out of the pittance that he might hope to collect from this vast estate for services that ought to be beyond price. It looks as though hatred and jealousy were combined in a desperate effort to crush the counsel for the plaintiff.

The counsel for the plaintiff can afford to laugh at their animosity toward himself, but he cannot help his indignation at their plot. Now, let us see.

"It is acknowledged that the boy Ralph spent the larger part of yesterday afternoon at the house of this defendant, and was fed and flattered till he nearly lost his head in telling of it. That is a strange circ.u.mstance, to begin with. How many private consultations he has had with counsel for defence, I know not. Neither do I know what tempting inducements have been held out to him to turn traitor to those who have been his truest friends. These things I can only imagine. But that fine promises have been made to him, that pictures of plenty have been unfolded to his gaze, that the glitter of gold and the sheen of silver have dazzled his young eyes, there can be little doubt. So he has seen visions and dreamed dreams, at will; he has endured terrible temptations, and fought great moral battles, by special request, and has come off more than victor, in the counsel's mind. To-day everything is ready for the carrying-out of their skilful scheme. At the right moment the counsel gives the signal, and the boy darts in, hatless, shoeless, ragged, and dusty, for the occasion, and tragic to the counsel's heart's content, and is put at once upon the stand to tell his made-up tale, and--"

Sharpman heard a slight noise behind him, and some one exclaimed:--

"He has fainted!"

The lawyer stopped in his harangue and turned in time to see Ralph lying in a heap on the floor, just as he had slipped that moment from his chair. The boy had listened to Goodlaw's praises of his conduct with a vague feeling that he was undeserving of so much credit for it.

But when Sharpman, advancing in his speech, charged him with having dreamed his story, he was astounded. He thought it was the strangest thing he had ever heard of. For was not Mr. Sharpman there, himself?

and did not he know that it was all real and true? He could not understand the lawyer's allegation. Later on, when Sharpman declared boldly that Ralph's statement on the witness-stand was a carefully concocted falsehood, the bluntness of the charge was like a cruel blow, and the boy's sensitive nerves shrank and quivered beneath it; then his lips grew pale, his breath came in gasps, the room went swimming round him, darkness came before his eyes, and his weak body, enfeebled by prolonged fasting and excitement, slipped down to the floor.

The people in the court-room scrambled to their feet again to look over into the bar.

A man who had entered the room in time to hear Sharpman's brutal speech pushed his way through the crowd, and hurried down to the place where Ralph was lying. It was Bachelor Billy.

In a moment he was down on his knees by the boy's side, chafing the small cold hands and wrists, while Mrs. Burnham, kneeling on the other side, was dipping her handkerchief into a gla.s.s of water, and bathing the lad's face.

Bachelor Billy turned on his knees and looked up angrily at Sharpman.

"Mayhap an' ye've killet 'im," he said, "wi' your traish an' your lees!" Then he rose to his feet and continued: "Can ye no' tell when a lad speaks the truth? Mon! he's as honest as the day is lang! But what's the use o' tellin' ye? ye ken it yoursel'. Ye _wull_ be fause to 'im!"

His lips were white with pa.s.sion as he knelt again by the side of the unconscious boy.

"Ye're verra gude to the lad, ma'am," he said to Mrs. Burnham, who had raised Ralph's head in her arms and was pressing her wet handkerchief against it; "ye're verra gude, but ma mind is to tak' 'im hame an'

ten' till 'im mysel'. He was ower-tired, d'ye see, wi' the trooble an'

the toil, an' noo I fear me an they've broke the hert o' 'im."

Then Bachelor Billy, lifting the boy up in his arms, set his face toward the door. The people pressed back and made way for him as he pa.s.sed up the aisle holding the drooping body very tenderly, looking down at times with great compa.s.sion into the white face that lay against his breast; and the eyes that watched his st.u.r.dy back until it disappeared from view were wet with sympathetic tears.

When the doors had closed behind him, Sharpman turned again to the jury, with a bitterly sarcastic smile upon his face.

"Another chapter in the made-up tragedy," he said, "performed with marvellous skill as you can see. My learned friend has drilled his people well. He has made consummate actors of them all. And yet he would have you think that one is but an honest fool, and that the other is as innocent as a babe in arms."

Up among the people some one hissed, then some one else joined in, and, before the judge and officers could restore order in the room, the indignant crowd had greeted Sharpman's words with a perfect torrent of groans and hisses. Then the wily lawyer realized that he was making a mistake. He knew that he could not afford to gain the ill-will of the populace, and accordingly he changed the tenor of his speech. He spoke generally of law and justice, and particularly of the weight of evidence in the case at bar. He dwelt with much emphasis on Simon Craft's bravery, self-sacrifice, poverty, toil, and suffering; and, with a burst of oratory that made the walls re-echo with the sound of his resonant voice, he closed his address and resumed his seat.

Then the judge delivered the charge in a calm, dispa.s.sionate way. He reviewed the evidence very briefly, warning the jury to reject from their minds all improper declarations of any witness or other person, and directing them to rest their decision only on the legal evidence in the case. He instructed them that although the boy Ralph's declaration that he was not Robert Burnham's son might be regarded by them, yet they must also take into consideration the fact that his opinion was founded partly, if not wholly, on hearsay, and, for that reason, would be of little value to them in making up their decision.

Any evidence of the alleged conversation at Mr. Sharpman's office, he said, must be rejected wholly. He warned them to dismiss from their minds all prejudice or sympathy that might have been aroused by the speeches of counsel, or the appearance of witnesses in court, and to take into consideration and decide upon but one question, namely: whether the boy Ralph is or is not the son of the late Robert Burnham: that, laying aside all other questions, matters, and things, they must decide that and that alone, according to the law and the evidence.

When the judge had finished his charge a constable was sworn, and, followed by the twelve jurors, he marched from the court-room.

It was already after six o'clock, so the crier was directed to adjourn the court, and, a few minutes later, the judge, the lawyers, the witnesses, and the spectators had all disappeared, and the room was empty.

CHAPTER XVIII.