The Bondboy Part 42

Judge Maxwell was tall and large of frame, from which the study and abstemiousness of his life had worn all superfluous flesh. His face, cleanly shaved, was expressive of the scholarly attainments which made his decisions a national standard. The judge's eyes were bushed over with great, gray brows, the one forbidding cast in his countenance; they looked out upon those who came for judgment before him through a pair of spring-clamp spectacles which seemed to ride precariously upon his large, bony nose. The gla.s.ses were tied to a slender black braid, which he wore looped about his neck.

His hair was long, iron-gray, and thick; he wore it brushed straight back from his brow, without a parting or a break. It lay in place so smoothly and persistently through all the labor of his long days, that strangers were sometimes misled into the belief that it was not his own.

This peculiar fas.h.i.+on of dressing his hair, taken with the length and leanness of his jaw, gave the judge a cast of aquiline severeness which his gray eyes belied when they beamed over the tops of his gla.s.ses at floundering young counsel or timid witness.

Yet they could shoot darts of fire, as many a rash lawyer who had fallen under their censure could bear witness. At such moments the judge had a peculiar habit of drawing up his long back and seemingly to distend himself with all the dignity which his c.u.mulative years and honors had endured, and of bowing his neck to make the focus of his eyes more direct as he peered above his rimless gla.s.ses. He did not find it necessary to reprimand an attorney often, never more than once, but these occasions never were forgotten. In his twenty-five years' service on the bench, he never had been reversed.

Joe felt a revival of hope again under the influence of these preparations for the trial. Perhaps Alice was there, somewhere among the people back in the room, he thought. And the colonel, also, and maybe Morgan. Who could tell? There was no use in abandoning hope when he was just where he could see a little daylight.

Joe sat up again, and lifted his head with new confidence. His mother sat beside him, watching everything with a sharpness which seemed especially bent on seeing that Joe was given all his rights, and that nothing was omitted nor slighted that might count in his favor.

She watched Hammer, and Captain Taylor; she measured Sam Lucas, the prosecutor, and she weighed the judge. When Hammer did something that pleased her, she nodded; when the prosecutor interposed, or seemed to be blocking the progress of the case, she shook her head in severe censure.

And now Joe came in for his first taste of the musty and ancient savor of the law. He had hoped that morning to walk away free at evening, or at least to have met the worst that was to come, chancing it that Morgan failed to appear and give him a hand. But he saw the hours waste away with the most exasperating fiddling, fussing and scratching over unprofitable straw.

What Hammer desired in a juryman, the prosecuting attorney was hotly against, and what pleased the state's attorney seemed to give Hammer a spasmodic chill. Instead of selecting twelve intelligent men, the most intelligent of the sixty empaneled, both Hammer and the prosecutor seemed determined to choose the most dense.

That day's sweating labor resulted in the selection of four jurymen.

Hammer seemed cheered. He said he had expected to exhaust the panel and get no more than two, at the best. Now it seemed as if they might secure the full complement without drawing another panel, and that would save them at least four days. That must have been an exceedingly lucky haul of empty heads, indeed.

Joe could not see any reason for elation. The prospect of freedom--or the worst--had withdrawn so far that there was not even a pin-point of daylight in the gloom. Alice had not shown her face. If she had come at all, she had withheld herself from his hungry eyes. His heart was as bleak that night as the mind of the densest juryman agreed upon between Hammer and the attorney for the state.

Next day, to the surprise of everybody, the jury was completed. And then there followed, on the succeeding morning, a recital by the prosecuting attorney of what he proposed and expected to prove in substantiation of the charge that Joe Newbolt had shot and killed Isom Chase; and Hammer's no shorter statement of what he was prepared to show to the contrary.

Owing to the unprecedented interest, and the large number of people who had driven in from the country, Judge Maxwell unbent from his hard conditions on that day. He instructed Captain Taylor to admit spectators to standing-room along the walls, but to keep the aisles between the benches clear.

This concession provided for at least a hundred more onlookers and listeners, who stood forgetful of any ache in their shanks throughout the long and dragging proceedings well satisfied, believing that the coming sensations would repay them for any pangs of inconvenience they might suffer.

It was on the afternoon of the third day of the trial that Sol Greening, first witness for the state, was called.

Sol retailed again, in his gossipy way, and with immense enjoyment of his importance, the story of the tragedy as he had related it at the inquest. Sam Lucas gave him all the rope he wanted, even led him into greater excursions than Sol had planned. Round-about excursions, to be sure, and inconsequential in effect, but they all led back to the tragic picture of Joe Newbolt standing beside the dead body of Isom Chase, his hat in his hand, as if he had been interrupted on the point of escape.

Sol seemed a wonderfully acute man for the recollection of details, but there was one thing that had escaped his memory. He said he did not remember whether, when he knocked on the kitchen door, anybody told him to come in or not. He was of the opinion, to the best of his knowledge and belief--the words being supplied by the prosecutor--that he just knocked, and stood there blowing a second or two, like a horse that had been put to a hard run, and then went in without being bidden. Sol believed that was the way of it; he had no recollection of anybody telling him to come in.

When it came Hammer's turn to question the witness, he rose with an air of patronizing a.s.surance. He called Sol by his first name, in easy familiarity, although he never had spoken to him before that day. He proceeded as if he intended to establish himself in the man's confidence by gentle handling, and in that manner cause him to confound, refute and entangle himself by admissions made in grat.i.tude.

But Sol was a suspicious customer. He hesitated and he hummed, backed and sidled, and didn't know anything more than he had related. The bag of money which had been found with Isom's body had been introduced by the state for identification by Sol. Hammer took up the matter with a sudden turn toward sharpness and belligerency.

"You say that this is the same sack of money that was there on the floor with Isom Chase's body when you entered the room?" he asked.

"That's it," nodded Sol.

"Tell this jury how you know it's the same one!" ordered Hammer, in stern voice.

"Well, I seen it," said Sol.

"Oh, yes, you saw it. Well, did you go over to it and make a mark on it so you'd know it again?"

"No, I never done that," admitted Sol.

"Don't you know the banks are full of little sacks of money like that?"

Hammer wanted to know.

"I reckon maybe they air," Sol replied.

"And this one might be any one of a thousand like it, mightn't it, Sol?"

"Well, I don't reckon it could. That's the one Isom had."

"Did you step over where the dead body was at and heft it?"

"'Course I never," said Sol.

"Did you open it and count the money in it, or tie a string or something onto it so you'd know it when you saw it again?"

"No, I never," said Sol sulkily.

"Then how do you know this is it?"

"I tell you I seen it," persisted Sol.

"Oh, you seen it!" repeated Hammer, sweeping the jury a cunning look as if to apprise them that he had found out just what he wanted to know, and that upon that simple admission he was about to turn the villainy of Sol Greening inside out for them to see with their own intelligent eyes.

"Yes, I said I seen it," maintained Sol, bristling up a little.

"Yes, I heard you say it, and now I want you to tell this jury how you _know_!"

Hammer threw the last word into Sol's face with a slam that made him jump. Sol turned red under the whiskers, around the whiskers, and all over the uncovered part of him. He s.h.i.+fted in his chair; he swallowed.

"Well, I don't just know," said he.

"No, you don't--just--know!" sneered Hammer, glowing in oily triumph. He looked at the jury confidentially, as on the footing of a shrewd man with his equally shrewd audience.

Then he took up the old rifle, and Isom's b.l.o.o.d.y coat and s.h.i.+rt, which were also there as exhibits, and dressed Sol down on all of them, working hard to create the impression in the minds of the jurors that Sol Greening was a born liar, and not to be depended on in the most trivial particular.

Hammer worked himself up into a sweat and emitted a great deal of perfume of barberish--and barbarous--character, and glanced around the court-room with triumph in his eyes and satisfaction at the corners of his mouth.

He came now to the uncertainty of Sol's memory on the matter of being bidden to enter the kitchen when he knocked. Sol had now pa.s.sed from doubt to certainty. Come to think it over, said he, n.o.body had said a word when he knocked at that door. He remembered now that it was as still inside the house as if everybody was away.

Mrs. Greening was standing against the wall, having that moment returned to the room from ministering to her daughter's baby. She held the infant in her arms, waiting Sol's descent from the witness-chair so she might settle down in her place without disturbing the proceedings. When she heard her husband make this positive declaration, her mouth fell open and her eyes widened in surprise.

"Why Sol," she spoke up reprovingly, "you told me Joe----"

It had taken the prosecuting attorney that long to glance around and spring to his feet. There his voice, in a loud appeal to the court for the protection of his sacred rights, drowned that of mild Mrs. Greening.

The judge rapped, the sheriff rapped; Captain Taylor, from his post at the door, echoed the authoritative sound.

Hammer abruptly ceased his questioning of Sol, after the judge had spoken a few crisp words of admonishment, not directed in particular at Mrs. Greening, but more to the public at large, regarding the decorum of the court. Sam Lucas thereupon took Sol in hand again, and drew him on to replace his former doubtful statement by his later conclusion. As Sol left the witness-chair Hammer smiled. He handed Mrs. Greening's name to the clerk, and requested a subpoena for her as a witness for the defense.

Sol's son Dan was the next witness, and Hammer put him through a similar course of sprouts. Judge Maxwell allowed Hammer to disport uncurbed until it became evident that, if given his way, the barber-lawyer would drag the trial out until Joe was well along in middle life. He then admonished Hammer that there were bounds fixed for human existence, and that the case must get on.