The Bondboy Part 44

The judge, for no other purpose, evidently, than to prove to the defendant and public alike that he was unbiased and fair--knowing beforehand what his ruling must be--indulged Hammer until he expended his argument. Then he laid the matter down in few words.

Mrs. Greening had not been present when her husband knocked on the door of Isom Chase's kitchen that night; she did not know, therefore, of her own experience what was spoken. No matter what her husband told her he said, or anybody else said, she could not repeat the words there under oath. It would be hearsay evidence, and such evidence was not admissible in any court of law. No matter how important such testimony might appear to one seeking the truth, the rules of evidence in civilized courts barred it. Mrs. Greening's lips must remain sealed on what Sol said Joe said, or anybody said to someone else.

So the jury was called back, and Mrs. Greening was excused, and Hammer wiped off the sweat and pushed back his cuffs. And the people who had come in from their farmsteads to hear this trial by jury--all innocent of the traditions and precedents of practice of the law--marveled how it could be. Why, nine people out of nine, all over the towns.h.i.+p where Sol Greening lived, would take his wife's word for anything where she and Sol had different versions of a story.

It looked to them like Sol had told the truth in the first place to his wife, and lied on the witness-stand. And here she was, all ready to show the windy old rascal up, and they wouldn't let her. Well, it beat all two o'clock!

Of course, being simple people who had never been at a university in their lives, they did not know that Form and Precedent are the two pillars of Strength and Beauty, the Jachin and Boaz at the entrance of the temple of the law. Or that the proper genuflections before them are of more importance than the mere bringing out of a bit of truth which might save an accused man's life.

And so it stood before the jury that Sol Greening had knocked on the door of Isom Chase's kitchen that night and had not been bidden to enter, when everybody in the room, save the jury of twelve intelligent men--who had been taken out to keep their innocence untainted and their judgment unbiased by a gleam of the truth--knew that he had sat up there and lied.

Hammer cooled himself off after a few minutes of mopping, and called Ollie Chase to the witness-chair. Ollie seemed nervous and full of dread as she stood for a moment stowing her cloak and handbag in her mother's lap. She turned back for her handkerchief when she had almost reached the little gate in the railing through which she must pa.s.s to the witness-chair. Hammer held it open for her and gave her the comfort of his hand under her elbow as she went forward to take her place.

A stir and a whispering, like a quick wind in a cornfield, moved over the room when Ollie's name was called. Then silence ensued. It was more than a mere listening silence; it was impertinent. Everybody looked for a scandal, and most of them hoped that they should not depart that day with their long-growing hunger unsatisfied.

Ollie took the witness-chair with an air of extreme nervousness. As she settled down in her cloud of black skirt, black veil, and shadow of black sailor hat, she cast about the room a look of timid appeal. She seemed to be sounding the depths of the listening crowd's sympathy, and to find it shallow and in shoals.

Hammer was kind, with an unctuous, patronizing gentleness. He seemed to approach her with the feeling that she might say a great deal that would be damaging to the defendant if she had a mind to do it, but with gentle adroitness she could be managed to his advantage. Led by a question here, a helping reminder there, Ollie went over her story, in all particulars the same as she had related at the inquest.

Hammer brought out, with many confidential glances at the jury, the distance between Ollie's room and the kitchen; the fact that she had her door closed, that she had gone to bed heavy with weariness, and was asleep long before midnight; that she had been startled by a sound, a strange and mysterious sound for that quiet house, and had sat up in her bed listening. Sol Greening had called her next, in a little while, even before she could master her fright and confusion and muster courage to run down the hall and call Joe.

Hammer did well with the witness; that was the general opinion, drawing from her a great deal about Joe's habit of life in Isom's house, a great deal about Isom's temper, hard ways, and readiness to give a blow.

She seemed reluctant to discuss Isom's faults, anxious, rather, to ease them over after the manner of one whose judgment has grown less severe with the lapse of time.

Had he ever laid hands on her in temper? Hammer wanted to know.

"Yes." Her reply was a little more than a whisper, with head bent, with tears in her sad eyes. Under Hammer's pressure she told about the purchase of the ribbon, of Isom's iron hand upon her throat.

The women all over the room made little sounds of pitying deprecation of old Isom's penury, and when Hammer drew from her, with evident reluctance on her part to yield it up, the story of her hard-driven, starved, and stingy life under Isom's roof, they put their handkerchiefs to their eyes.

All the time Ollie was following Hammer's kind leading, the prosecuting attorney was sitting with his hands clasped behind his head, balancing his weight on the hinder legs of his chair, his foot thrown over his knee. Apparently he was bored, even worried, by Hammer's pounding attempts to make Isom out a man who deserved something slower and less merciful than a bullet, years before he came to his violent end.

Through it all Joe sat looking at Ollie, great pity for her forlorn condition and broken spirit in his honest eyes. She did not meet his glance, not for one wavering second. When she went to the stand she pa.s.sed him with bent head; in the chair she looked in every direction but his, mainly at her hands, clasped in her lap.

At last Hammer seemed skirmis.h.i.+ng in his mind in search of some stray question which might have escaped him, which he appeared unable to find.

He turned his papers, he made a show of considering something, while the witness sat with her head bowed, her half-closed eyelids purple from much weeping, worrying, and watching for the coming of one who had taken the key to her poor, simple heart and gone his careless way.

"That's all, Missis Chase," said Hammer.

Ollie leaned over, picked up one of her gloves that had fallen to the floor, and started to leave the chair. Her relief was evident in her face. The prosecutor, suddenly alive, was on his feet. He stretched out his arm, staying her with a commanding gesture.

"Wait a minute, Mrs. Chase," said he.

A stir of expectation rustled through the room again as Ollie resumed her seat. People moistened their lips, suddenly grown hot and dry.

"Now, just watch Sam Lucas!" they said.

"Now, Mrs. Chase," began the prosecutor, a.s.suming the polemical att.i.tude common to small lawyers when cross-examining a witness; "I'll ask you to tell this jury whether you were alone in your house with Joe Newbolt on the night of October twelfth, when Isom Chase, your husband, was killed?"

"Yes, sir."

"This man Morgan, the book-agent, who had been boarding with you, had paid his bill and gone away?"

"Yes, sir."

"And there was absolutely n.o.body in the house that night but yourself and Joe Newbolt?"

"n.o.body else."

"And you have testified, here on this witness-stand, before this court and this jury"--that being another small lawyer's trick to impress the witness with a sense of his own unworthiness--"that you went to bed early that night. Now, where was Joe Newbolt?"

"I guess he was in bed," answered Ollie, her lips white; "I didn't go to see."

"No, you didn't go to see," repeated the prosecutor with significant stress. "Very well. Where did your husband keep his money in the house?"

"I don't know; I never saw any of it," Ollie answered.

The reply drew a little jiggling laugh from the crowd. It rose and died even while Captain Taylor's knuckles were poised over the panel of the door, and his loud rap fell too late for all, save one deep-chested farmer in a far corner, who must have been a neighbor of old Isom. This man's raucous mirth seemed a roar above the quiet of the packed room.

The prosecutor looked in his direction with a frown. The sheriff stood up and peered over that way threateningly.

"Preserve order, Mr. Sheriff," said the judge severely.

The sheriff pounded the table with his hairy fist. "Now, I tell you I don't want to hear no more of this!" said he.

The prosecutor was shaken out of his pose a bit by the court-room laugh.

There is nothing equal to a laugh for that, to one who is laboring to impress his importance upon the world. It took him some time to get back to his former degree of heat, skirmis.h.i.+ng around with incidental questioning. He looked over his notes, pausing. Then he faced Ollie again quickly, leveling his finger like a pointer of direct accusation.

"Did Joe Newbolt ever make love to you?" he asked.

Joe's face flushed with resentful fire; but Ollie's white calm, forced and strained that it was, remained unchanged.

"No, sir; he never did."

"Did he ever kiss you?"

"No, I tell you, he didn't!" Ollie answered, with a little show of spirit.

Hammer rose with loud and voluble objections, which had, for the first time during the proceedings, Joe's hearty indors.e.m.e.nt. But the judge waved him down, and the prosecutor pressed his new line of inquisition.

"You and Joe Newbolt were thrown together a good deal, weren't you, Mrs.

Chase--you were left there alone in the house while your husband was away in the field, and other places, frequently?"

"No, not very much," said Ollie, shaking her head.

"But you had various opportunities for talking together alone, hadn't you?"

"I never had a chance for anything but work," said Ollie wearily.