CHAPTER XIVTHE CONFOUNDING OF JUSTICE
THE atmosphere of the Court was intolerably heavy. It was the reek of humanity and steam heat. But there was no desire for ventilation. Winter was winter to the people in Calford, and steam heat its only antidote. Besides, every soul amongst that very mixed gathering was absorbed in the drama being enacted.
It was the first day of the trial of the Wolf for the murder of Ernest Sinclair. That was the apparently simple case. There was no complication through the added charge of his liquor traffic. It was murder, just murder. And the official position of the victim of the crime made it the greatest “nine days’ wonder” which the people of the city of Calford had ever known.
The trial had proceeded swiftly, as was the way with the Supreme Court in Calford. Already the late winter day was drawing to its close. The carefully screened lights had been lit, and the heavy haze prevailing had contrived to depress their brilliancy.
The Court was crowded from end to end. A sea of intent faces filled the background of at least three walls. The fourth was where sat Chief Justice Pansarta, and other officials of the Court. Every face was slightlyraised and peering, even amongst the most hardened servants of the law. It was as though all were determined to miss nothing of interest, no display of emotion, no sign that might be given by any of the principals in the moving drama. It was all powerfully human. And it had the effect of reducing every soul in the place to a single level.
It was no different in the well of the Court. Counsel, and official, and privileged spectator, sat packed together in the limited space at disposal. And above the intense, though restless hush rose and fell the tones of the voices of the various actors; counsel, witness, judge, and ushers.
The only spectator with space at his disposal was Superintendent Croisette, who sat alone at the little table set aside for the use of Mounted Police officials. He sat with his alert face supported on his hand, and in such a position that the entire Court came under his scrutiny. His keen gray eyes were watching, searching. And his ears were strained for every inflection in the voices to which he was listening. He knew the crux of the trial had been reached. Annette Estevan was in the witness box. And she had just concluded her evidence in chief.
And what evidence it had been. The girl had told it with damning clarity under the skilful shepherding of the prosecuting counsel. It was full of all thatwhich drives the human soul to bitter partisanship against the wrongdoer.
But Superintendent Croisette had had enough of Annette, and the story he knew almost by heart. It was the same, dreadfully the same, as he and Fyles had searched together. The story Annette had told at the preliminary hearing had not been changed one iota.
Croisette had watched closely during the recital of the girl’s evidence. He had been looking for revealing signs. And he had not been wholly disappointed.
The dusky cheeks had become almost ashen under the girl’s ordeal. Her big eyes were restless and burning. There had been a telltale averting whenever it was possible to escape the compelling gaze of the counsel inviting her story. Furthermore, at no moment was her look steady. There were moments, too, when real passion swept the girl in fierce, stormy gusts. They were the moments when she was forced to bare her woman’s secrets to the Court.
Croisette realized Annette’s unquestioning belief in the Wolf’s guilt. And so he was able the more surely to dismiss the ultimate theory of Sergeant Fyles. But he also realized something else. Annette was nearly at the extremity of her nervous resources. And he wondered how she would endure the cross-examination now about to start.
He was glad to turn from the sight of Annette’s gripping hands upon the rail of the witness box to theeasy, lounging, unemotional figure of the prisoner in the dock.
The Wolf stood there leaning, with his arms folded. He had been unmoving from the moment Annette had entered the witness box. And his immobility had extended even to his unblinking eyes.
The man had given no sign. He had listened without one single flash of resentment to the awful indictment against him. Nor was there a sign of reproach whenever Annette turned accusingly upon him. Boundless devotion, which he was at no pains to conceal, shone in the dark depths of his eyes; that, and a subtle shadowy anxiety.
It was that unvoiced concern which Croisette fixed upon and pondered.
What was it the man feared? Croisette knew full well it had nothing to do with any personal concern. The man had shown from the first that his own ultimate fate was a matter of complete indifference to him. First, there had been the incidents connected with his arrest. Then he had rejected every assistance that might save him in his trial. It had been the same here as at the preliminary hearing. He had refused to plead. He had rejected the assistance of counsel by the simple process of remaining mute. Not a single word had passed his lips since he had been placed in the dock. Then where lay the source of his obvious anxiety?
John Danson K.C. rose to cross-examine.
Croisette considered the defending counsel’s strong, full, clean-shaven face. The man’s brows were heavy and broad. His eyes were keen and sparkled under bushy gray brows. There was a truculent set to his jaws that reached his hard lips. And, somehow, as the superintendent watched that big figure rise from its seat, a feeling akin to pity for the half-breed girl in the witness box stirred in him. He, himself, had spent upwards of an hour in close conference with this man, before his appointment to the defence.
There was a sigh from the spectators and some clearing of throats as John Danson faced the witness. If possible, interest and emotion had deepened. Like Superintendent Croisette the eager crowd of onlookers understood that this man would somehow clear away the cobwebs of mystery surrounding the case.
The advocate began almost gently. There was no brow-beating at the start. None of the vicious bark for which he was renowned and feared. He almost smiled on the witness, whose restless eyes and clutching hands had told him so much already.
“The prisoner?” he questioned, in his blandest manner. “Who is he? What is he to you? A relation?”
Annette’s reply was instant with a sense of relief at his manner.
“No. He’s no relation. We were raised together. That’s all.”
“That’s all?”
“Yes.”
Annette failed to appreciate the note underlying the echo of her words.
“Sort of brother and sister, eh? You just played together? Maybe even fought together—as playmates will?”
Annette stirred. Croisette saw the grip of her hands tighten on the rail. She inclined her head.
“Yes.”
“In a city? Where?”
“No. The hills. West.”
“Ah! The hills. West. Forest and hill, valleys and rivers—all the wonderful things that set kiddies dreaming and playing. Where you’re free and unrestrained. Where companionship is everything. And the Wolf was your companion. You liked your playmate, and he liked you. You loved him—as a child?”
Annette turned from the questioner and found herself gazing into the Wolf’s now troubled eyes. Croisette saw a sudden lifting of her swelling bosom as she breathed deeply. And in that moment he felt that John Danson’s reputation had been well earned.
“Ye-es.”
It was Annette’s first falter.
But John Danson appeared not to notice. Certainlyhe displayed no interest in it. He pursued his questioning with unruffled composure, and, to the uninitiated, in a direction that looked to be leading him no whither.
In reality, however, he was delving. He was delving deep into the soul of the girl while he held her under the anæsthetic of illusion. He was shrewdly recalling to her the almost forgotten past. He was returning the playmate of her youth to her; that lank fearless youth who had always been her willing slave.
Croisette understood.
For awhile Annette was clay in the man’s hands. At first she displayed no anxiety. His questions seemed to have so little to do with the case. She answered readily. It was almost as if she welcomed them.
But in a while the lawyer became more pressing. In a while his tone sharpened. And his jaws closed, snapping over his words. And very quickly reaction set in. First came the girl’s return of restlessness. She found it difficult to respond to the keen inquiry of his eyes. Then fear became apparent in a gaze that looked everywhere but at the questioner. Her replies came in a voice that had grown strident. Then, as the hunted look in her eyes grew, the half-breed in her became uppermost and she sought evasion and subterfuge.
The whole process was something that Croisette had witnessed often enough before. A witness in John Danson’s hands was rather like a snared rabbit. Hewould wring any secret this girl was striving to keep from him out of her, as surely as someone had shot Sinclair. He turned to the prisoner.
There had come a significant change in the Wolf. He was no longer lounging. There was none of his earlier indifference. But much more of the anxious searching in his eyes. He was leaning over the rail of the dock, and the smile of his queer eyes was a tiger-smile.
He was following every word of his counsel. His every inflection. His every gesture. Danson was pointing at him.
“And that man there,” he was saying. “The man now grown out of the boy with whom you were raised, the boy you loved and played with, who only thought of your happiness and comfort, the boy you’ve just told the Court you even sided with against your father in some domestic affair. You wanted to send him to penitentiary, deliberately, callously, him and your father as well, both, so you could be free to satisfy your woman’s lust for a policeman whose propensities you knew only too well. Tell me. That man—and your father? You were betraying, sacrificing them, that you might have your lover—your husband?”
The scorn and revolting were devastating. The lawyer’s tone smote as it was intended to smite.
Annette shrank before its withering. Her nervous grip on the rail was pitiful. For an instant Croisettehad a vision of self-horror in the widened black eyes. Then the lids fell to conceal the world of shame they had been driven to betray.
“Answer!”
Like a gunshot Danson’s challenge rang out.
“He—reckoned he couldn’t marry me without—promotion.”
Annette’s voice was so low that every ear in the Court was set straining. A sigh broke like a wave over the spectators.
“And so you must betray them, the men who’d loved you, and raised you, and fed you, and clothed you. Penitentiary! That was his price—for marriage.”
“Ye-es.”
Croisette’s arms were folded on the table. The Wolf was forgotten.
“And you—believed?”
“Yes! Why shouldn’t I?”
There was a limp tone of defiance in the girl’s reply.
“In spite of the common knowledge of Sinclair, and the other woman and her baby?”
“Why not?” Again there was defiance. “I knew he would marry me. He swore it.”
“He swore it. You knew he would marry you. You were sure?”
“Yes.”
Annette snatched up the glass of water set for her use. She gulped down half of it.
Danson’s gaze swept over the crowded court. The girl set her glass down with a clatter.
“You told him where to find the cache, the liquor, the still. You revealed the whole secret entrusted to you by these men who loved you?”
“Yes.”
“Then—why, why did you go there, stealing after him?”
“I—I——”
“Why did you follow him to witness what took place? Why did you go there to see the prisoner murder Sinclair? Answer!”
“That’s a lie!”
“Answer!”
“I didn’t go to see him murdered.”
“Don’t play with the question. Tell the Court why you went there at all. You had good reason. What was it?”
“I needed to be sure he located the cache right.”
“Sinclair! A skilled officer! He knew the country. Every foot. You’d told him. He was satisfied. Yet you must see he located it—right?”
“Yes.”
“You insist to the jury, to the Court, that was your reason?”
The sneer, the incredulity in the man’s voice were furiously provocative.
There was a metallic crash as a fist descended onthe rail of the prisoner’s dock. And a sound like the snarl of a wild beast drew every eye to the prisoner.
“Don’t answer, kid! Say!”
The Wolf’s eyes were ablaze, and he stood with a warning hand outflung. He was erect now. Dire urgency had broken down the barrier of silence he had set up.
Danson completely ignored the interruption. It might never have occurred.
“Answer me!” he roared at the girl in the box. “You followed Sinclair. Why?”
“I told you.”
“You’re on oath. The real reason. I want it. Why?”
“Not on your life, kid. It’s a trap! A lousy trap!”
The Wolf’s face had suddenly distorted with fury. The veins in his forehead stood out. His fists clenched. He flung them out in desperate appeal.
The lawyer’s face wore a sardonic smile. Annette had turned at the Wolf’s challenge. Croisette saw her sway as though about to collapse. She was shaking in every limb. Her eyes, those great appealing eyes were hunted. It was as though the voice of the Wolf had awakened her from some dreadful nightmare. John Danson’s voice rasped. Perhaps he understood.
“The prisoner can’t help you. He’s the man you tell the Court you saw murder Sinclair. Now this isthe simple truth. You went to see Sinclair didn’t escape you. Is that so?”
“Annette!”
The Wolf’s cry howled through the Court.
“Be silent!”
It was the Judge.
“You must not interrupt,” he went on sharply, frowning down from his bench. “You will have every opportunity given you of saying anything you have to say. You are delaying proceedings which I will not allow.”
Then he turned to Annette.
“You must answer Counsel’s question.”
But Annette was beyond answering any question. And Croisette, watching her, saw something of the miracle that was being wrought.
It was the Wolf. It was there in the girl’s frantically appealing eyes. It was there in the heaving bosom, the hands that now gestured towards the man she had been seeking to destroy. What was it? How had it come?
It was not terror of the inquisition to which she was being submitted that Croisette beheld in those agonized eyes. It was some tremendous, pitiful emotion. Some emotion that was tearing the girl’s soul with torturing agony.
There was no doubt now. Annette’s hate of the Wolf was dead. It had died in a moment, slain bythe mad impulse of the race to which she belonged. All that had driven her to witness against him had been swept away by some force of whose existence she had been wholly unaware. She was mutely gazing, appealing, praying forgiveness for the enormity of the thing she had done.
“Wolf! Help me! Wolf!” she wailed.
But it was the thunder of Danson’s voice that replied to her.
“I put it to you,” he cried. “It’s as I said. You went to make sure of your payment. And Sinclair laughed at you. You’d handed them over to him, your father; your playmate. He wanted no more of you. So you pulled the Wolf’s gun on him! You shot him cold! You murdered Sinclair!”
“It’s a lie! A foul, crazy lie!” the Wolf shouted frantically.
“It’s not a lie. It’s truth. Truth! Truth!” Annette screamed back in a wild burst of hysteria. Her eyes were blazing. She was beside herself. Her face was contorted with nervous twitchings. “It’s a lie, I tell you! I was lyin’ before! It was all lies, lies, lies! I didn’t see you shoot, because I shot him. Ernie lied to me! He lied like hell! An’ he laffed at me! He laffed in my face. He cursed me for a Breed—a dirty Breed! He cursed me, an’ sent me to hell with my kid! They can’t hang you, Wolf! You didn’t do it! I did! I stole your gun from your room. I doneit! I left him there dead, an’ I’m glad! They can’t hang you, boy. You didn’t do it! I did! I did! I——”
In a flash the Wolf came back.
“Don’t take notice of her!” he cried in a sweat of awful dread. “She’s crazy mad! She don’t know a thing she’s sayin’. You’ve drove her crazy between you! She didn’t kill Sinclair. I did!”
He broke off and gazed about him. He looked yearningly at the bowed figure in the witness box. The sight seemed to spur him. The next moment Croisette became aware of movement at the back of the Court as someone stood up and moved towards the door. Then the Wolf was talking again, but coldly, quietly, convincingly.
“You’ve mazed her! You may as well get the truth right here, so you ken let that pore kid alone. I shot Sinclair. An’ I’d do it all again if he was livin’ now. He stole my woman,” he went on, pointing at the huddled figure of Annette. “She’s my woman. Do you get what that means—any of you? An’ he made her bear his kid. I said I’d kill him. All she said first was right—dead right. Ther’ wasn’t one lie to it. She’s only lyin’ now, cos you’ve got her rattled. I shot that boy to the hell he belongs, an’ now you ken hang me right away.”
Croisette scrawled a note and passed it to StanleyFyles. But as the Wolf finished speaking Annette was galvanized into fierce rejection of his confession.
“I’m not mazed or crazy!” she cried at the Judge. “It’s that fool boy! He guesses to save me from hangin’. That’s been him always. He reckons me a crazy kid. I’m not. I’m a woman. I killed Ernie Sinclair ’cos he made me hate him. My kid. I killed him for my kid. I ken show you the way I did it. It wasn’t him. The Wolf didn’t shoot him. You can’t hang him! It’s me! You got to hang me!”
Croisette saw Fyles thrust his way out of the Court.
It was like the passing of a fantastic dream. Where before had pulsed a throng of eager life with every passion astir, now all was darkness, and the hush of desertion. The courthouse was closed, and locked up, and empty.
There had been one final half-hour when Judge and Counsel had battled laboriously with the astounding situation. But it was useless. The Wolf and Annette clung tenaciously to their conflicting claims. Had they entered that Court with the purpose of creating legal confusion it could have been never so grotesquely complete. Chief Justice Pansarta was left with no alternative.
The Court had adjourned.