Satan Sanderson Part 33

Harry's glance followed his, and a deeper pain beleaguered it as his eyes returned to the empty chair. He saw Mrs. Halloran whisper eagerly with the lawyer, who turned away with a puzzled look. In his bitterness the thought came to him that the testimony had sapped her conviction of his innocence--that his refusal to answer her entreaties had been the last straw to the load under which it had gone down--that she believed him indeed the murderer of Moreau. To seem the cringing criminal, the pitiful liar and actor in her eyes! The thought stung him. Her faith had meant so much!

The ominous feeling weighed heavily on Felder when he rose to continue the testimony for the prisoner, so rudely disturbed the evening before.

In such a community pettifogging was of no avail. Throwing expert dust in jurors' eyes would be worse than useless. In his opening words he made no attempt to conceal the weakness of the defense, evidentially considered. Stripped of all husk, his was to be an appeal to Caesar.

Through a cloud of witnesses, concisely, consistently--yet with a winning tactfulness that disarmed the objections of the prosecution--he began to lead them through the series of events that had followed the arrival of the self-forgotten man. Out of the mouths of their own neighbors--Devlin, Barney McGinn, Mrs. Halloran, who came down weeping--they were made to see, as in a cyclorama, the struggle for rehabilitation against hatred and suspicion, the courage that had dared for a child's life, the honesty of purpose that showed in self-surrender. The prisoner, he said, had recovered his memory before the accusation and a.s.serted his absolute innocence. Those who believed him guilty of the murder of Doctor Moreau must believe him also a vulgar liar and _poseur_. He left the inference clear: If the prisoner had fired that cowardly shot, he knew it now; if he lied now he had lied all along, and the later life he had lived at Smoky Mountain--eloquent of fair-dealing, straightforwardness of purpose, kindliness and courage--had been but hypocrisy, the bootless artifice of a shallow buffoon.

It was an appeal sustained and moving, addressed to folk who, untrammelled by a complex and variform convention, felt simply and deeply the simplest and deepest pa.s.sions of human kind. Often, as the morning grew, Felder's glance turned toward the empty chair near-by, and more than once, though his active thought never wavered from the serious business in hand, his subconscious mind wondered. Mrs. Halloran had told him of the note from Jessica--it had said only that she would return at the earliest possible moment. The wonder in Felder's mind was general throughout the court-room, for none who had listened to Jessica's testimony--and the whole town had heard it--could doubt the strength of her love. The eyes that saw the empty chair were full of pity. Only the knot of serious faces in the jury-box was seldom turned that way.

The session was prolonged past the noon hour, and when Felder rested his case it seemed that all that was possible had been said. He had done his utmost. He had drawn from the people of Smoky Mountain a dramatic story, and had filled in its outlines with color, force and feeling. And yet, as he closed, the lawyer felt a sick sense of failure.

Court adjourned for an hour, and in the interim Felder remained in a little room in the building, whither Doctor Brent was to send him sandwiches and coffee from the hotel.

"You made a fine effort, Tom," the latter said, as they stood for a moment in the emptying court-room. "You're doing wonders with no case, and the town ought to send you to Congress on the strength of it! I declare, some of your evidence made me feel as mean as a dog about the rascal, though I knew all the time he was as guilty as the devil."

The lawyer shook his head. "I don't blame you, Brent," he said, "for you don't know him as I do. I have seen much of him lately, been often with him, watched him under stress--for he doesn't deceive himself, he has no thought of acquittal! We none of us knew Hugh Stires. We put him down for a shallow, vulgar blackleg, without redeeming qualities. But the man we are trying is a gentleman, a refined and cultivated man of taste and feeling. I have learned his true character during these days."

"Well," said the other, "if you believe in him, so much the better.

You'll make the better speech for it. Tell me one thing--where was Miss Holme?"

"I don't know."

The doctor raised his eyebrows. "Good-by," he said. "I'll send over the coffee and sandwiches," he added as he turned away.

"She thinks he is guilty!" he said to himself as he walked up the street. "She thinks he is guilty, too!"

CHAPTER XLVI

FACE TO FACE

To stand face to face with Harry Sanderson--that had been Jessica's sole thought. The news that the bishop, with the man she suspected, was speeding toward her--to pa.s.s the very town wherein Hugh stood for his life--seemed a prearrangement of eternal justice. When the telegram reached her, she had already gone by Twin Peaks. To proceed would be to pa.s.s the coming train. At a farther station, however, she was able to take a night train back, arriving again at Twin Peaks in the gray dawn of the next morning. At the dingy station hotel there she undressed and lay down, but her nerves were quivering and she could not close her eyes. Toward noon she dressed and forced herself to breakfast, realizing the need of strength. She spent the rest of the time of waiting walking up and down in the crisp air, which steadied her nerves and gave her a measure of control.

When the train for which she waited came in, the curtained car at its end, she did not wait for the bishop to find her on the platform, but stepped aboard and made her way slowly back. It started again as she threaded the last Pullman, to find the bishop on its rear platform peering out anxiously at the receding station.

He took both her hands and drew her into the empty drawing-room. He was startled at her pallor. "I know," he said pityingly. "I have heard."

She winced. "Does Aniston know?"

"Yes," he answered. "Yesterday's newspapers told it."

She put her hand on his arm. "Can you guess why I was coming home?" she asked. "It was to tell Harry Sanderson! I know of the fire," she went on quickly, "and of his injury. I can guess you want to spare him strain or excitement, but I must tell him!"

"It is a matter of physical strength, Jessica," he said. "He has been a sick man. Forgive my saying it, child, but--what good could it do?"

"Believe, oh, you must believe," she pleaded, "that I do not ask this lightly, that I have a purpose that makes it necessary. It means so much--more than my life to me! Why, I have waited here at Twin Peaks all through the night, till now, when this very day and hour they are trying him there at Smoky Mountain! You must let me tell him!"

He reflected a moment. He thought he guessed what was in her mind. If there was any one who had ever had an influence over Hugh for good, it was Harry Sanderson. He himself, he thought, had none. Perhaps, remembering their old comradeship, she was longing now to have this influence exerted, to bring Hugh to a better mind--thinking of his eternal welfare, of his making his peace with his Maker. Beneath his prosy churchmanship and somewhat elaborate piety, the bishop had a spirituality almost medieval in its simplicity. Perhaps this was G.o.d's way. His eyes lighted.

"Very well," he said. "Come," and led the way into the car.

Jessica followed, her hands clenched tightly. She saw the couch, the profile on its cushions turned toward the window where forest and stream slipped past--a face curiously like Hugh's! Yet it was different, lacking the other's strength, even its refinement. And this man had molded Hugh! These vague thoughts lost themselves instantly in the momentous surmise that filled her imagination. The bishop put out his hand and touched the relaxed arm.

The trepidation that darted into the bandaged face as it turned upon the girlish figure, the frosty fear that blanched the haggard countenance, spoke Hugh's surprise and dread. It was she, and she knew the real Harry Sanderson was in Smoky Mountain. Had she heard of the chapel fire, guessed the imposture, and come to denounce him, the guilty husband she had such reason to hate? The twitching limbs stiffened. "Jessica!" he said in a hoa.r.s.e whisper.

For an instant a fierce sense of triumph flamed through her every nerve.

But a cold doubt chilled it. Her suspicion might be the veriest chimera.

It seemed suddenly too wild for belief. She sat down abruptly and for a fleeting moment hid her face. The bishop touched the bowed, brown head.

"Harry," he said, "Jessica is in great trouble. She has come with sad news. Hugh, her husband, your old college mate, is in a terrible position. He is accused of murder. I kept the newspapers from you to-day because they told of it."

She had caught the meaning of the pity in his tone--for her, not for Hugh! "Ah," she cried pa.s.sionately, lifting her head, "but they did not tell it all! Did they tell you that he is unjustly, wickedly accused by an enemy? That, though they may convict him, he is innocent--innocent?"

The bishop looked at her in surprise. In spite of all the past--the shameful, conscienceless past and her own wrong--she loved and believed in her husband!

Hugh's hand lifted, wavered an instant before his brow. Did she say he was innocent? "I don't--understand," he said hoa.r.s.ely.

Jessica's wide eyes fastened on his as though to search his secret soul.

"I will tell it all," she said, "then you will understand." The bishop drew a chair close, but her gaze did not waver from the face on the cushions--the face which she must read!

As she told the broken tale the car was still, save for the labored, irregular breathing of the prostrate man, and the m.u.f.fled roar that penetrated the walls, a mult.i.tudinous, elfin din. Once the swinging canary broke forth into liquid warbling, as though in all the world were no throe of body or dolor of mind. In that telling Jessica's mind traversed wastes of alternate certainty and doubt, as she hung upon the look of the man who listened--a look that merged slowly into a fearful understanding. Hugh understood now!

Jessica had believed him to be her husband, and she believed so still.

And Harry did not intend to tell. He was safe ... safe! In the reaction from his fear, Hugh felt sick and faint.

The bishop had been listening in some anxiety, both for her and for his charge. There was a strained intensity in her manner now that betokened almost unbalance--so it seemed to him. The side-lights he had had of Hugh's career led him to believe him incapable of such a self-sacrifice as her tale recited. A strange power there was in woman's love!

"You see," she ended, "that is why I know he is innocent. _You_ can not"--her eyes held Hugh's--"_you_ can not doubt it, can you?"

Hugh's tongue wet his parched lips. A tremor ran through him. He did not answer.

Jessica started to her feet. Self-possession was falling from her; she was fighting to seize the vital knowledge that evaded her. She held out her hand--in the palm lay a small emblem of gold.

"By this cross," she cried with desperate earnestness, "I ask you for the truth. It is his life or death--Hugh's life or death! He did not kill Doctor Moreau. _Who did?_"

Hugh had shrunk back on the couch, his face ghastly. "I know nothing--nothing!" he stammered. "Do not ask me!"

The bishop had risen in alarm; he thought her hysterical. "Jessica!

Jessica!" he exclaimed. He threw his arm about her and led her from the couch. "You don't know what you are saying. You are beside yourself." He forced her into the drawing-room and made her sit down. She was tense and quivering. The cross fell from her hand and he stooped and picked it up.

"Try to calm yourself," he said, "to think of other things for a few moments. This little cross--I wonder how you come to have it? I gave it to Sanderson last May to commemorate his ordination." He twisted it open. "See, here is the date, May twenty-eighth--that was the day I gave it to him."

She gave a quick gasp and the last vestige of color faded from her cheek. She looked at him in a stricken way. "_Last_ May!" she said faintly. Harry Sanderson had been in Aniston, then, on the day Doctor Moreau had been murdered. Her house of cards fell. She had been mistaken! She leaned her head back against the cushion and closed her eyes.

Presently she felt a cold gla.s.s touch her lips. "Here is some water,"

the bishop's voice said. "You are better, are you not? Poor child! You have been through a terrible strain. I would give the world to help you if I could!"