The Red Mouse Part 25

"Not on your life!" remarked one of them genially; and showing to the prisoner a slip of paper which he drew from his pocket: "There's a warrant for your arrest."

Pemmican for a moment looked bewildered and murmured incredulously:--

"... my arrest?"

"Sure," replied the officer. "The chiefs begun his raid on Cradlebaugh's, and you're one of the main guys...."

Pemmican wiped his forehead and stammered sulkily:--

"And--and the prosecutor's goin' to lock me up after all I've done for him?"

"That's what!" replied the officer, and a moment later added complacently: "Unless you can get bail."

"Confound 'em!" exclaimed Pemmican. "They won't go my bail!"

The detective placed his ear quite close to Pemmican.

"_Who_ won't go your bail?" he queried interestedly.

Pemmican smiled.

"They," he returned, not for an instant off his guard.

"If Prosecutor Murgatroyd only knew who _they_ are," went on the detective, "if he knew who backed you up, there'd be some interesting goings on 'round here."

"He won't find out from me," replied Pemmican, doggedly. "I play a straight game with the men who hand out my bread and b.u.t.ter. You can lay your bets on that!"

"Sh-h-h-! The prosecutor's talkin' over there," whispered the detective, raising his hand, and he hustled the prisoner out of the room, as Murgatroyd, rising once more, bowed toward the bench and announced:--

"The State rests, if the Court please."

And then Thorne at his end of the table also rose to his feet and declared:--

"The defence rests."

Presently he began to address the Jury. During the trial his line of defence had been insanity--the defence of the defenceless, the forlorn hope of the hopeless. The Bench had frowned at it; the Jury had shaken its head as one man: insanity to juries in the metropolis had become as a red rag to a bull. But the crowd in the court-room had leaned forward with huge expectation,--waiting for the hidden places to be revealed with much the same antic.i.p.ation and interest one experiences in waiting for the denouement of a stage drama.

Before turning to the jury, however, for his last effort, Thorne stooped down for an instant and whispered to Mrs. Challoner:--

"I'm sorry, Mrs. Challoner, that we couldn't do better with our facts.

It seems to me to be the weakest defence I have ever seen put up in any case. Indeed, it seems to me we have no defence at all."

But somewhat to his astonishment this remark was received by Miriam Challoner with that same degree of confidence that had characterised her att.i.tude all through the trial. On her face was a certain unexplainable something which not only he had noted but which the people had noted, the men at the press-table had noted, and commented upon freely in their copy--a glow that had never faded from the eyes of the woman, a flush upon her cheek that had never paled, and which said more plainly than words that she was certain of the acquittal of her husband.

"Devilish fine actress!" Thorne thought to himself, for such optimism in a case like this was wholly beyond his comprehension; and it was with a certain feeling of admiration that he heard her whisper with a rea.s.suring smile:--

"You're making a glorious fight, Mr. Thorne; you're bound to succeed."

And indeed, such was her marvellous hopefulness, that it succeeded in enheartening him, and was reflected in his ill.u.s.trations to the jury when dwelling at some length on the many fine points in the character of the accused. He was particularly happy in impressing upon his hearers that Challoner was a man with a most peculiar temperament and mental bias; that if Challoner had taken the life of Colonel Hargraves, it was only after the man's soul and mind had eaten poison from the hands of his enemy--Colonel Hargraves.

Of the life and character of that gentleman, he had little to add to what was already known, and was seemingly content to dismiss him with:--

"The least said of him the better, now that he is gone."

Thorne paused.

Suddenly he a.s.sumed a dramatic pose, and now turning toward a beautiful and fashionably gowned young woman with a bar of sunlight streaming down her face, who occupied a seat underneath the third high window in the court-room, he riveted his gaze on her, all eyes following in that direction.

"There," he said, his voice sinking to a whisper, but a whisper that could be heard all over the court-room, "is the woman in the case--the real culprit! A temptress! A vampire! A Circe! A woman who has made a mess of the lives of two men, and only G.o.d knows how many others! A woman who played the game to her own selfish ends!... And here you have the result!"

For a full minute Letty Love unblushingly returned the lawyer's probing glances; plainly she rejoiced in the stares which she felt were focused upon her,--for no one knew better than she that her beauty was infecting all present,--and it was not until she had drunk her fill of the cup of publicity that she turned her head away and looked out upon the sunlit street.

From where he sat Challoner, too, was able for a brief moment to see the face of the woman who was responsible for his misfortunes. That same second, however, brought his wife also into his line of vision, making it possible for him to contrast the two countenances; and he was surprised to find himself not only admiring the wealth of colouring and glow upon Miriam's face, but actually loathing himself for ever having admired the ugly lines which he now saw on the sunlit face of Letty Love; and his whole nature revolted against her.

"If only I had left her to Colonel Hargraves," he muttered to himself; and immersed in similar bitter reflections, he lost all but his counsel's concluding words:--

"... and all that I want, all that I ask of you, gentlemen of the jury, is that you give us what we have not had so far--a fair, square deal!"

Thorne sat down, satisfied that he had made an impression. At all events, he had done the best he could--under the circ.u.mstances. Out of his material he had hewn the inevitable result--debauchery; out of this debauchery he fashioned the conclusion--insanity; out of a victim he had made a murderer; out of a murderer he had made a hero whose irresponsible emotions cried out to a jury of his peers for justice, even for retribution against the murdered man. Base metal though it were, it seemed pure gold to his listeners. Even the jurors drew long breaths and looked each other questioningly in the eye; the crowd murmured its sympathy; and Thorne, glancing at the little coterie behind the prisoner, was pleased to see that even in the eyes of Shirley Bloodgood he had raised a new hope for Challoner.

In the interim that followed Shirley and Miriam leaned over and shook hands with Thorne.

"We can't lose," whispered Miriam; and again there returned to her face that mysterious expression of confidence which was decidedly inexplicable to her lawyer. And so it was that a little while later he turned to Shirley and said:--

"Does she understand that we must lose?"

Miss Bloodgood shook her head.

"Oh, no! No one can tell her that." And bestowing on him a rare smile, she added: "And now, Mr. Thorne, after what you have said no one can tell _me_ that either."

Well pleased with her flattery, Thorne returned the smile, but he warned her that when those twelve men got into the jury room they would get down to facts.

And it so happened that the twelve men got down to the facts before they even started for the jury room, for already the prosecutor had begun his speech and was stripping the case of everything save the truth.

"This, gentlemen," he now told the jury, quietly, "is not an unusual case; it's an every-day story growing out of jealousy and hatred; one bad man shot another bad man--that's all."

At this the temperature of the crowd dropped from the fever-heat of frenzied sympathy down to the freezing-point of common-sense. Challoner stirred uneasily; Shirley Bloodgood shivered; only Miriam Challoner sat with the same placid look on her face.

Murgatroyd now left his jury, walked to the table where the prisoner sat, and without taking his eyes from the face of the accused, he continued:--

"... This man Challoner is a wilful, deliberate murderer! This is not his first offence--he began to murder years ago...."

At this point the prosecutor went back to the time when Challoner married a beautiful young girl, emphasising the fact that he had married this mere slip of a girl for her money.

"Her money! And he has never earned a dollar since!" he told his listeners with great scorn. "And his life! What has he made of it? Ah!

You men know the things that are done in this city between midnight and morning, and the up-hill fight that is being made to clean it of corruption and vice! Well, this degenerate, this profligate, did these things of the under-world. They appealed to him; he was no mere youth to be led astray!"

Challoner winced; not that he quailed before the menacing posture that the prosecutor had a.s.sumed, but because of a guilty consciousness that the accusing lips meant every word that they uttered. The audience shifted uneasily in their seats; Shirley Bloodgood held her breath as she placed a protecting arm about Miriam, which Miriam gently shook off; for what need had she for sympathy?