"I didn't think it necessary."
Marriott wondered whether to press him further--he was on dangerous ground.
"To whom did you first mention them?"
"To the deputy warden."
"This man here?" Marriott waved his hand at Ball with a contempt he was not at all careful to conceal.
"Yes, sir."
"When was that?"
"Oh, about a month ago."
"After Kouka's death?"
"Yes."
"Griscom," said Marriott, risking his whole case on the words, and the silence in the room deepened until it throbbed like a profound pain, "when Ball came to tell you to testify as you have against Archie, he promised to get you a pardon, did he not?"
Eades was on his feet.
"There is no evidence here that Ball went to the witness," he cried. He was angry; his face was very red.
Marriott smiled.
"Let the witness answer," he said.
"The question is improper," said Glassford.
"Is it not a fact, Griscom, that Ball made you some promise to induce you to testify as you have?"
Griscom hesitated, his eyes were already wavering, and Marriott felt an irresistible impulse to follow them. Slowly the convict's glance turned toward Ball, sitting low in his chair, one leg hung over the other, a big foot dangling above the floor. His arm was thrust straight out before him, his hand grasped his cane, his attitude was apparently careless and indifferent, but the knuckles of the hand that held the cane were white, and his eyes, peering from their narrow slits, were fastened in a steady, compelling stare on Griscom. The convict looked an instant and then he said, still looking at Ball:
"No, it isn't."
The convict had a sudden fit of coughing. He fumbled frantically in the breast of his jacket, then clapped his hand to his mouth; his face was blue, his eyes were staring; presently between his fingers there trickled a thin bright stream of blood. Ball got up and tenderly helped the convict from the chair and the court-room. And Marriott knew that he had lost.
Yes, Marriott knew that he had lost and he felt himself sinking into the lethargy of despair. The atmosphere of the trial had become more inimical; he found it hard to contain himself, hard to maintain that air of unconcern a lawyer must constantly affect. He found it hard to look at Eades, who seemed suddenly to have a new buoyancy of voice and manner. In truth, Eades had been uncertain about Griscom, but now that the convict had given his testimony and all had gone well for Eades and his side, Eades was immensely relieved. He felt that the turning point in the great game had been passed. But it would not do to display any elation; he must take it all quite impersonally, and in every way conduct himself as a fearless, disinterested official, and not as a human being at all. Eades felt, of course, that this result was due to his own sagacity, his own skill as a lawyer, his generalship in marshaling his evidence; he felt the crowd behind him to be mere spectators, whose part it was to look on and applaud; he did not know that this result was attributable to those mysterious, transcendental impulses of the human passions, moving in an irresistible current, sweeping him along and the jury and the judge, and bearing Archie to his doom. But Eades was so encouraged that he decided to call another witness he had been uncertainly holding in reserve. He had had his doubts about this witness as he had had them about Griscom, but now these doubts were swept away by that same occult force.
"Swear Uri Marsh."
There was the usual wait, the stillness, the suspended curiosity, and then Bentley came in, leading an old man. This old man was cleanly shaven, his hair was white, and he wore a new suit of ready-made clothes. The cheap and paltry garments seemed to shrink away from the wasted form they fitted so imperfectly, grudgingly lending themselves, as for this occasion only, to the purpose of restoring and disguising their disreputable wearer. Beneath them it was quite easy to detect the figure of dishonorable poverty that in another hour or another day would step out of them and resume its appropriate rags and tatters, to flutter on and lose itself in the squalid streets of the city where it would wander alone, abandoned by all, even by the police.
As Archie recognized this man, his face went white even to the lips.
Marriott looked at him, but the only other sign of feeling Archie gave was in the swelling and tightening of the cords of his neck. He swallowed as if in pain, and seemed about to choke. Marriott spoke, but he did not hear. Strangely enough, it did not seem to Marriott to matter.
This witness, like Griscom, had been a convict, like Griscom he had known Archie in prison; he and Archie had been released the same day, and he had come back to town with Archie.
"What did he say?" the old man was repeating Eades's question; he always repeated each question before he answered it--"what did he say? Well, sir, he said, so he did, he said he was going to kill a detective here.
That's what he said, sir. I wouldn't lie to you, no, sir, not me--I wouldn't lie--no, sir."
"That will do," said Eades. "Now tell us, Mr. Marsh, what, if anything, Koerner said to Detective Quinn in your presence?"
"What'd he say to Detective Quinn? What'd he say to Detective Quinn?
Well, sir," the old man paused and spat out his saliva, "he said the same thing."
"Just give his words."
"His words? Well, sir, he said he was going to kill that fellow--that detective--what's his name? You know his name."
The garrulous old fellow ran on. There was something ludicrous in it all; the crowd became suddenly merry; it seemed to feel such a gloating sense of triumph that it could afford amusement. The old man in the witness-chair enjoyed it immensely, he laughed too, and spat and laughed again.
It was with difficulty that Marriott and Eades and Glassford got him to recognize Marriott's right to cross-examine him, and when at last the idea pierced its way to his benumbed and aged mind, he hesitated, as the old do before a new impression, and then sank back in his chair. His face all at once became impassive, almost imbecile. And he utterly refused to answer any of Marriott's questions. Marriott put them to him again and again, in the same form and in different forms, but the old man sat there and stared at him blankly. Glassford took the witness in hand, finally threatened him with imprisonment for contempt.
"Now you answer or go to jail," said Glassford, with the most impressive sternness he could command.
Then Marriott said again:
"I asked you where you had been staying since you came to town and who provided for you?"
The old man looked at him an instant, a peculiar cunning stole gradually into his swimming eyes, and then slowly he lifted his right hand to his face. His middle finger was missing, and thrusting the stump beneath his nose, he placed his index finger to his right eye, his third finger to his left, drew down the lower lids until their red linings were revealed, and then he wiggled his thumb and little finger.
The court-room burst into a roar, the laughter pealed and echoed in the high-ceiled room, even the jurymen, save Broadwell, permitted themselves wary smiles. The bailiff sprang up and pounded with his gavel, and Glassford, his face red with fury, shouted:
"Mr. Sheriff, take the witness to jail! And if this demonstration does not instantly cease, clear the courtroom!"
The _contretemps_ completed Marriott's sense of utter humiliation and defeat. As if it were not enough to be beaten, he now suffered the chagrin of having been made ridiculous. He was oblivious to everything but his own misery and discomfiture; he forgot even Archie. Bentley and a deputy were hustling the offending old man from the court-room, and he shambled between them loosely, grotesquely, presenting the miserable, demoralizing and pathetic spectacle that age always presents when it has dishonored itself.
As they were dragging the old man past Archie, his feet scuffling and dragging like those of a paralytic, Archie spoke:
"Why, Dad!" he said.
In his tone were all disappointment and reproach.
The incident was over, but try as they would, Glassford, Eades, Lamborn, Marriott, all the attaches and officials of the court could not restore to the tribunal its lost dignity. This awesome and imposing structure mankind has been ages in rearing, this institution men had thought to make something more than themselves, at the grotesque gesture of one of its poorest, meanest, oldest and most miserable victims, had suddenly collapsed, disintegrated into its mere human entities. Unconsciously this aged imbecile had taken a supreme and mighty revenge on the institution that had bereft him of his reason and his life; it could not resist the shock; it must pause to reconstruct itself, to resume its lost prestige, and men were glad when Glassford, with what solemnity he could command, told the bailiff to adjourn court.
XVII
At six o'clock on the evening of the day the State rested, Marriott found himself once more at the jail. He passed the series of grated cells from which their inmates peered with the wistful look common to prisoners, and paused before Archie's door. He could see only the boy's muscular back bowed over the tiny table, slowly dipping chunks of bread into his pan of molasses, eating his supper silently and humbly. The figure was intensely pathetic to Marriott. He gazed a moment in the regret with which one gazes on the dead, struck down in an instant by some useless accident. "And yet," he thought, "it is not done, there is still hope. He must be saved!"
"Hello, Archie!" he said, forcing a cheerful tone.
Archie started, pushed back his chair, drew his hand across his mouth to wipe away the crumbs, and thrust it through the bars.