Complete Works of E W Hornung

by E. W. Hornung

  The first witness was the mechanic who had discovered the body. His testimony was very short. He had run straight for the police, leaving the blood-stained cudgel precisely where he had found it in the grass. This witness was not cross-examined, and the police-officer whom he had summoned soon replaced him in the box.

  Matters here became a little technical. The position of the body was elaborately gone into, judge and jury examining a prepared plan of the scene which seemed to demand a deal of explanation. Either the witness was obscure or the jury dense; the dejected judge stood up himself to make things plain to them; and for several minutes the chief sounds in court were the judicial undertones and a continuous crinkling of tracing-paper. Tom wondered at the waste of time upon an infinitesimal point; he had never been at a trial before; and the extreme deliberation of the whole tribunal was another revelation to a lay mind thus mercifully distracted from the vital issues at stake. It must be remembered, however, that this was not a guilty man; he had the open mind of innocence, the outside point of view; there were whole moments when he almost forgot who it was that was being tried. And, perhaps, in the ceaseless self-consciousness of guilt, Tom Erichsen was spared a keener heart-ache than any that even he had yet endured.

  When the finding of the body and its exact position when found had been duly demonstrated to the satisfaction of the court, and counsel for the defence had put a couple of questions, counsel for the Crown informed his lordship that he proposed to take the medical evidence later; he would now trace the prisoner’s connection with the crime, adducing in the first place what he conceived to be an adequate motive for its commission. Mr. Richard Vale was thereupon called, but added little to the evidence which he had given at Marylebone as already described. The only difference was a crossexamination more rough than telling, in which disgraceful admissions were accompanied with a dissipated smirk, but which elicited no essential point in the prisoner’s favour.

  On the other hand, this witness was again the peg upon which were hung the threatening letters; the letters were once more undisputed; and a passage in one of them caused the first “sensation” of the trial. “I warn you,” ran the text, “that I would rather hang than starve. Unless you pay me I shall do one or the other; and don’t you rely on dodging me much longer, for I am hunting you day and night, and will do till I drop.” The dead man’s landlady and a club porter gave supplementary evidence; the latter had forwarded the letters to deceased, and had caused the police to put a stop to prisoner’s loitering near the club.

  Now came a working man whose face Tom had quite forgotten; but he swore to the prisoner as one of the two men to whom he had said good-night as he passed them at the stile in the Finchley Road, on the night of Thursday, the 27th ult., about half-past ten; and it seemed that at the inquest he had sworn to deceased as the other. Prosecuting counsel had hardly resumed his seat when Culliford was on his legs. —

  “You say it was about half-past ten. Do you carry a watch?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Then how could you tell the hour?”

  “Well, sir, no sooner had I left them two gents than I was sorry I hadn’t arst ‘em the time; but next moment I met another, and arst him; and he told me it had just gone the ‘alf-hour.”

  “And could you identify that gentleman, too?”

  Dead silence and a puzzled grin.

  “Come, come, my man,” cried Culliford. “Could you identify the gentleman who told you the time if you were to see him again? Can you tell me anything at all about him? Could you pick him out if he were in this court at the present moment?”

  Witness caused a thrill by taking the question literally and scanning several faces before he would reply; then he shook his head; his recollection of the third gentleman was confessedly indistinct.

  “And yet you could swear to the other two!” said Culliford significantly. And he sat down with his first real point ably made.

  A similar admission was obtained from Tom’s old friend and enemy, the hackney-coachman, who first swore to the prisoner as the man who had stopped his coach overnight, and was then examined as to the entertainment of prisoner in his house next morning, and his ultimate flight therefrom. Tom saw his counsel’s eyelids twitching before he rose, and he anticipated one at least of the three successive points now scored in his favour.

  “When the prisoner sat at your breakfast-table,” began Culliford, “did you then, or at any subsequent moment, notice anything in the nature of a blood-stain upon his clothes or person?”

  “No, sir, I can’t say that I did.”

  “Can you say that you did not?”

  Witness hesitated but told the truth.

  “No,” said he, “I saw no signs of blood upon him, either then or afterwards.”

  “You saw no signs of blood upon the prisoner either then or afterwards. You are quite positive, however, that the man who waylaid your fare in the Finchley Road was the prisoner in the dock?”

  “Quite positive.”

  “Then didn’t you recognise him in the morning when your brother-in-law brought him to your house?”

  “No, sir, I did not.”

  “What! Not when he was sitting at your own breakfast-table?”

  “I did not.”

  “Nor yet when you gave him the newspaper, and he read you an account of the very crime with which he stands indicted? You suspected nothing, saw nothing suspicious in his manner, nothing familiar in his face?”

  “No — not then I didn’t.”

  “You suspected nothing and did not recognise him then; yet at a word from your wife you identified the prisoner with the man who stopped your coach, and you have so identified him ever since?”

  Witness made the necessary admission, but attempted to explain matters, whereupon Culliford cut him short, and having gained the advantage which Tom had foreseen, passed on to one that was less apparent.

  “To return to your fare,” said counsel; “did you notice any valuables upon his outer person? A watch-chain? Rings? A breast-pin in the stock?”

  “I did,” was the rather sullen reply.

  “Oh, you did; all three?”

  “No; a watch-chain and a pin.”

  “A watch-chain and a pin. What kind of a pin, now, should you say that it was?”

  “A diamond pin.”

  “A diamond pin; you can swear it was a diamond, can you?”

  “Yes, I can, for I seen it glittering in the light of my near coach-lamp.”

  “You saw the diamond glittering in the light of your lamp,” repeated Mr. Serjeant Culliford in his cool, ringing voice; and he sat down unexpectedly, but with an expression so satisfied that Tom lost much of the next evidence (that of the coachman’s wife) in endeavouring to account for it. He had not succeeded when the court adjourned for luncheon, for the hour of acute perceptions was over and had left him dazed, so that the venerable turnkey who had charge of him in the dock had to take him by the arm to make him leave it. Then it was that Tom discovered the public galleries behind the dock, and faced a firmament of eyes gleaming and straining for a first glimpse of his countenance. It flushed and fell — he was so taken aback — and he went down the stairs with a sob in his throat.

  “Come, come!” said his custodian; “you’re doing much better than I expected. You’ve got the best of it in counsel, anyway; he’s made three or four good points already.” -

  Tom brightened a little. “But I didn’t quite see the force of that last one,” said he; “what was he driving at there?”

  “Why, have you forgotten the only two questions he put the officer who described the position of the body?” asked the other; and he answered his own question while Tom was trying to remember. “The body was lying face down; he wanted to know whether they could see the stock as it lay, and whether there was a pin in the stock when they turned him over. Now don’t you see? That pin’s still missing, and they may prove it was better worth taking than the watch itself!”

  Under the turnk
ey’s supervision, the prisoner was sitting down to eat in a cell beneath the court; but at these words he dropped knife and fork and looked up with hope’s fitful fever on his cheeks and in his eyes.

  “I see! I see!” he cried. “Oh, what a magnificent man to defend a poor fellow like me! He’ll save me yet — he’ll save me, I do believe!”

  “We’ll hope for the best,” said the turnkey; “but there’s no denying that’s a goodish point. You see,” confidentially, “we know what you done with the watch, but there’s none on us knows what you done with the pin!”

  Tom started, stricken to the quick.

  “So you think—”

  But words failed him, and he said no more.

  That hour of respite was the longest of the day.

  Tom was thankful to be back in court.

  The principal witnesses of the afternoon were Mrs. Adcock, Jonathan Butterfield and the diminutive householder of Kew. Thus the trio who had made the world seem so kind a fortnight before, now typified its cruelty; for the evidence of the first two was reluctant but damning, and that of the last was supplementary in matter, but given with the officious venom and the transparent exultation of a personal foe.

  But his old landlady shed tears as she described her last interview with the prisoner at the bar. It was with difficulty that things which Tom had said on that occasion, and to which she had already sworn at Marylebone, could be wrung a second time from her unwilling lips. “I’ll pay him” and “I’ll break every bone in his infernal body” were not the worst of the words which were extracted by degrees. Then the stick was produced in court; and the knob that had been so clean and creamy was now clotted over with a scaly, russet skin, like a coat of glue, at sight of which the witness turned as white as her hair and was given a glass of water in the box. The stick was then duly identified; the jury informed that the prisoner had described it to witness as “a rod in pickle” for the deceased; and the witness allowed to stand down, after a brief but painful crossexamination, in which the good soul’s fondness for Tom was betrayed by signs that touched him as deeply as anything could just then. His brain was reeling under the dread weight of her evidence against him; he felt its influence upon judge and jury as a palpable force; its very reluctance only heightened its mortal effect.

  Jonathan Butterfield exhibited a like demeanour with a like result: it only showed that the prisoner had not lacked those common attributes of the worst rascals, an engaging manner and the power of imposing on the simple-minded. This witness, however, swore very positively that there were no marks of blood upon the prisoner when they were together. And though his sly successor as positively swore that such a stain upon the kerseymere waistcoat had first aroused his suspicions in the garden at Kew, and though this was afterwards proved in the medical evidence to be a blood-stain, it was eventually established that the blood was not that of the murdered man. The point was finally gained in cross-examination of the police-officer upon whom Tom had jumped bodily in his escape from the empty house. Witness admitted having opened his eyes to find the prisoner leaning over him with a bloody nose. And the defence had scored once more, but this after an interval so prolific of incriminating matter that Mr. Serjeant Culliford sat down with a sigh instead of a smile, and the prisoner at the bar longed incontinently for the end.

  About this time Tom recognised a forgotten face. The sporting youth who had lent him a copper to toss with, and afterwards treated his starving body to a generous meal, was seated immediately above the clock in the central gallery at the back of the court. Turning in very weariness to see the time, Tom had a glimpse of bottle-green shoulders and a pair of twinkling eyes, set now, however, in a very solemn face, which it took him some seconds to remember. He looked round no more when he had done so, but fell to thinking bitterly of all that had befallen him through the spin of that borrowed penny. It had brought him here. It would bring him to the gallows in due time. And here in the gallery sat the last of those who had been kind to him in his extremity; since he could not bear witness against him, he had come to gloat over his trial, and would doubtless attend his execution next! Thus did injustice make a normally fair mind unfair and unjust; but the stolid expression of the man above the clock had rubbed salt in his wounds; especially as the same glance had shown him quite a ragged man, who buried his face in a dirty handkerchief as Tom looked up.

  The long, tense day wore slowly to a close, but the prisoner’s interest was at an end before it: he had lost all hope. No more points were scored in his favour; his very counsel never glanced his way; he was fighting a losing battle with tenacity, but without conviction, and Tom scoured the court for a single face that should look to believe in him. There was none. The plain old judge looked more and more worried and depressed; his raised eyebrows meeting his wig as he leant forward to make a note of some peculiarly damning circumstance. The last witness of the day was the medical man who had certified death and conducted the autopsy. This was a stout gentleman with white whiskers and a benevolent voice, but Tom could only see the light shining on his bald head, as evening fell through the tall windows on that side of the court. Tom had counted the panes, still filled with a soiled, bluish sky, and was beginning to count the sparrows upon a smoke-charred wall without, when he was once more taken by the arm: the court had adjourned in the middle of the medical evidence, of which he had not listened to one word.

  As he turned to descend, there arose in the sloping seats behind the barristers a flushed face that gave the wretched Erichsen a new thought for the night: he thought, but could hardly believe, that it was the face of his old enemy, Nicholas Harding.

  CHAPTER XVII

  END OF THE TRIAL

  IT was!

  Tom had entered the dock with his eyes on those sloping seats; it was Nicholas Harding sure enough, in the very same place, and there in good time, yet ashamed of being there at all, or why did he duck his great head the instant Tom appeared? There were more pressing questions than that, however. Why had he come? What did he know? Had Claire told him all, and sent him to see the end?

  The prisoner’s heart began to beat as no witness and neither counsel had set it beating yet. A new and fierce desire for life and liberty ran like wildfire through his sluggish blood. Get off he must; his innocence must and should be proved, if only to baulk that vindictive snob come to glory in his destruction. His soul railed and sickened to think it was Claire’s father.

  But a new light played in his eyes; a new fire flamed in his face; and, to complete the transformation, he leant across the bulwark of the dock, and the gaze that had been so errant and so apathetic was eagerly concentrated upon the white-whiskered doctor in the witness-box. Spectators of the day before looked on and marvelled at a change so marked. And Nicholas Harding was among the number, for, once satisfied that it was he, Tom had not deigned to look a second time in his direction.

  The cross-examination of the medical man was longer and more persistent than that of any preceding witness. But nothing came of it. The object was also unusually patent and direct: it was to prove that death must have been all but instantaneous, and that it could not have occurred before the small hours of the fatal night. But this stepping-stone to an alibi was one whereon the witness could be neither led nor driven to set a foot. The upshot of much questioning and some ghastly details was merely to show the impossibility of fixing the time of death to an hour. The later period was not inconceivable, but more than that the witness would not say; whereupon Culliford was rude to him, and Tom sighed, for he felt instinctively that the doctor would have helped him if he could.

  “One moment, Dr. Westmacott,” said the opposing leader, rising to re-examine as Culliford sat down. “You have told the jury that it is not absolutely impossible for this murder to have taken place as late as two o’clock in the morning; will you kindly tell them whether such a fact would be at variance with your experience as a medical man?”

  “It would.”

  Culliford shifted angrily in h
is place.

  “May we not take it,” pursued the other, “that in your professional—”

  Culliford sprang to his feet.

  “You may not!” cried he. “My lord, I must protest against this form of question. My friend is leading.

  He shall not lead! This is a matter of life or death — I say life or death, for my friend’s instruction. He need not think that he is going to make it the latter by fair means or by foul!” —

  This righteous outburst was justified by the incidental letter, but certainly not by the essential spirit of the prosecution, which had struck the very prisoner as a miracle of restraint and moderation. The case against him had never been unduly pressed; all the pressing and browbeating had been upon his own side; and again Tom deplored what struck him as almost prejudicial ungraciousness on his counsel’s part. And it did no good; the question was put afresh, with a blush, but in an admissible form; and Dr. Westmacott stood down, having given it as his professional opinion that there was every probability of the crime having been committed before midnight rather than after.

  Counsel for the prosecution, with the colour still in his face, then called his last witness, a Newgate wardsman, with the pointed observation that the jury were at length in possession of the facts; they should now hear the incredible story with which the prisoner sought to explain those facts away.

  Up came Culliford on the instant, to object to the word “incredible,” which his own asperity had provoked.