Not Under the Law

by Grace Livingston Hill

  By and by the train stopped suddenly with a jerk and a groan and, after one or two attempts to creep a few steps, lay there for a long time. She remembered dimly that some such thing had happened on her way up. She wondered idly if it were a part of every day’s journey. Her impatience leaped ahead anxiously. Oh, if she were only there!

  At last the train started on again, and suddenly she realized that she must plan what she would do when she got there. Should she go home and send for the police, or should she go and try to find Darcy? She had no idea where he lived now, and if he were at home, he would probably be in jail unless he had been able to prove that he was innocent. Then suddenly she thought of Judge Peterson. He would know what to do. He was a judge. She would go straight to his house. Afterward she would have to go home and explain her absence and what she was doing, she supposed, but that could take care of itself. She had Darcy now to think about.

  She had hoped to get the noon train from the city out to Meadow Brook, but when she reached her home city, her train was so late that there was no Meadow Brook train till quarter of two. Then her impatience could wait no longer, and she called up Judge Peterson’s house.

  At first she could get no answer, but just as she was about to give up in despair, a gruff voice said, “Hello! Dan Peterson at the phone.”

  “Oh,” said Joyce in a relieved little voice. “Then is the judge there? I would like to speak to him a moment, please.”

  “No. He isn’t here. He’s over at the courthouse. Everybody’s over there. I just happened to run home for some papers. Who is this?”

  “This is Joyce Radway.” Joyce’s voice was all of a tremble. What if she should be too late after all? What if the trial was days ago?

  “What! Joyce? Oh, glory! Is that really you, Joyce? Where are you? In town? Say, take the L, and I’ll meet you at Sixty-Third Street with the car. You’re wanted here, you certainly are. And say, you there yet? Say, don’t talk to anybody on the way out! Mind that! What’s that? In time? Oh, sure, the nick of time. Couldn’t be better. All right. Get a hustle on. I’ll meet you.”

  Joyce hung up the receiver and hurried out to the elevated train, her heart beating high with hope.

  Dan dashed out to his car and rattled over to the courthouse, sent a note up to the judge’s desk, and waited by the door. The message came up.

  Say, Dad: the dead has come to life. Have her here in half an hour. Where do you want me to bring her? Here or over home?

  Dan

  The message came back with one word written across the back. “Here.”

  But a light flashed from the eye of father to son as Dan turned to dash out again.

  Dan almost upset a small, forlorn figure pressed close to the swinging, leathern doors, with woebegone look and white, tearstained cheeks.

  “Hello there, kid, did I hurt you?” He paused in his wild rush to set her on her feet again. “Why, little Lib Knox, is this you?” he said tenderly, discovering her identity and the tear streaks on her cheeks. “This is no place for you, child. Come on, take a ride with me.”

  But Lib drew a sigh of sobbing and held back.

  “No, I gotta stay here,” she said. “I gotta stay here an’ help my uncle Darcy.”

  “Come on, then, an’ we’ll help him.” He swept her under one arm and marched away, she wearily resisting. “Listen, kid, I’ve got glad news. Wait till we sail, an’ I’ll tell you who we’re goin’ after.”

  Lib suddenly relaxed and looked in his face. There was no mistaking the light in Dan’s eye. He had really some glad news. Lib climbed into the machine and sat back wearily, a poor little sinner with all her spirit gone, and allowed herself to be led away from the scene of her sorrow. Things had been going hard in there where Uncle Darcy was with the bad red-haired man. She knew it by the stern look on his face when the door swung back and she got a glimpse. She knew it by the leer on Tyke’s evil face and by the smug exclamations of the ladies who sat in the backseat and the knowing winks of rough men near the door. She knew it by the hard set of the old judge’s mouth as he eyed the witnesses and by the way he worried them with questions now and then like a cat with a mouse. If anything could be glad now, Lib was ready to believe it.

  When they had swung the second corner beyond the courthouse, Dan leaned down and whispered, “Now, Lib, do you know who we’re going after? Guess.”

  “God, I guess,” said Lib drearily. “I guess that’s all’s could help my uncle Darcy any. I heard the men say he was as good as hung now!” She caught a sob with a gulp and let the big tears roll down her worried little face.

  “Well, I guess God has something to do with it,” allowed Dan comfortably. “He generally does. Cut out that weeping, Lib. That’s not like you!”

  “But it’s all my fault!” she sobbed out, utterly broken at last. “It’s ’cause I went and took that ride with that nasty red-haired man in his motorcycle. He—he—he made me tell where Uncle Darcy was.”

  “Why, how did you know where he was?”

  “I—I—I didunt!” wept Lib. “I made it up. I told a lie. I said he was in Canada. And I told God it was a lie, huh—huh—huh!” she sobbed. “But id didunt do any good. God didn’t like it.” Dan put one arm around her gently.

  “There now, Lib, that’s all nonsense. You did a brave thing, and it didn’t have a thing to do with your uncle’s trouble. It probably only held the man off a little longer. Besides, there’s no need for you to worry anymore. Listen. Who do you think we’re going after? Joyce Radway. She’s down at Sixty-Third Street station waiting for us now. I just talked to her over the phone.”

  Lib Knox sat up as straight as a pipe stem, and her eyes got round and great behind their tears. “Then He did hear!” she said in an awestruck tone.

  “Who heard?”

  “God heard, away up in heaven like they said in Sunday school. I didn’t believe it, but now I do. But I tried it anyway, and He heard. I ast Him would He please bring her back to life again, and He’s done it.”

  Dan pressed the little hand he held and said huskily: “Yes, kid, He’s done it. I guess there was more than one asking for that same thing. Well, here we are, and … there she is!”

  Chapter 30

  The trial had been hard on Darcy, as little Lib had surmised. Even the old judge had been sour in some of his orders and had thrown anxious glances among the witnesses, searching in vain for some ray of hope. He loved Darcy, and things seemed to be going against him.

  Not for one minute in his heart of hearts did Judge Peterson believe that Darcy Sherwood was guilty of such things as he was being charged with, and when he stood up straight and handsome in the prisoner’s box to answer to the question “Guilty or not guilty?” he had admired the straight, clear look with which he faced the roomful of curious enemies and anxious friends. Slowly Darcy had swept the room with his glance, as if searching for one on whom he could rely. Anxiously his eyes rested on his sister, Ellen, sitting huddled behind her handkerchief, and on the little shrinking Lib, looking so fierce beside her, surprisedly on the minister and his wife, taking in their kindly faces, something true and real about them. He knew they were Joyce’s friends, and he liked their being there. There was nothing hostile about them. Then his gaze wandered to the four men huddled together in a corner with Tyke speaking as their leader, making loudmouthed remarks and casting furtive, sidelong glances, keeping his eyes away from the prisoner. Darcy took them in half amusedly, wholly comprehending, almost a smile of contempt flitting across his face, before he turned deliberately and faced his enemy, Gene, and looked him intensely down with a cold, righteous glance. Then he turned back to the judge and said quietly, “Not guilty, Your Honor,” as if there had been no pause between the question and the answer. The judge found himself watching the boy and wondering where he got his poise, his cool, calm look, which might almost be described as that of peace.

  From the start, Darcy sat in his place and watched each actor in the little scene before him as if he were so
mehow outside of it all, detached from the whole thing as if the outcome were of little moment to him, only the persons.

  Darcy had not asked for a lawyer. In fact, he had refused one. He would not ask anybody to help him nor tell anything that would give a clue to where he had been or what he had been doing. He had told them he would plead his own cause when the time came.

  So the evidence went on. Witnesses were sworn in and testified to the most unpleasant details in a well-constructed tale of horror. Tyke was clever, but Bill was sharp, and what the two of them could not think out, the canny Cottar did. They had left no question unprepared for, no weak places in their line of evidence. They even had an old flashlight of Darcy’s they had found where he had left it last at one of their meeting places, and most carefully had they preserved it without handling, that the fingerprints might be observed. Obligingly Darcy put out his fingers for the impression, that smile of half amusement on his lips. So well he understood the revenge that was working all this elaborate network of lies to catch him.

  Yet as the evidence went on, he began to realize how cleverly it had been done, and now only a miracle of some kind could save him. He sat gravely watching it all, listening, now and then jotting down a note for his own reply when his time came, but for the most part, gravely listening, and the day went on and the evidence against him grew blacker. The excitement in the courtroom was great. There were gruesome details, and Darcy’s face grew stern and his soul sick within him. To think that Joyce should, through him, be mixed up in a loathsome mess like this! He would rather have died a thousand deaths than to have had her name connected to this.

  The spectators were strained to the highest point. Nan, heavily veiled and weeping, was most affected. When it came her turn to testify, she told of the beautiful relation between herself and Joyce but said that Joyce was very secretive and went out a good deal evenings, staying late. Once during Bill’s blunt testimony she screamed and fainted and had to be taken out but insisted on coming back again. And hourly the look of suffering grew on Darcy’s face, as if the ordeal were actual physical pain. But once, there was a little relaxing of the strain, when old Noah Casey took the stand and was asked to swear that he would tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

  He climbed into his place and laid a trembling, knotted hand upon the Book, but when they asked him to swear, he smiled and shook his head.

  “My mother taught me not to swear,” he said serenely, while the four who were sponsoring him frowned and cursed beneath their breath.

  He stood there looking at the throng, his quick, bright eyes traveling from one face to another, half suspicious of them all, half frightened like a wild thing of the woods. And when the people laughed, he laughed with them at himself. The difficulty about the oath over, he told his story eagerly, somewhat like a child, in short, hurried sentences, his bright eyes still hurrying over the audience, his long, nervous fingers fingering the brim of his old felt hat. “I was going acrost the medder,” he began, “ahint of the graveyard,” and Gene’s lawyer helped him out with questions. “You saw a bundle on the ground like a human body—” The bright eyes focused on the lawyer an instant.

  “No, it was broken glass. Leastways that’s what I thought I saw. They tell me—” The lawyer hurried into another question, and the judge interrupted. “Suppose you look around, Noah, and tell me if you can see the man you saw that night digging in the graveyard?”

  The bright eyes focused on the judge and then turned quickly toward Tyke. The lawyer hastened with his assistance.

  “Was it this man, Noah?” He pointed to the prisoner.

  Noah Casey turned around toward the box where Darcy sat and saw Darcy for the first time. “What! Him?” he asked, pointing with a long finger at Darcy, who regarded him with a grin of friendliness. “Why, no, that’s Darcy Sherwood. I know him. I’ve knowed him since he was little. Oh, no, it wa’n’t Darcy. He’s a good boy. He wouldn’t do such a thing. The man I saw had red ha—”

  But Gene’s lawyer raised his voice. “Your Honor, I am disappointed in this witness. Mentally he does not seem to be quite all that I supposed—”

  “Undoubtedly,” said the judge under his breath, and Noah was hustled off the scene.

  But the afternoon came on, and somehow the false witnesses were making a pretty good case of it against Darcy. The judge’s eyebrows were drawn in a heavy frown, and his breath came quick and deep. Those who knew him well knew that he was troubled, and it was just then that Dan’s note was handed up.

  No one but Darcy noticed the twinkle that came in the judge’s eyes, and he wondered and tried to puzzle it out. The judge was his friend, he knew, and wanted to see him cleared, but surely all hope was gone. The evidence was all on one side. Why prolong the agony? It almost seemed as if the judge was trying to keep the case going, trying to make time. He asked the most trivial questions and tripped up the lawyer again and again, holding a witness far beyond necessity.

  All at once the judge drew a long breath and a light came in his eye. He sat back as if he were done and ordered that the prisoner be allowed to speak for himself.

  The leather door at the back of the courtroom had swung noiselessly open at that moment, and little Lib had entered, straight and beaming, and behind her walked a lady and Dan Peterson. Darcy gave one glance and then arose, and there was a new light in his face. It was almost as if he had come to a triumphant moment instead of being about to plead for his life in the face of indubitable evidence against him. Those who were watching noticed with a shock that he actually had a kind of smile on his face, and a look of something—could it be peace? What utter nonsense! Perhaps he was going out of his mind. Anyone might, having to listen to such a list of his own horrible crimes! But Darcy was speaking in his quiet tone. “It almost seems a pity to add anything after such well-established evidence as you all have heard. If I didn’t know I wasn’t guilty, I would almost think I was after listening to what has been said. So I won’t try to argue in my own favor. I see Miss Joyce Radway herself has just come in, and I’m going to ask if she may come up here and tell you whether I ever abducted her or murdered her or buried her.”

  Then indeed there was a great stir in the courtroom. People stretched their necks to see and rose up in their seats, but the judge commanded silence. Under cover of the confusion, Tyke attempted to escape but was stopped by order of the watchful judge.

  Joyce came to the front of the room, proudly escorted by Lib, who held her hand to the very witness stand and then stood by with glad eyes to watch her.

  Joyce turned and faced the excited throng, then looking toward her old friend Judge Peterson, she spoke in clear, ringing tones that everybody could hear. “Your Honor, I haven’t seen Mr. Sherwood but once since I left home a year ago to go to Silverton and teach. Mr. Sherwood does not know I saw him then. He was making a speech in a religious service in the city where I happened to be one evening, and it was a good speech, too. I wish you could have heard it. I tried to get up to speak to him, but the crowd was so great that he was gone before I got to the platform.”

  She turned her face toward the courtroom a little more, looking down at the seats where the witnesses sat and noticing with startled eyes the man of the loud voice who had addressed her as “girlie” on that memorable morning one year ago.

  “I don’t know what you have been trying to do to my old friend Mr. Sherwood, or where you got such utter lies. I went away from Meadow Brook because I wanted to teach and I knew my relatives were opposed to my doing it. I did not realize that I could be misunderstood or make trouble for anybody by doing so, but my going certainly had nothing whatever to do with Darcy Sherwood. We have seldom seen each other since we were schoolchildren together, and he has always been most kind and gentlemanly to me whenever I have met him.

  “I happened to see an old copy of the Meadow Brook News this morning and read to my horror what you were saying about him and me. It made me sick that my old friends and my relati
ves could allow such an awful charge to be made on such a man as Darcy Sherwood. I had to get somebody to take my place in school while I came here, and I was afraid I wouldn’t get here in time before you did something dreadful you could never be forgiven for. But I’m glad I came, and I’m…ashamed of you all.”

  If anyone had been looking at Darcy then, they would have seen a wonderful look in his eyes, but everybody’s attention was centered on Joyce. There had not been such a sensation in Meadow Brook in years as the dead coming to life just in time to save a tragedy.

  The judge stood up and addressed Darcy. His voice was trembling. He was very unjudgelike in his manner.

  “My boy, you are free from the charge, and the court dismisses the case.” He was smiling, and there was something like a mist in his eyes.

  Darcy inclined his head slightly.

  “Your Honor, I thank you. I am glad to be exonerated from a crime that I did not commit, but I want to ask your permission now to confess to one that I did. I want to take the penalty, whatever it is, and be cleared in the eyes of the law forever.”

  The courtroom grew suddenly hushed. People who had risen and begun to adjust wraps and pick up their gloves sat down again. All ears were strained to hear every word.

  “You have my permission,” said the judge, looking instantly grave and anxious. “Is the attorney here to take down the confession? Mr. Robinson—”

  There was a little stir in the room while the attorney came forward, and then Darcy went on. “For several months prior to the time last spring when I left town, I had been in the bootlegging business.”

  “Oh! Ah!” were whispered here and there with nods of previous conviction from people who had been half disappointed to have the trial turn out so well.

  “I gave it up because I had come to feel that it was wrong. I confess it now because I want to pay the penalty of what I have done. Judge, I will be glad if you will put this through as soon as possible. I am ready to take what is coming to me.”