“You are, and much may depend on your answering correctly! Why should you —”I don’t need a lawyer, or counsel, or help at all!” cried Toad. “I am happy, very happy, with you all.”
“Let that be noted!” said a sharp voice. “The prisoner thereby expunges, exterminates, obliterates, and dismisses by his own admission all his rights, privileges, prerogatives, powers and perquisites to be represented here by another or himself and agrees forthwith to be interrogated, assessed, tried, considered, examined and judged without recourse, help, respite or care by us in the sole, exclusive, inalienable, immediate and eternal duty vested in us by their Lordships, the Bishops, all five of the Police Commissioners themselves answerable, though that is now too late and beyond possibility, to the Monarch himself and all his heirs and issue for ever more. Eh, Mr Toad?”
“Yes,” said Toad who understood nothing but that all hope was now gone forever.
“The prisoner agrees!”
At this, and rather to Toad’s surprise, the seven Judges rose to their feet to shake hands and congratulate each other before resuming their seats once more and their general sombre demeanour.
“Bring forth the List of Charges, Clerk!”
The list, which was so lengthy that it had been bound between leather covers and had various markers in it for ease of reference, was brought past Toad from somewhere behind him, and placed upon the table.
One of the seven Judges — Toad could never be quite sure which was to speak, or which had spoken — opened the book and pored over it before reading, “Toad of Toad Hall, whereas it is known that you did on the eighteenth day of—”
The horrid words charged towards Toad like so many wild horses and overwhelmed him, and trampled him where he sat, so that his head was dizzy and he saw stars before his eyes. On and on they went till, like grey light at the end of a long, dark night, he heard this: “Therefore, Toad of Toad Hall, you are here charged as miscreant, felon, and common criminal with —”
The horses came galloping back again and charged him down once more, so that, breathless and beaten, Toad could only whisper his reply, when finally asked, “How do you plead?”
“Guilty, My Lords.”
“To all one hundred and sixteen charges — ?” began another of the Judges.
Toad gulped.
“— including the attempted abduction of the said sweep’s wife, and her five children,” continued a third Judge, “and the damage, extensive and absolute, to property internal and external of His Lordship the —”
“Yes, yes, yes!” cried Toad, unable to sustain the awfulness of sitting in so terrible a place.
“Not to mention, though we must and should, the theft in the second and third degrees, and attempted manslaughter in the fourth degree —”
“It was all me,” said the abject Toad, “all me.
“It is a pity,” said yet another Judge, “that you have shown no remorse or shame for what you have done, for we have some power to mitigate. Some small token of regret, and pity for your victims, or a sign that you could learn from your mistakes —”
“I do feel shame,” cried Toad, “I do feel regret, and not only for those victims you have mentioned, but for others too. O, I do!”
“Others?” whispered the High Judge in the centre. “Did you mention others? Are they not all listed?”
“O no,” said Toad, weeping real tears of contrition (and hoping that the sight of them might ameliorate a little the sentence that was soon surely to be passed), “for I also let down Mole, and I may have been the cause of Rat’s death.”
This unexpected confession produced a sudden silence, but of rather a different temper than those that had gone before. It was a silence of puzzlement, even of dismay.
“Mole?Rat? Who may they be, pray?”
“Friends of mine,” wailed Toad. “O, I did not mean to leave Mole to die,” wailed Toad, “or to have Rat fall out of the flying machine, but you see there was something so magnificent about it all that I got carried away for a moment and so without knowing what I was doing, and quite without any premeditation or forethought, I —”
His confession came tumbling forth and went on a very long time, yet they heard him out and when he had finally finished they sat once more, staring at him in silence.
“Clerk, bring forth the evidence that we may re-examine it for inaccuracy, and a tendency towards undue leniency,” said one of the Judges, “or find some support for these claims the prisoner has now made.”
“Hear! Hear!” cried all the others, falling into jovial and cheerful chatter among themselves while they waited for the evidence to be brought. The evidence —all twenty-one quarto volumes of it, close printed, and each leather-bound like the List of Charges — eventually arrived, pushed in by the Clerk’s Assistant and neatly stacked upon a silver trolley, as if it was roast beef all cooked and ready to be carved up in the private restaurant of the Royal Courts of Justice.
The re-examination of this material took some considerable time, during which Toad wilted yet further, the only relief being that the shaft of light that had been upon him at the beginning shifted somewhat to his right side.
“No mention of the Water Rat here,” said the High Judge with a terrible sigh, “nor any of the Mole either, it would seem. Nor of the flying machine you make claim to have flown.”
The High Judge looked up at Toad and frowning the deepest and most thorough frown yet said, “This is grave, Mr Toad, grave indeed. To the one hundred and sixteen charges already brought and officially listed must forthwith be added eighteen more of false claim, of impersonation, of subjugation of mechanical property, namely a flying machine, of—”
There was something about this mention of the flying machine — his flying machine, his beautiful bright red and glorious flying machine — that stirred in Toad’s breast some last faint spark of rebellion. For if he had understood aright, they were daring to suggest —”But —” he began in protest.
“But?” thundered the Judge.
Toad blinked and struggled to raise himself a shade from the semi-supine posture into which his chains and restraints, combined with fatigue physical and emotional, had forced him.
“I wanted to say —”
“He wants to say something voluntary and gratuitous!” cried the Judges in concert.
Toad looked at them and continued, quietly it is true, yet with a growing resolve and spirit which would not now be stopped.
“— to say,” he continued, “that it was my flying machine, and I did fly it, and I’m sorry if it careered about the Town somewhat and disturbed people, but —“
But Toad could say no more, for he had no more strength, no more hope. Two great tears coursed down his cheeks. They could take his liberty, his life even, but they could not, should not, take away his memories of that great and glorious flight, a memory that was all he had to sustain him in the hard times to come — whether through the long years of incarceration, if that were to be his fate, or in those final moments when they took him down that cold passageway that led to his last moment in the sun, and the hangman’s noose.
But then, when he had done, there came into the dusty and disbelieving silence that followed his final faltering claim (or denial as no doubt they saw it) a new sound: the Clerk coughed.
“Ahem!” he went.
Then “Ahem!” again.
But if this was meant to draw the attention of the Judges to some point of procedure they had overlooked, it failed, for with a suddenness that took even the now passive and resigned Toad by surprise, and caused him to start up, the High Judge declaimed the following: “The prisoner having been examined, considered and found utterly wanting on all counts and probably several more, the verdict will now be given, and the sentence served and the consequential punishment (for we may reasonably pre-empt matters by assuming on the strength of the evidence and the prisoner’s paltry submissions that guilty it will be) brought forward to the earliest opportunity, unless there be any h
ere who —”
“Ahem!” coughed the Clerk once more.
“Yes, Clerk! Have you anything to say? Should I have put on my black cap already, is that it?”
“My Lord, there are the depositions on the plaintiff’s behalf.”
Nothing, not even an earthquake, could have had more effect on the seven Judges than this simple reminder from the excellent, and orderly, Clerk of the Court.
Yet the High Judge retained his composure (though the others gasped for air, and mopped their brows, and undid their legal collar studs and, in two cases, removed their heavy wigs) and said with admirable understatement, “Depositions in the plural?”
“Three, My Lord, or rather, as I am given to understand, two associated pleas on the plaintiff’s behalf, and a query concerning his identity.”
“Are they ready?”
“And bound in leather, Your Lordship.”
A last tome was brought in, this one so light and thin, so inconsequential-looking in all respects, that it was carried by the Under Assistant to the Clerk’s Assistant.
“Just for the record, Your Lordship,” said the Clerk, to cover himself.
The Judges eyed the slim volume with distaste till one of them, with an “I suppose we must at least glance at it”, opened it, and glanced.
“But — !” he declared, visibly nonplussed at what he read inside.
“But — !” said another, passing it to the third.
“But,” said he, “this deposition from no less a personage than —”
The clear and mighty lettering at the head of the thick white notepaper of the document that had caused such a stir was unmistakable, and put awe into all their hearts, for it was from the Editor’s office of that newspaper so august and mighty that it could be said that it was to truth what the Bank of England was to sterling.
“Need there be more than this?” it asked of the seven rhetorically.
The deposition was read, followed by the two other documents, and Toad was astonished to hear two names whispered by the Judges, in the same breath as that of the Editor of the greatest newspaper in the world. One of the names was Badger, and the other was Mr Prendergast.
“Impressive indeed,” muttered the High Judge. “Things are beginning to look good,” whispered the Clerk into Toad’s astonished ear, “and there could be a turn—up.”
Toad stared, his future now in the balance once more. “It comes down to the issue of identity then,” said the High Judge finally “Though is he not Toad and therefore guilty? Has he not said as much?”
“Ahem!”
“Yes, Clerk, speak if you will.”
“The last document by the aforesaid Prendergast is ill-writ, but it does say, if I may paraphrase for Your Lordships, that the plaintiff is more than a Toad, he is more even than a pilot. He is the pilot. He is —”
Seven pairs of beady eyes examined the last-named document once more, seven pairs of lips pursed, seven pairs of brows knitted, seven pairs of eyes narrowed and, having read whatever it was that was ill-writ, looked up and gazed on Toad.
“Is this witness Prendergast to hand, and ready to identify the prisoner?”
“He is, My Lord. He awaits your order.”
“Well then,” said the High Judge almost indifferently, “our hands are tied, and sentencing cannot and should not commence till this matter is cleared up. But then, if the plaintiff proves to be the Toad we think him to be, well, that will as it were put the seal on his fate, will it not? Eh, Clerk?”
“Yes, My Lord, I think it will.”
Bemused and bewildered, and yet caught once more upon the carousel of hope, Toad was unshackled and made free, his body given up to the four gaolers who had brought him there, and dragged off.
“It’s to be a parade then, like I said,” said his gaoler. “Couldn’t they have done it before?” asked Toad. “Due process, Mr Toad, due process,” said his friend, as if that explained all.
Toad was taken down some steps and up some steps, and round one corner, and back round another, then along and down and up and between, each step of the way involving the opening and closing of gates and barred doors, till he was ushered forth into a courtyard.
“Stand in the line!” he was harshly told.
The line was of eleven other brutal, hardened, desperate criminals much like himself, except that all were much bigger of leg, arm, back and foot than Toad, though their heads were not so swollen as his. He did his best, which was not much, to raise himself up, to puff himself out and to generally make himself look as much like them as he could, for plainly, it would be better not to stand out. He feared that if he was identified, he was done for.
Then another door opened and in came two policemen accompanying a tall man in a morning coat: the butler Toad had not only duped, but endeavoured to bribe. Whatever hope Toad had dared harbour was gone in that moment.
“Have pity on me!” he cried in despair.
“Prisoners be silent!”
“Do not choose me!” cried Toad in the very vale of self-pity and terror, falling to his knees and grasping his hands together as if in prayer. “I never meant it! I got carried away.”
“Sir,” said one of the policeman to the butler, “is there anyone present whom you recognise? You need say nothing — merely raise your hand and point. Take as much time as you wish.”
Slowly the butler’s hand came up, slowly his forefinger was extended, and slowly and unerringly it pointed at Toad.
“O!” cried Toad, swaying in his distress, and swooning into the arms of the brutal felon who stood next to him.
Toad awoke in the loathsome chair once more, but this time he was not manacled, chained or restrained, and someone had thoughtfully placed a cushion or two under him, and behind his back.
“To help me face the worst,” he thought.
“Prisoner,” began the High Judge, “the scales of justice have rarely had to weigh so wretched and hopeless-seeming a case as this. Where do we begin when so many laws have been broken, when so many precedents for wrong-doing and malfeasance set? First —”
He droned on, and on, so long that Toad grew weary, and could not even react when finally he said, “For which the sentence is in each case that you be taken from here to a place of execution and there —”
But Toad no longer cared. He was, he now believed, a lost cause. His life was run, his time nearly over. He would —
“— but on the other side, upon the other scale as it were, we must put the fact, indubitable in the face of the evidence of a witness so full of sobriety as His Highest Lordship’s Butler, that this extraordinary Toad, this master criminal, was also the hero of that flight upon which the fate of thousands was to turn.”
Toad’s ears pricked up.
“Alone, ailing, with nothing but his own courage and intelligence to rely on, faced by a choice of his own life or others’, he wrestled with that flying machine and succeeded — we may say triumphed — where all others would surely have failed. Leaping from it only when he was sure others were safe and no damage would be caused, he —”
Toad sat up, enthralled.
“— he who is a hero yet made no claim to be one. Modest, retiring, risking his life a second time, and a third, and a fourth, he sought to escape public notice by a series of brave escapes and stratagems the like of which we have rarely seen. Then, when this brave hero was brought before us here, did he lose his composure? Did he strive to wriggle free and escape in body, spirit or intellect? He did not! He successfully pretended to the part of vile criminal and felon.”
“Yes!” cried Toad, truthfully.
“But friends who knew him well came forward and pleaded for him, knowing he was too good and honourable to plead for himself. Of the Editor of the august organ whose letter we have seen we shall say no more: that great citizen demands a veil of secrecy and we shall respect it, and we need not ask from what source of truth and rectitude he first heard of Mr Toad’s connection with flying, and so pursued the enqu
iries whose happy outcome we now know Yet, since crimes have been committed, the law of the land demands a surety in such a case as this, and by good fortune we have it on the good name of the wise and retiring Badger, than whom we understand there is none to be held in greater respect. That detail satisfied, we can rest assured that Toad will return to a good home. Therefore the scales are in balance, and his evil crimes are exactly matched by the greatness of his actions. He shall go free and our judgment is that, unheralded before, he shall go unheralded now, just as he himself would wish it —”
“But —” protested Toad, who was beginning to wonder whether to bring the charge of wrongful prosecution right there and then, or bide his time till he had retained the best counsel he could find, and had enjoyed his triumphant procession through the Town, where he might find a suit of clothes to replace his prison garb —”Therefore,” continued the High Judge, “take him hence beyond the city walls, put him upon the high road that leads back to where he came from, and let no man or woman pursue him more.
“I am free?” whispered Toad, utterly exhausted.
“Free to go, but not to come,” was the reply “Commit no more crimes, or all those sentences of execution eternal will be put back on the list from which they have not been fully expunged, and can never be, and we fear there will be no second chance.”
Toad was escorted from the courtroom, bundled into the black and windowless automobile once more, and taken far beyond the Town walls, where he was put out upon the road beneath a road sign pointing south.
“There!” said his gaoler. “Duty done!” With that he placed a shilling in Toad’s hand and said, “From His Lordship’s Butler, sir. Says he never had so much fun in his whole professional career as serving Toad of Toad Hall in the Master Guest Bedroom.”
“He knew me!” gasped Toad.
“Moment he saw your headgear and goggles, sir. With that his gaoler climbed into the automobile, which turned and left.
Toad stared after it, utterly nonplussed.
Then he looked about him, just to see if there were any Bishops, or Lords, or policemen, or Judges, or butlers about. But there were none.
The Willows in Winter Page 18