CHAPTER VIII

THE DEFENDANT TO THE BAR

"Hats off!"

Through the great white room the cry vibrated, followed instantly by another:

"Hear ye, hear ye, all ye having business with the Court of the General Sessions of the City and County of New York, draw near, give attention and ye shall be heard."

Within the Bar, restless as hyenas awaiting their prey, roamed the district attorneys. Against that Bar, crouching there, were Orr and his associate counsel, restless too, but prepared to spring. To the rear were reporters, the flower of newspaperdom, handsome young men dressed to the ears in resplendent collars and astounding cravats. Back of them were the spectators, a solid mass, ladies of every degree except the high one and, with or without them, men whom you would recognize as first-nighters, others whom you would not recognize at all. To the right of the Bar were witnesses for the prosecution, experts in various matters of which gastronomy evidently was one. To the left was the jury, and above, beneath the amber panoply of the Bench, the Recorder sat, an ascetic Solon.

The atmosphere of the room, high ceiled, close packed, was Senegambian. Without you could see, within you could feel, the heat and eagerness of the autumnal sun.

"Arthur Annandale to the Bar!"

Into the court, as though it were a theatre, the defendant strolled, perfectly groomed, the Tombs pallor on his face but none of its dust on his coat, an air of tranquil boredom about him. At his heels was a keeper. He shook hands with Orr, sat down beside him, turned and gave his hat to the keeper, turned again and looked over to a gated inclosure at the right of the Bench where, in a sort of proscenium box, Sylvia sat with her mother.

The entire settings were those of a play. With this difference, it was real, a drama of mud and blood without orchestral accompaniment. After months of preparation, after days of talesmen baiting, on this Indian Summer forenoon the curtain was rising. The jury it had been a job to get. A full hundred were examined, cross-questioned, challenged and rejected before the dozen were boxed. When the last, the twelfth, a cadaverous individual, was accepted the stage was set.

"May it please the Court; Mr. Foreman and gentlemen of the jury."

With three bows and these rituals, Peacock opened for the State, outlining the case of the People, describing the crime, detailing the motive, summarizing the evidence, expressing the wish that the jury would believe the defendant innocent until his guilt had been proved, but declaring that, personally, for his own part, of that guilt he was thoroughly convinced.

Before he had finished Orr was at him. "I object to the District Attorney prejudicing the jury against this gentleman, my client."

That gentleman did not appear to heed. From Sylvia and her mother he had turned to look at the spectators, from them to fabulous beasts that climbed the fluted columns on the walls.

The objection was not sustained.

"And I object to Your Honor's ruling," Orr with a bulldog look threw up at the Bench.

Peacock proceeded. "There, gentlemen, is the crime, there too, the motive. To finish the picture evidence will be adduced."

He sat down. Then getting up, he called the first witness for the People, the Gramercy Park caretaker, who had found the body. The witness was succeeded by others, by the policeman on the beat, by the coroner's physician, by experts and servants.

By turn Orr took them in hand. With some he was curiously perfunctory. Of the caretaker, a meagre old man, with shifty eyes, who appeared very uncomfortable, he asked but four questions.

"When you found the body what did you do?"

"Ran and got the policeman, sir."

"Where did you get him?"

"On Lexington avenue and Twenty-third street, sir."

"Did you find him at once?"

"No, sir, I had to hunt a bit."

"Between the time you found the body and the time you got back how many minutes would you say had elapsed?"

"About ten or fifteen minutes, sir."

"That's all," said Orr.

It was not much. Yet with the policeman, a fat man with a red face and a blue nose, he was even briefer.

"When you reached the park with the last witness, how did you get in?"

"Walked in, sir," the man answered with a grin.

"The gate was open was it?"

"Yes, sir."

"That will do," said Orr.

It was not much either. But with other witnesses, notably with the experts, he fought, he fought with them, fought with Peacock, fought with the Court, would have fought with more had there been more to fight, fought pertinaciously, step by step, reducing testimony to nothing.

Meanwhile the court-room shimmered with silks. Wanderers from Fifth avenue who never in their lives had been in the General Sessions before begged and badgered their way there. It is great fun to see a man tried for his life. But when you have known him, when in addition elements supersensational blend like a halo about him, what more could be decently asked? Yet one thing disappointed. It was regrettable that the prisoner was not in chains, that he could sit there and yawn with every appearance of being at a matinee, a keeper for lackey behind him.

Otherwise the fun, if not fast, was furious. Peacock would ask a question, the lips of a witness would part but before more than a fraction of a syllable could issue Orr would hold him up, hold up the prosecution, hold up the Court. Generally he was overruled. But no overruling abashed him. He arose from opposition refreshing. There were times when Sylvia thought him bowed to the earth, utterly routed, hushed for good. But not a bit of it. At the moment when his ammunition seemed exhausted and his defeat assured, from an arsenal of books before him he pulled weapons wherewith not merely to renew the fight but to win.

In the course of one objection he was commanded by the Bench to sit down. He protested. The Recorder declined to listen to him further, reiterating the order that he be seated. Then with the air and manner of a little boy sent for misbehavior from the room, Orr half turned, hesitated, turned back, and through the exercise of guile unique and his own, succeeded in re-engaging the Court in conversation, protesting his respect, denying his contumacy and presently he was continuing the very objection because of which he had been told to sit down. He did sit down, but long after, when he was ready, when he had succeeded in having his say and his way. Then when at last he did sit down it was with an air of mastery that would have become Napoleon at Marengo. At the moment he was not a lawyer merely, he was an actor, quasi-Shakespearian, a compound of irony and good humor, Falstaff and Mercutio in one.

All this, however, was, to vary the metaphor, but the preliminary canter. That Loftus had been killed was shown and admitted. But it had not been shown nor was it admitted that the defendant was the man. This defect a star witness was to repair. The star was Harris.

Yet, though a star, he looked ghastly. Whether ill or not, he was at least ill at ease. The smug, household-servant air had gone. He seemed to have come from turmoils in Tatterdemalia. He was bruised, dirty, unshorn. But the story which he had brought to the _Chronicle_ he repeated, with embellishments at that. After retailing the tale, precising the motive and elaborating on it, he declared that the love of the defendant's wife for Loftus was common talk--evidence which, though hearsay, Orr indifferently let pass.

Then, after identifying a pistol as the property of Annandale--an exhibit marked A which Peacock had already tried but, held up by Orr, had not wholly succeeded in fitting to the crime--Harris swore that on the night of the murder, at five minutes after twelve, in the room which he occupied at the top of Annandale's house and which overlooked Gramercy Park, he heard a shot; that going to the window he looked out, that he could distinguish nothing, but that going then to the hall he heard someone coming in the house and looking down saw the defendant enter.

"Ha!" said Orr, taking him in hand, or rather, by the throat. For he made no attempt at ordinary amenities. He questioned him ferociously, with an air of personal hatred, with an air of saying, "Damn you, I have got it in for you now."

"What is your name?" he asked.

"Richard Harris, sir."

Orr pounded on the table in front of him. "Your name! Your name! I want your name, not something that you have made up like the rest of your rubbish. How many times have you been in jail? You were once employed in Hill street, Berkeley Square, by the Duchess of Kincardine. When you absconded from there, where was it that the police caught you? Answer me."

From behind the rail objections exploded like shell. But through the running fire of them Orr held his own, sandbagging the man with one charge after another, charge of theft, charge of forgery, but particularly of boasting the week before, in a Sixth avenue saloon where grooms and footmen congregate, that he could testify to anything that he was paid for.

From ghastly Harris turned vermilion. The flush retreating left him