“Of all the things that I have said to you, there is only one that I hold it essential that you carry in the very core of your memory when you leave this room on as solemn an errand as falls to the lot of any man. This only: That the sole defense that I plead for Stephen Bellamy and Susan Ives is that they are innocent—as entirely and unequivocally innocent as any man of you in whose hands rests their fate; that this foul and brutal murder was against their every wish, hope, or desire; that it is to them as ghastly, as incredible, and as mysterious as it is to you. That and that only is their defense.
“It is not my task, as you know—as in time Judge Carver will tell you—to prove them innocent. It is the state’s to prove them guilty. A heavy task they will find it, I most truly believe. But I would have you find them something more than not guilty. That is the verdict that you may render with your lips, but with your hearts I ask you to render another more generous and ungrudgingly. ‘Innocent’—a lovely, valiant, and fearless word, a word untainted by suspicion or malice. A verdict that has no place in any court, but I believe that all who hear your lips pronounce “Not guilty” will read it in your eyes. I pray that they may.
“I said to you that when you left this room you would be bound on the most solemn of all errands. I say to you now that when you return you may well be bound on the most beautiful one imaginable—you will return in order to give life to two who have stood in the shadow of death. Life!
“You cannot give back to Susan Ives something that she has lost—a golden faith and carefree security, a confidence in this world and all its works. You cannot give back to Stephen Bellamy the dead girl who was his treasure and delight, about whose bright head clustered all his dreams. You cannot give back to them much that made life sweetest, but, gentlemen, you can give them life. You can restore to them the good earth, the clean air, the laughter of children, the hands of love, starlight and firelight and sunlight and moonlight—and brightest of all, the light of home shining through windows long dark. All these things you hold in your hands. All these things are yours to give. Gentlemen, I find it in my heart to envy you greatly that privilege, to covet greatly that opportunity.”
He sat down, slowly and heavily, and through the room there ran an eager murmur of confidence and ease, a swift slackening of tension, a shifting of suspense. And as though in answer to it, Farr was on his feet. He stood silent for a moment, his hands clasped over the back of the chair before him, his eyes, brilliantly inscrutable, sweeping the upturned faces before him. When he lifted his voice, the familiar clang was muted:
“Your Honour, gentlemen, when my distinguished adversary rose to address you an hour or so ago, he assured you that he was about to take very little of your time. We would none of us grudge him one moment that he has subsequently taken. He is waging a grim and desperate battle, and moments and even hours seem infinitesimal weapons to interpose between those two whose defense is entrusted to him, and who stand this day in peril of their lives on the awful brink of eternity itself.
“The plea that he has made to you is as eloquent and moving a one as you will hear in many a long day; it is my misfortune that the one that I am about to make must follow hard on its heels, and will necessarily be shorn of both eloquence and emotion. It will be the shorter for lack of them, but not the better. What I lack in oratory I shall endeavour to supply in facts: facts too cold, hard, and grim to make pleasant hearing—still, facts. It is my unwelcome duty to place them before you; I shall not shrink from it. It will not be necessary for me to elaborate on them. They will speak for themselves more eloquently than I could ever hope to do, and I propose to let them do so.
“Before I marshal them before you, I will dispose as briefly as possible of two or three issues that Mr. Lambert has seen fit to raise in his speech to you. First, as to the wealth of Mrs. Ives. I cannot see that the fact that she is wealthy is in any way a vital issue in this case, but Mr. Lambert evidently considered it sufficiently important to dwell on at considerable length. He managed very skilfully to place before you the picture of a modest little farmhouse with roses clambering over a cottage gate, presided over by an even more modest chatelaine. Very idyllic and utterly and absolutely misleading.
“The little farmhouse is a mansion of some twenty-odd rooms, the roses grow in a sunken garden as large as a small park; not many cottages boast a swimming pool, a tennis court, a bowling green and a garage for five cars—but Mrs. Ives’s cottage took these simple improvements as a matter of course. Mr. Lambert drew your attention to the fact that if you had rung a doorbell the lady herself might have hastened to welcome your summons, and, he implies, to welcome you in to see how simply she lived.
“I doubt profoundly whether Mrs. Ives ever opened her door in her life unless she was intending to pass through it, and I doubt even more profoundly whether you would ever have been requested to cross the
