“As for Stephen Bellamy, Mr. Lambert has assured you that any mechanic in the land was as well off as he. Well, possibly. The mechanics that I know don’t have maids to help their pretty wives, and gardeners to sleep over their pretty garages, but perhaps the ones that you know do.
“So much for the wealth of the defendants. I said at the outset that it was a matter of no great importance, and in one sense it is not; in a deeper sense, it is of the greatest possible significance. Not that Susan Ives was, in the strictest sense of the word, a wealthy woman, but because of the alchemy that had been wrought in her by the sinister magic of what we may call the golden touch.
“You all know the legend of Midas, I am sure—the tale of that unhappy king who wished that every object that his fingers rested on might turn to gold, and whose fingers strayed one day to his little daughter’s hair and transformed her into a small statue—beautiful, shining, brilliant, but cold and hard and inhuman as metal itself. Long ago Curtiss Thorne’s fingers must have rested on his little daughter’s hair, and what he made of his child then the woman is today. The product of pride, of power, of privilege, of riches—Susan Ives, proud, powerful, privileged, and rich—the golden girl, a charming object of luxury in the proper surrounding, a useless encumbrance out of them.
“No one knew this better than the golden girl herself—she had had bitter cause to know it, remember; and on that fatal summer afternoon in June a drunken breath set the pedestal rocking beneath her feet. She moved swiftly down from that pedestal, with the firm intention of making it steady for all time. It is not the gold that we hold in our hands that is a menace and a curse, gentlemen—not the shining counters that we may change for joy and beauty and health and mercy—it is the cold metal that has grown into our hearts. I hold no brief against wealth itself. I hold a brief against the product of the Midas touch.
“Mr. Lambert next introduced to you most skilfully a very dangerous theme—the theme of the deep personal interest that he takes in both defendants, more especially in Susan Ives. The sincerity of his devotion to her it is impossible to doubt. I for one am very far from doubting it. He loved the little girl before the fingers of Midas had rested heavy on her hair; he sees before him still only those bright curls of childhood clustering about an untarnished brow. Many of you who have daughters felt tears sting in your eyes when he told you that he loved her as his daughter—I, who have none, felt the sting myself.
“But, gentlemen, I ask you only this: Are you, in all truth and fairness, the most unbiased judges of your daughter’s characters? Would you credit the word of an archangel straight from heaven who told you that your daughter was a murderess, if that daughter denied it? Never—never, in God’s world, and you know it! If, in your hearts, you say to yourself, ‘He has known Susan Ives and loved her for many years; he loves her still, so she must be all he thinks,’ then Mr. Lambert’s warm eloquence will have accomplished its purpose and my cold logic will have failed.
“But I ask you, gentlemen, to use your heads and not your hearts. I ask you to discount heavily not Mr. Lambert’s sincerity, nor his affection, nor his eloquence, but his judgment and his credulity. Platitudes are generally the oldest and profoundest of truths; one of the most ancient and most profound of all is the axiom that Love is blind.
“So much for two general challenges that it has been my duty to meet; the more specific ones of the note, the car, and the laugh, I will deal with in their proper places. We are now through with generalizations and down to facts.
“These fall into two categories—the first including the events leading up to and precipitating the crime, the second dealing with the execution of the crime itself.
“I propose to deal with them in their logical sequence. In the first category comes the prime factor in this case—motive. Mr. Lambert has told you that that is the weakest factor in the state’s case; I tell you that it is the strongest. There has never come under my observation a more perfect example of an overwhelming motive springing from the very foundation of motivation—from character itself.
“I want you to get this perfectly straight; it is of the most vital importance. There is never any convincing motive for murder, in that that implies an explanation that would seem plausible to the sane and well-balanced mind. There is something in any such mind that recoils in loathing and amazement that such a solution of any problem should seem possible. It makes no difference whether murder is committed—as it has been committed—for a million dollars or for five—in revenge for a nagging word or for bestial cruelty—for a quarrel over a pair of dice or over a pair of dark eyes—to us it seems equally abhorrent, grotesque, and incredible. And so
