“Is there an officer at that door?” Judge Carver’s voice was harsh with anger. “Officer, take that door. No one out of it or in it until the verdict has been delivered.”
Despairing eyes exchanged frantic glances. Well, but what about the last edition? They’re holding the presses until seven. What about the last edition? Hurry, hurry!
But the ambassador of the majestic law was quite unhurried. “I have a few words to say to the occupants of this courtroom. If at the conclusion of the verdict there is a demonstration of any kind whatsoever, the offenders will be brought before me and promptly dealt with as being in contempt of court. Officers, hold the doors.”
And through another door—the little one behind the seat of justice—twelve tired men were filing, gaunt, solemn eyed, awkward—the farmers, merchants, and salesmen who held in their awkward hands the terrible power of life and death. The redheaded girl clutched the solid, tweed-covered arm beside her as though she were drowning.
There they stood in a neat semicircle under the merciless glare of the lights, their upturned faces white and spent.
“Gentlemen of the jury, have you agreed on a verdict?”
A deep-voiced chorus answered solemnly, “We have.”
“Prisoner, look upon the jury. Jury, look upon the prisoners.”
Unflinching and inscrutable, the white faces obeyed the grave voice.
“Foreman, how do you find as to Stephen Bellamy, guilty or not guilty?”
“Not guilty.”
A tremor went through the court and was stilled.
“How do you find as to Susan Ives?”
“Not guilty.”
For a moment no one moved, no one stirred, no one breathed. And then, abruptly, the members of the fourth estate forgot the majesty of law and remembered the majesty of the press. Three minutes to seven—three minutes to make the last edition! The mad rush for the doors was stoutly halted by the zealous guardians, who clung devoutly to their posts, and the air was rent with stentorian shouts: “Sit down there!” “Keep quiet!” “Order! Order!” “Take your hands off of me!”—and the thunder of Judge Carver’s gavel.
And caught once more between the thunder of the press and the law, two stood oblivious of it. Stephen Bellamy’s haunted face was turned steadfastly toward the little door beyond which lay freedom, but Susan Ives had turned away from it. Her eyes were on a black head bent low in the corner by the window, and at the look in them, so fearless, so valiant, and so eager, the redheaded girl found suddenly that she was weeping, shamelessly and desperately, into something that smelt of tweed—and tobacco—and heaven. … The clock over the door said seven. The Bellamy trial was over.
The judge came into the little room that served him as office in the courthouse with a step lighter than had crossed its threshold for many days. It was a good room; the dark panelling went straight up to the ceiling; there were two wide windows and two deep chairs and a great shining desk piled high with books and papers. Against the walls rose row upon row of warm, pleasant-coloured books, and over the door hung a great engraving of Justice in her flowing robes of white, smiling gravely down at the bandage in her hands that man has seen fit to place over her eyes. Across the room from her, between the two windows, his robes flowing black, sat John Marshall, that great gentleman, his dark eyes eternally fixed on hers, as though they shared some secret understanding.
Judge Carver looked from one to the other a little anxiously as he came in, and they smiled back at him reassuringly. For thirty years the three of them had been old friends.
He crossed to the desk with a suddenly quickened step. The lamps were lighted, and reflected in its top as in a mirror he could see the short, stubby, nut-coloured pipe, the huge brass bowl into which a giant might have spilled his ashes, the capacious box of matches yawning agreeably in his tired face. The black robes were heavy on his shoulders, and he lifted an impatient hand to them, when he paused, arrested by the sight of the central stack of papers.
“Gentlemen of the jury, the long and anxious inquiry in which we have been engaged—”
Now just what was it that he’d said to them about a principal and an accessory before the fact being one and the same in a murder case? Of course, as a practical matter, that was quite accurate. Still—He ran through the papers with skilled fingers—there! “An accessory after the fact is one who—”
There was a knock on the door and he lifted an irritated voice: “Come in!”
The door opened cautiously, and under the smiling Justice in her flowing robes a little boy was standing, freckle-faced, blue-eyed, black-haired, in the rusty green of the messenger’s uniform. Behind him the judge could see the worried face of old Martin, the clerk of the court.
“I couldn’t do anything with him at all, Your Honour. I told him you were busy, and I told him you were engaged, and I told him you’d given positive orders not to be disturbed, and all he’d say was, ‘I swore I’d give it into his hands, and into his hands it goes, if I stay in this place until the moon goes down and the sun comes up.’ ”
“And that’s what I promised,” said the small creature at the door in a squeak of terrified obstinacy. “And that’s what I’ll do. No matter what—”
“All right, all right, put it down there and be off.” The judge’s voice was not too long-suffering.
“Into his hands is what I said, and into his hands—”
The judge stretched out one fine lean hand with a smile that warmed his cold face like a fire. The other hand went to his pocket. “Here, if you keep on being an honourable nuisance, you may have a career ahead of you. Good night, Martin; show the young gentleman to the
