“To the layman, at least, it would seem to be a queer sort of piracy to commit suicide in one’s cabin, or perform an illegal operation on the captain’s daughter!”
“Well, you see the difficulties. Consequently we always prefer to make use of it simply as a makeweight with another more serious charge. Captain Kidd, for instance, was not, strictly speaking, hanged for piracy. The first count in his indictment, on which he was condemned, sets forth that he feloniously, intentionally, and with malice aforethought hit his own gunner on the head with a wooden bucket value eightpence. That is something definite. What we need is something definite. We have not got it. Take the second case, the piracy of the Dutch steamer. We are in the same difficulty there: a man is taken on board the schooner, he disappears. What happened? We can only surmise.”
“Isn’t there such a thing as turning King’s Evidence?”
“Another most unsatisfactory proceeding, to which I should be loath to have recourse. No, the natural and proper witnesses are the children. There is a kind of beauty in making them, who have suffered so much at these men’s hands, the instruments of justice upon them.”
Mathias paused, and looked at Thornton narrowly.
“You haven’t been able, in all these weeks, to get the smallest hint from them with regard to the death of Captain Vandervoort either?”
“None.”
“Well, is it your impression that they do truly know nothing, or that they have been terrorised into hiding something?”
Thornton gave a gentle sigh, almost of relief.
“No,” he said, “I don’t think they have been terrorised. But I do think they may know something they won’t tell.”
“But why?”
“Because, during the time they were on the schooner, it is plain they got very fond of this man Jonsen, and of his lieutenant, the man called Otto.”
Mathias was incredulous.
“Is it possible for children to be mistaken in a man’s whole nature like that?”
The look of irony on Thornton’s face attained an intensity that was almost diabolical.
“I think it is possible,” he said, “even for children to make such a mistake.”
“But this … affection: it is highly improbable.”
“It is a fact.”
Mathias shrugged. After all, a criminal lawyer is not concerned with facts. He is concerned with probabilities. It is the novelist who is concerned with facts, whose job it is to say what a particular man did do on a particular occasion: the lawyer does not, cannot be expected to go further than to show what the ordinary man would be most likely to do under presumed circumstances.
Mathias, as he conned these paradoxes, smiled to himself a little grimly. It would never do to give utterance to them.
“I think if they know anything I shall be able to find it out,” was all he said.
“D’you mean to put them in the box?” Thornton asked suddenly.
“Not all of them, certainly: Heaven forbid! But we shall have to produce one of them at least, I am afraid.”
“Which?”
“Well. We had intended it to be the Fernandez girl. But she seems … unsatisfactory?”
“Exactly.” Then Thornton added, with a characteristic forward jerk: “She was sane enough when she left Jamaica.—Though always a bit of a fool.”
“Her aunt tells me that she seems to have lost her memory: or a great part of it. No, if I call her it will simply be to exhibit her condition.”
“Then?”
“I think I shall call your Emily.”
Thornton stood up.
“Well,” he said, “you’ll have to settle with her yourself what she’s to say. Write it out, and make her learn it by heart.”
“Certainly,” said Mathias, looking at his fingernails. “I am not in the habit of going into court unprepared.—It’s bad enough having a child in the box anyway,” he went on.
Thornton paused at the door.
“—You can never count on them. They say what they think you want them to say. And then they say what they think the opposing counsel wants them to say too—if they like his face.”
Thornton gesticulated—a foreign habit.
“I think I will take her to Madame Tussaud’s on Thursday afternoon and try my luck,” ended Mathias: and the two bade each other goodbye.
VI
Emily enjoyed the waxworks; even though she did not know that a waxwork of Captain Jonsen, his scowling face bloody and a knife in his hand, was already in contemplation. She got on well with Mr. Mathias. She felt very grown-up, going out at last without the little ones endlessly tagging. Afterwards he took her to a bun-shop in Baker Street, and tried to persuade her to pour out his tea for him: but she turned shy at that, and he had in the end to do it for himself.
Mr. Mathias, like Miss Dawson, spent a good deal of his time and energy in courting the child’s liking. He was at least sufficiently successful for it to come as a complete surprise to her when presently he began to throw out questions about the death of Captain Vandervoort. Their studied casualness did not deceive her for a moment. He learnt nothing: but she was hardly home, and his carriage departed, than she was violently sick. Presumably she had eaten too many cream buns. But, as she lay in bed sipping from a tumbler of water in that mood of fatalism which follows on the heels of vomiting, Emily had a lot to think over, as well as an opportunity of doing so without emotion.
Her father was spending a rare evening at home: and now he stood unseen in the shadows of her bedroom, watching her. To his fantastic mind, the little chit seemed the stage of a great tragedy: and while his bowels of compassion yearned towards the child of his loins, his intellect
