Then he smiled again, grimly as before, with an air of personal satisfaction.
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 enclosure 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 courtroom 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
