“Curse him,” he muttered. “There he is. He disgraced my perle, my daughter Marie, but she wrote me where to find him and I did; I found him in the park and I shot him there, through the head, through the h-head,” he stammered and clutched at his heart.
From his hand the picture had slipped. Orr edged closer, stooped for it, recovered it, then in heightening wonder stared. The picture was a colored photograph that displayed the chiseled features, wonderful eyes and thin black mustache of one whom he had known. Above it was written “Marie’s Husband.”
“It is Loftus,” he exclaimed.
Peacock wheeled. “Loftus,” he cried. Instantly to question further, he turned to the juror again.
But even as he turned he saw that the trial was over. Spasmodically the man’s mouth had twitched, his head had fallen; before a higher court he had gone.
Peacock, the marvel of it upon him, turned anew to Orr. Foes while the battle was raging, the two men now were like the commandants of opposing forces who, the conflict ended, meet and embrace.
Peacock rubbed his eyes. “What this confession means, Orr, you as well as I appreciate.” Instinctively his voice had sunk into that undertone which Death, when it comes, exacts. “Yes,” he continued, “Annandale is not merely acquitted, he is cleared. For that, believe me, I am glad. As for Loftus, he got from that dead father only what he deserved.”
To this Orr, about whom the marvel of it all still also clung, assented. “Justice,” he replied, “is rarely human, but sometimes it is divine.”
He would have said more perhaps, but Annandale was approaching. Obviously the latter was as yet wholly unaware of this new climax to his case. He was looking doubtfully around.
“I can’t find my hat,” he announced. Then at once, detecting the unusual in the attitude of those that stood about, his eyes followed theirs to the box from which court officers, long trained to the lugubrious, swiftly and silently were removing the corpse.
A keeper appeared. In his hand was the hat. Annandale took it, his eyes still following the body that was being removed.
“There,” said Orr abruptly, “there is the man that killed Loftus. But come,” he added. “Sylvia is waiting. Goodbye, Peacock. We have both had a lesson in presumptive proof.”
Astonishment lifted Annandale visibly like a flash. “What!” he exclaimed. “What! What’s all this?”
Then Orr, a hand on his arm, led him away, and as they passed from the General Sessions, told him what had occurred.
X
The Verdict
In the days of the Doges there was a Gold Book in which the First Families of Venice shone. In New York there is also a Gold Book, unprinted but otherwise familiar. The names that appear there have earned the cataloguing not from medieval prowess, but from money’s more modish might.
At the Metropolitan Opera House, two years and a fraction after the trial, the Gold Bookers were on view—men who could have married the Adriatic, dowered her too, whose signatures were potenter than kings. There also were women fairer than the young empresses of old Rome, maidens in thousand-dollar frocks, matrons coroneted and tiaraed. On the grand tier they sat, a family-party air about them, nodding to each other, exhaling orris, talking animatedly about nothing at all. Into their boxes young men strolled, lolled awhile, sauntered away.
In one of these boxes was Sylvia, looking like an angel, only, of course, much better dressed. Behind her was Annandale. They were quite an old couple. They had been married fully a year. In the box with them was Orr.
On the stage a festival was in progress, a festival for ear and eye, the apogee of Italian art, a production of Aïda. A quarter of a century and more ago when that opera was first given in Cairo, there was an accompanying splendor more lavish than it, or any other opera, has had since. But it was difficult to fancy that even then there was a better cast. Before the tenor had completed the opening romanza he had enthralled the house. Good-looking, as tenors should be, stout as tenors are, he suggested Mario resurrected and returned.
“Celeste Aïda!” he sang, and it was celestial. Then at once Amneris, enacted by a debutante, appeared and the house was treated to what it had not had since Scalchi was in her prime, a voice with a conservatory in the upper register, a cavern in the lower and, strewn between, rich loops of light, of opals, flowers, kisses and stars.
Princess she was and looked, yet, despite the glory of her raiment, rather a princess in a drawing-room than the daughter of a Pharaoh in a Memphian crypt. She seemed pleased, sure of her charm, and she pleased and charmed at sight. The house, the most apathetic—save Covent Garden—in the world, and, musically, the most ignorant as well, rose to her.
Sylvia turned to Orr. In his gloved hand was a program. “What a dear!” she murmured. “Who is she?”
Orr, before answering, looked at Annandale. The latter’s eyes were on the roof. He may have been drinking the song, unconscious of the singer. But it is more probable that his thoughts were elsewhere, though hardly in the Tombs, where, during his relatively brief sojourn, he had lived at the relatively reasonable rate of a hundred dollars a day.
“A debutante,” Orr answered. “She is billed as Dellarandi.”
The curtain fell. The box was invaded. Men indebted to Mrs. Annandale for dinner, or who hoped to be, dropped in. Orr got up and went out.
The second act began. There was an alternating chorus. During it Amneris sat mirroring her beauty in a glass. Presently her voice mounted, mounting as mounts a bird and higher. She was joining in the incomparable duo that ensues. It passed. A march, blown from Egyptian trumpets, followed, preluding the dance of priestesses which precedes the tenor’s return. As that
