WHEN a murderer — for I named myself — is called to confront across some feet of court-room the innocent man standing trial in his stead, he needs all his nerve and a bit more to keep steady under the questioning of even a friendly and considerate counsel.
In fact, I was strangely more afraid of Mark than of District Attorney Clemens. I might, however, have spared myself there.
The impaneling of the Jury had been a battle-royal between Mark and Clemens, at which I was not present, but which had roused the newspaper men to gloating anticipation (the real battle to follow).
Then Mark became ill — dropped out!
I could hardly believe it when Orlow, his junior associate, met me on the first day of the trial, and broke the news. A brain tumor caused by the injury.
Had it not been for Mark, I told myself, I would never have let Nils Berquist go to trial. Should I allow it to go on now, with our best hope hors de combat?
The second Mark, Helidore’s brother, was in Europe, and Orlow, while brilliant in his fashion, was not a man to impress juries. His genius lay in the hunting out of technical refinements of law, ‘ammunition,’ as it were, for the batteries which had brought rage to the heart of more than one district attorney.
When he arose presently in court and asked for a delay in proceedings, Clemens’ eye lighted. When Mr. Justice Ballington refused the request — a foregone conclusion, because Mark, admittedly, was in too serious a condition for the delay even to be measured — Clemens lowered his head suddenly. It might have been grief for his adversaries’ misfortune — or, again, it might not.
Where I sat with other witnesses, I was intensely conscious of an absurd, brilliantly veiled little figure, two chairs behind me.
This was my first glimpse of Alicia, since the night of Berquist’s arrest. Though I knew Mark had been granted at least two interviews with her, me she had resolutely refused to receive.
Now I was relieved to find that her nearness brought no return of the supernormal influence I had suffered before in her vicinity.
She sat stiffly upright, and did not glance once in my direction. Perhaps her ‘guides’ had advised her to don that awful veil of protecting purple for this occasion, or she may have worn it as a tribute to her husband’s memory. It certainly gave her a more unusual appearance than would a crape blackness behind which a newly made widow is wont to hide her grief.
At her side towered the large form of Sabina Cassel.
The trial opened.
One Dr. Frick appeared on the stand, and in elaborate incomprehensibility described in surgical terms the wound which had caused Moore’s death. I saw him handling a small, hideous object — gesturing with it to show exactly how it had been misused to a deadly purpose.
Then for several minutes I didn’t see anything more. Luckily all eyes in the courtroom were on either the doctor or the “murderer.” Nobody was watching me.
The doctor’s demonstration seemed to prove rather conclusively that my “accident” hypothesis was impossible. The file, he showed, could have been driven into the brain only by a direct blow.
Dr. Frick was allowed to stand down.
In establishing the offense, Clemens saw fit to call Alicia herself.
As her mistress arose, Sabina’s massive bulk stirred uneasily, as if she would have followed her to the stand.
At the inquest, the old colored woman’s testimony had done more than cause Nils’ indictment for murder. It had made a public and very popular jest of Alicia’s claim to intercourse with “spirits.” But though, in the first flush of excitement over Moore’s death, Sabina had betrayed her, the woman was loyal to her mistress. When a murmur that was almost a titter swept the packed audience outside the rail. Sabina shook her head angrily, muttering to herself.
The audience hoped much of Alicia, and its keen humor was not entirely disappointed. No sooner had she appeared than an argument began about her preposterously brilliant veil. The court insisted that it should be raised. Alicia firmly declined to oblige. She had to give in finally, of course, and when that peaked, white face with its strange eyes was exposed, the hydra beyond the rail doubtless felt further rewarded.
The hydra believed her a fraud. They had reason. I, with greater reason, understood and pitied her!
I thought she might break down on the stand. Alicia’s character, however, was a complicated affair that set her outside the common run of behavior. To Clemens’ questions she replied with sphinx-like impassivity and the precision of a machine.
Her answers only confirmed Nils’ story and mine to a certain point, and stopped there. There was not a word of “sprits” nor “guides;” not a hint of any influence more evil than common human passions; not a suggestion, even that she had formed an opinion as to which man, slayer or slain, was the first aggressor. I am sure that a more reserved and non-committal widow than Alicia never took the stand at the trial of her husband’s supposed murderer.
“James,” she said, “wished Mr. Barbour to remain. Mr. Berquist wished him to leave. They argued. No, I should not have called the argument a quarrel — I did not see Mr. Berquist strike James. While they were talking I lost consciousness of material surroundings. Yes, my loss of consciousness could be called a faint. The argument was not violent enough to frighten me into fainting. Yes, there was a reason for my losing consciousness. I lost consciousness because I felt faint, I was tired. I do that sometimes. Yes, I warned them that something bad was coming. I couldn’t say why. I just had that impression. I did not see either James or Mr. Berquist assume a threatening attitude-”
Released at last, she readjusted her purple screen with cold self-possession, and returned to her seat.
It was Sabina Cassel’s next turn. Save in appearance, Alicia had not after all come up to public anticipations. In Sabina, however, the hydra was sure of a real treat in store.
Judge Ballington rapped for order. Sabina took her oath with a scowl. Every line of her face expressed resentment.
But she was intelligent. To Clemens’ questions, she gave grim, bald replies that offered as little grip as possible to public imagination.
Yes, on the evening in question she had been standing concealed behind the black curtains of “Miss ‘Licia’s” cabinet, or “box,” as Sabina called it. No, “Marse James” did not know she was there. Miss ‘Licia and she had “fixed it up” so that one could enter the box from the back. Marse James had the box built with a solid wooden back, like a wardrobe. It stayed that way — for a while.
“Then Marse James he done got onsatisfied. Yas, de sperits did wuhk in de box an’ come out ob it, too; but Marse James, he ain’t suited yit. He want dem ‘sperits shud wuhk all de time! He neber gib mab poh chile no res’!”
And so Alicia, who, according to Sabina, could sometimes but not always command her “sperits,” devised a means to satiate Moore’s scientific craving for results.
While he was absent in another city, the two conspirators brought in a carpenter. They had the cabinet removed and a doorway cut through the plastered wall into a large closet in the next room. By taking off the cabinet’s solid back and hanging it on again, it would just open neatly into the aperture cut to fit it. Alicia kept plenty of gowns hung over the opening in the closet beyond.
Returning, Moore found his solid-backed cabinet apparently as before. From that time, however, the “sperits” were more willing to oblige than formerly.
“Ab uno disce omnes,“ is invariably applied to the medium or clairvoyant caught in fraud, though translated: “From all fraud, infer all deceit.”
The world laughed over the “spiritualistic fake again exposed!” I did not laugh.
Let it be that the hand which Roberta and I had seen was Sabina’s gnarled black paw, and that my impression of its unsubstantiality was a self-delusion. Let those strange little twirling flames that had arisen pass as the peculiar “fireworks” I had tried to believe them. Let even the incident of the broken lamp have been a feat of Sabina’s — though how her large, clumsy figure could have stolen out past the table and into the room unheard was a puzzle — and the masculine voice wonderful ventriloquism.
Grant all these as deceptions. There had come that to me through Alicia’s unwilling agency which had given me a terrible faith in her, that no proof of occasional fraud could dispel.
Clemens’ interrogations touched lightly on the object of the door in the cabinet’s supposedly solid back, only serving to establish the fact that it was possible for his witness to have been practically in the library unknown to all the room’s other occupants save, probably, Alicia.
Then he asked Sabina’s story of that night in her own words. She began it grimly:
“Waal, Ah wuz in behin’ de cuhtins dat hangs in front ob Miss ‘Licia’s box. Dem cuhtins is moderate thin. Ah cudn’ see all dey is in de room, but Ah suttinly cud see all dat pass in front ob de lamp. Yass, dat whut yoh got in yoh hand am one a dem cuhtins.”
Here Clemens checked her, while the “cuhtin,” was passed from hand to through the jury-box. Each juryman momentarily draped himself in mourning while he assured himself ............