The House of the Whispering Pines, Anna Katharine Green [ebook reader screen txt] 📗

stop at the stable?"

A pause, during which more than one person present sat breathless. These questions were what might be expected from Mr. Fox in cross-examination. They seemed totally unsuited to a direct examination at the hands of his own counsel. What did such an innovation mean?

"Yes, I stopped at the stable."

"What to do?"

"To look at the horses."

"Why?"

"One of them had gone lame. I wanted to see his condition."

"Was it the grey mare?"

Had the defence changed places with the prosecution? It looked like it; and Arthur looked as if he considered Mr. Moffat guilty of the unheard of, inexplainable act, of cross-examining his own witness. The situation was too tempting for Mr. Fox to resist calling additional attention to it. With an assumption of extreme consideration, he leaned forward and muttered under his breath to his nearest colleague, but still loud enough for those about him to hear:

"The prisoner must know that he is not bound to answer questions when such answers tend to criminate him.".

A lightning glance, shot in his direction, was the eloquent advocate's sole reply.

But Arthur, nettled into speaking, answered the question put him, in a loud, quick tone: "It was not the grey mare; but I went up to the grey mare before going out; I patted her and bade her be a good girl."

"Where was she then?"

"Where she belonged—in her stall."

The tones had sunk; so had the previously lifted head; he no longer commanded universal sympathy or credence. The effect of his former avowals was almost gone.

Yet Mr. Moffat could smile. As I noticed this, and recognised the satisfaction it evinced, my heart went down, in great trouble. This esteemed advocate, the hero of a hundred cases, was not afraid to have it known that Arthur had harnessed that mare; he even wanted it known. Why? There could be but one answer to that—or, so I thought, at the moment. The next, I did not know what to think; for he failed to pursue this subject, and simply asked Arthur if, upon leaving, he had locked the stable-door.

"Yes—no,—I don't remember," was the bungling, and greatly confused reply.

Mr. Moffat glanced at the jury, the smile still on his lips. Did he wish to impress that body with the embarrassment of his client?

"Relate what followed. I am sure the jury will be glad to hear your story from your own lips."

"It's a beastly one, but if I've got to tell it, here it is: I went straight down to Cuthbert Road and across the fields to the club-house. I had not taken the key to the front door, because I knew of a window I could shake loose. I did this and went immediately down to the wine-vault. I used an electric torch of my own for light. I pulled out several bottles, and carried them up into the kitchen, meaning to light the gas, kindle a fire, and have a good time generally. But I soon found that I must do without light if I stayed there. The meter had been taken out; and to drink by the flash of an electric torch was anything but a pleasing prospect. Besides—" here he flashed at his counsel a glance, which for a moment took that gentleman aback—"I had heard certain vague sounds in the house which alarmed me, as well as roused my curiosity. Choosing the bottle I liked best, I went to investigate these sounds."

Mr. Moffat started. His witness was having his revenge. Kept in ignorance of his counsel's plan of defence, he was evidently advancing testimony new to that counsel. I had not thought the lad so subtle, and quaked in secret contemplation of the consequences. So did some others; but the interest was intense. He had heard sounds—he acknowledged it. But what sounds?

Observing the excitement he had caused, and gratified, perhaps, that he had succeeded in driving that faint but unwelcome smile from Mr. Moffat's lips, Arthur hastened to add:

"But I did not complete my investigations. Arrived at the top of the stairs, I heard what drove me from the house at once. It was my sister's voice—Adelaide's. She was in the building, and I stood almost on a level with her, with a bottle in my pocket. It did not take me a minute to clamber through the window. I did not stop to wonder, or ask why she was there, or to whom she was speaking. I just fled and made my way as well as I could across the golf-links to a little hotel on Cuthbert Road, where I had been once before. There I emptied my bottle, and was so overcome by it that I did not return home till noon the next day. It was on the way to the Hill that I was told of the awful occurrence which had taken place in the club-house after I had left it. That sobered me. I have been sober ever since."

Mr. Moffat's smile came back. One might have said that he had been rather pleased than otherwise by the introduction of this unexpected testimony.

But I doubt if any one but myself witnessed this evidence of good-humour on his part. Arthur's attitude and Arthur's manner had drawn all eyes to himself. As the last words I have recorded left his lips, he had raised his head and confronted the jury with a straightforward gaze. The sturdiness and immobility of his aspect were impressive, in spite of his plain features and the still unmistakable signs of long cherished discontent and habitual dissipation. He had struck bottom with his feet, and there he would stand,—or so I thought as I levelled my own glances at him.

But I had not fully sounded all of Alonzo Moffat's resources. That inscrutable lawyer and not-easily-to-be-understood man seemed determined to mar every good impression his unfortunate client managed to make.

Ignoring the new facts just given, undoubtedly thinking that they would be amply sifted in the coming cross-examination, he drew the attention of the prisoner to himself by the following question:

"Will you tell us again how many bottles of wine you took from the club-house?"

"One. No—I'm not sure about that—I'm not sure of anything. I had only one when at the inn in Cuthbert Road."

"You remember but one?"

"I had but one. One was enough. I had trouble in carrying that."

"Was the ground slippery?"

"It was snowy and it was uneven. I stumbled more than once in crossing the links."

"Mr. Cumberland, is there anything you would like to say in your own defence before I close this examination?"

The prisoner thus appealed to, let his eye rest for a moment on the judge, then on the jury, and finally on one little white face lifted from the crowd before him as if to meet and absorb his look. Then he straightened himself, and in a quiet and perfectly natural voice, uttered these simple words:

"Nothing but this: I am innocent."

XXVI THE SYLLABLE OF DOOM

I alit
On a great ship lightning-split,
And speeded hither on the sigh
Of one who gave an enemy
His plank, then plunged aside to die.

Prometheus Unbound.

Recess followed. Clifton and I had the opportunity of exchanging a few words. He was voluble; I was reticent. I felt obliged to hide from him the true cause of the deep agitation under which I was labouring. Attached as he was to me, keenly as he must have felt my anomalous position, he was too full of Moffat's unwarrantable introduction of testimony damaging to his client, to think or talk of anything else.

"He has laid him open to attack on every side. Fox has but to follow his lead, and the thing is done. Poor Arthur may be guilty, but he certainly should have every chance a careful lawyer could give him. You can see—he makes it very evident—that he has no further use for Moffat. I wonder under whose advice he chose him for his counsel. I have never thought much of Moffat, myself. He wins his cases but—"

"He will win this," I muttered.

Clifton started; looked at me very closely for a minute, paled a little—I fear that I was very pale myself—but did not ask the question rising to his lips.

"There is method in the madness of a man like that," I pursued with a gloom I could not entirely conceal. "He has come upon some evidence which he has not even communicated to his client. At least, I fear so. We must be prepared for any untoward event." Then, noticing Clifton's alarm and wishing to confine it within safe bounds, I added: "I feel that I am almost as much on trial as Arthur himself. Naturally I am anxious at the appearance of anything I do not understand."

Clifton frowned. We were quite alone. Leaning forward, he touched my arm.

"Elwood," said he, "you've not been quite open with me."

I smiled. If half the bitterness and sorrow in my heart went into that smile, it must have been a sad and bitter one indeed.

"You have a right to reproach me," said I, "but not wholly. I did not deceive you in essentials. You may still believe me as guiltless of Adelaide's violent death as a man can be who drove her and hers into misery which death alone could end."

"I will believe it," he muttered, "I must." And he dropped the subject, as he made me see, forever.

I drew a deep breath of relief. I had come very near to revealing my secret.

When we returned to the court-room, we found it already packed with a very subdued and breathless crowd. It differed somewhat from the one which had faced us in the morning; but Ella and her parents were there and many others of the acknowledged friends of the accused and of his family.

He, himself, wore the heavy and dogged air which became him least. Physically refreshed, he carried himself boldly, but it was a boldness which convinced me that any talk he may have had with his lawyer, had been no more productive of comfort than the one I had held with mine.

As he took the witness chair, and prepared to meet the cross-examination of the district attorney, a solemn hush settled upon the room. Would the coming ordeal rob his brow of its present effrontery, or would he continue to bear himself with the same surly dignity, which, misunderstood as it was, produced its own effect, and at certain moments seemed to shake even the confidence of Mr. Fox, settled as he seemed to be in his belief in the integrity of his cause and the rights of the prosecution.

Shaken or not, his attack was stern, swift, and to the point.

"Was the visit you made to the wine-vault on the evening of the second of
December, the first one you had ever paid there?"

"No; I had been there once before. But I always paid for my depredations," he added, proudly.

"The categorical answer, Mr. Cumberland. Anything else is superfluous."

Arthur's lip curled, but only for an instant; and nothing could have exceeded the impassiveness of his manner as Mr. Fox went on.

"Then you knew the way?"

"Perfectly."

"And the lock?"

"Sufficiently well to open it without difficulty."

"How long do you think you were in entering the house and procuring these bottles?"

"I cannot say. I have no means of knowing; I never thought of looking at my watch."

"Not when you started? Not when you left Cuthbert Road?"

"No, sir."

"But you know when you left the club-house to go back?"

"Only by this—it had not yet begun to snow. I'm told that the first flakes fell that night at ten minutes to eleven. I was on the golf-links when this happened. You can fix the time yourself. Pardon me," he added, with decided ill-grace as he met Mr. Fox's frown. "I forgot your injunction."

Mr. Fox smiled an acrid smile, as he asked: "Whereabouts on the golf-links? They extend for some distance, you remember."

"They are six hundred yards across from first tee to the third hole, which is the nearest one to Cuthbert Road," Arthur particularised. "I was—no, I can't tell you just where I was at that moment. It was a good ways from the house. The snow came on very fiercely. For a little while I could not see my way."

"How, not see your way?"

"The snow flew into my eyes."

"Crossing the links?"

"Yes, sir, crossing the links."

"But the storm came from the west.