Carmen Ariza Part 187

"I have been working for G.o.d," she interrupted. Her voice was low and steady, and her eyes shone with a light that men are not wont to see in those of their neighbors. "I have not been working for men. He alone is my employer. And for Him I am here to-day."

Consternation was plainly discernible in the camp of the prosecution.

Ca.s.s knew now that he need make no more objections. The defense had pa.s.sed from his hands.

At this juncture James Ketchim, brother of the defendant, thinking to relieve the strain and embarra.s.sment, gave audible voice to one of his wonted witticisms. All turned to look at him. But the effect was not what he had antic.i.p.ated. No one laughed.

"Hold your tongue, Mr. Ketchim!" roared the exasperated judge, bending far over his desk. "You are just a smart little fool!" And the elder Ketchim retired in chagrin and confusion.

"Miss Carmen," pursued Ellis, eager to recover his advantage, for he saw significant movements among the jury, "do you not think the unfortunate results at Avon quite prove that you have allied yourself with those who oppose the nation's industrial progress?"

Carmen sat silent. Order had now been restored in the court room, and Ellis was feeling sure of himself again.

"You have opposed the constructive development of our country's resources by your a.s.saults upon men of wealth, like Mr. Ames, for example, have you not?"

Then the girl opened her mouth, and from it came words that fell upon the room like ma.s.ses of lead. "I stand opposed to any man, Mr. Ellis, who, to enrich himself, and for the purpose of revenge, spreads the boll weevil in the cotton fields of the South."

Dull silence descended upon the place. And yet it was a silence that fell cras.h.i.+ng upon Ames's straining ears. He sat for a moment stunned; then sprang to his feet. All eyes were turned upon him. He held out a hand, and made as if to speak; then sank again into his chair.

Ellis stood as if petrified. Then Hood rose and whispered to him.

Ellis collected himself, and turned to the judge.

"Your Honor, we regret to state that, from the replies which Miss Ariza has given, we do not consider her mentally competent as a witness. We therefore dismiss her."

But Ca.s.s had leaped to the floor. "Your Honor!" he cried. "I should like to examine the witness further!"

"She is dismissed!" returned the judge, glowering over his spectacles at the young lawyer.

"I stand on--"

"Sit down!" the judge bellowed.

"Miss Carmen!" called Ca.s.s through the rising tumult, "the lawyer for the prosecution has heaped insults upon you in his low references to your parentage. Will you--"

The judge pounded upon his desk with the remnant of his broken gavel.

Then he summoned the bailiffs.

"I shall order the room cleared!" he called in a loud, threatening voice.

The murmur subsided. The judge sat down and mopped his steaming face.

Hood and Ellis bent in whispered consultation. Ames was a study of wild, infuriated pa.s.sion. Ca.s.s stood defiantly before the bar. Carmen sat quietly facing the crowded room. She had reached up and was fondling the little locket which hung at her throat. It was the first time she had ever worn it. It was not a pretty piece of jewelry; and it had never occurred to her to wear it until that day. Nor would she have thought of it then, had not the Beaubien brought it to the Tombs the night before in a little box with some papers which the girl had called for. Why she had put it on, she could not say.

Slowly, while the silence continued unbroken, the girl drew the slender chain around in front of her and unclasped it.

"I--I never--knew my parents," she murmured musingly, looking down lovingly at the little locket. Then she opened it and sat gazing, rapt and absorbed, at the two little portraits within. "But there are their pictures," she suddenly announced, holding the locket out to Ca.s.s.

It was said afterward that never in the history of legal procedure in New York had that court room held such dead silence as when Ca.s.s stood bending over the faces of the girl's earthly parents, portrayed in the strange little locket which Rosendo had taken from Badillo years before. Never had it known such a tense moment; never had the very air itself seemed so filled with a mighty, unseen presence, as on that day and in that crisal hour.

Without speaking, Hood rose and looked over Ca.s.s's shoulder at the locket. A m.u.f.fled cry escaped him, and he turned and stared at Ames.

The judge bent shaking over his desk.

"Mr. Hood!" he exclaimed. "Have you ever seen those pictures before?"

"Yes, sir," replied Hood in a voice that was scarcely heard.

"Where, sir?"

Hood seemed to have frozen to the spot. His hands shook, and his words gibbered from his trembling lips.

"The--the woman's portrait, sir--is--is--the one in--in Mr. Ames's yacht!"

_"My G.o.d!"_

The piercing cry rang through the still room like a lost soul's despairing wail. Ames had rushed from his seat, overturning his chair, thrusting the lawyers aside, and seized the locket. For a moment he peered wildly into it. It seemed as if his eyes would devour it, absorb it, push themselves clean through it, in their eagerness to grasp its meaning.

Then he looked up. His eyes were red; his face ashen; his lips white.

His unsteady glance met the girl's. His mouth opened, and flapped like a broken shutter in the wind. His arms swung wildly upward; then dropped heavily. Suddenly he bent to one side; caught himself; straightened up; and then, with a horrifying, gurgling moan, crashed to the floor. The noise of the tremendous fall reverberated through the great room like an echo of Satan's plunge into the pit of h.e.l.l.

Pandemonium broke upon the scene. Wild confusion seized the excited spectators. They rushed forward in a ma.s.s, over railings, over chairs and tables, heedless of all but the great mystery that was slowly clearing away in the dim light that winter's morning. Through them the white-haired man, clad in clerical vestments, elbowed his way to the bar.

"Let me see the locket!" he cried. "Let me see it!"

He tore it from Hood's hand and scanned it eagerly. Then he nodded his head. "The same! The very same!" he murmured, trembling with excitement. Then, shouting to the judge above the hubbub:

"Your Honor! I can throw some light upon this case!"

The crowd fell back.

"Who are you?" called the judge in a loud, quavering voice.

"I am Monsignor Lafelle. I have just returned from Europe. The woman's portrait in this little locket is that of Dona Dolores, Infanta, daughter of Queen Isabella the Second, of Spain! And this girl,"

pointing to the bewildered Carmen, who sat clinging to the arms of her chair, "is her child, and is a princess of the royal blood! Her father is the man who lies there--J. Wilton Ames!"

CHAPTER 18

Borne on pulsing electric waves, the news of the great _denouement_ flashed over the city, and across a startled continent. Beneath the seas it sped, and into court and hovel. Madrid gasped; Seville panted; and old Padre Rafael de Rincon raised his h.o.a.ry head and cackled shrilly.

To the seething court room came flying reporters and news gatherers, who threw themselves despairingly against the closed portals. Within, the bailiffs fought with the excited crowd, and held the doors against the panic without.

Over the prostrate form of Ames the physicians worked with feverish energy, but shook their heads.

In the adjoining ante-room, whither she had been half carried, half dragged by Hitt when Ames fell, sat Carmen, clasped in the Beaubien's arms, stunned, bewildered, and speechless. Hitt stood guard at the door; and Miss Wall and Jude tiptoed about with bated breath, unable to take their eyes from the girl.

In the court room without, Haynerd held the little locket, and plied Monsignor Lafelle with his incoherent questions. The excited editor's brain was afire; but of one thing he was well a.s.sured, the Express would bring out an extra that night that would scoop its rivals clean to the bone!

In a few minutes the bailiffs fought the mob back from the doors and admitted a man, a photographer, who had been sent out to procure chemicals in the hope that the portrait of the man in the locket might be cleaned. Ten minutes later the features of J. Wilton Ames stood forth clearly beside those of the wife of his youth. The picture showed him younger in appearance, to be sure, but the likeness was unmistakable.