The Perfume of Eros: A Fifth Avenue Incident Part 25

Meanwhile the court-room s.h.i.+mmered 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. Peac.o.c.k 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 refres.h.i.+ng. 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 a.s.sured, from an a.r.s.enal of books before him he pulled weapons wherewith not merely to renew the fight but to win.

In the course of one objection he was commanded by the Bench to sit down. He protested. The Recorder declined to listen to him further, reiterating the order that he be seated. Then with the air and manner of a little boy sent for misbehavior from the room, Orr half turned, hesitated, turned back, and through the exercise of guile unique and his own, succeeded in re-engaging the Court in conversation, protesting his respect, denying his contumacy and presently he was continuing the very objection because of which he had been told to sit down. He did sit down, but long after, when he was ready, when he had succeeded in having his say and his way. Then when at last he did sit down it was with an air of mastery that would have become Napoleon at Marengo. At the moment he was not a lawyer merely, he was an actor, quasi-Shakespearian, a compound of irony and good humor, Falstaff and Mercutio in one.

All this, however, was, to vary the metaphor, but the preliminary canter. That Loftus had been killed was shown and admitted. But it had not been shown nor was it admitted that the defendant was the man.

This defect a star witness was to repair. The star was Harris.

Yet, though a star, he looked ghastly. Whether ill or not, he was at least ill at ease. The smug, household-servant air had gone. He seemed to have come from turmoils in Tatterdemalia. He was bruised, dirty, unshorn. But the story which he had brought to the _Chronicle_ he repeated, with embellishments at that. After retailing the tale, precising the motive and elaborating on it, he declared that the love of the defendant's wife for Loftus was common talk--evidence which, though hearsay, Orr indifferently let pa.s.s.

Then, after identifying a pistol as the property of Annandale--an exhibit marked A which Peac.o.c.k had already tried but, held up by Orr, had not wholly succeeded in fitting to the crime--Harris swore that on the night of the murder, at five minutes after twelve, in the room which he occupied at the top of Annandale's house and which overlooked Gramercy Park, he heard a shot; that going to the window he looked out, that he could distinguish nothing, but that going then to the hall he heard someone coming in the house and looking down saw the defendant enter.

"Ha!" said Orr, taking him in hand, or rather, by the throat. For he made no attempt at ordinary amenities. He questioned him ferociously, with an air of personal hatred, with an air of saying, "d.a.m.n you, I have got it in for you now."

"What is your name?" he asked.

"Richard Harris, sir."

Orr pounded on the table in front of him. "Your name! Your name! I want your name, not something that you have made up like the rest of your rubbish. How many times have you been in jail? You were once employed in Hill street, Berkeley Square, by the d.u.c.h.ess of Kincardine. When you absconded from there, where was it that the police caught you? Answer me."

From behind the rail objections exploded like sh.e.l.l. But through the running fire of them Orr held his own, sandbagging the man with one charge after another, charge of theft, charge of forgery, but particularly of boasting the week before, in a Sixth avenue saloon where grooms and footmen congregate, that he could testify to anything that he was paid for.

From ghastly Harris turned vermilion. The flush retreating left him livid. Had the fluted columns with their fabulous beasts fallen on him he could not have been more limp. At one question he swayed like an animal hit on the head. At another he hissed like a snake. There were times when he tried to hide from view. It was a curious example of the biter bit.

"That's all," said Orr with tigerish cheerfulness at last.

He had done him. He had given him the medicine. He had more in reserve. Peac.o.c.k meanwhile had once jumped at Orr, his fist raised.

Once he gave him the lie direct. Once he accused him of suborning. But Orr in sandbagging the witness with one hand, had another free for the prosecution. He was gluttonish, giving as good as was sent, very often better.

The Recorder, dismayed at the slugging, protested. "A human being is on trial for his life. I cannot try a case where only counsel are heard."

Immediately Orr supplied him with a diversion. One after another witness for the defense scaled the stand, sleuths from over seas, experts and servants.

In his corner before them Orr prowled. At the witnesses for the prosecution he had roared, sometimes he had bounded at the Bar, sometimes when a move of his succeeded he raised his right hand and looked at it as though surprised that it was not blood red. But now with his own witnesses he was serene, entirely calm, refres.h.i.+ngly civil.

That civility awoke in Peac.o.c.k the hyena. The first witness Orr produced, a man who, as it afterward appeared, had had a rough and tumble with Harris that morning in the corridor, he partly devoured.

What was left of him he sent to the Tombs. As fast as witnesses could be produced he ate them up. It was terrific. You could not help feeling that there are safer places than the witness stand in a murder trial, that you ran the risk of being killed yourself, talked to death if nothing worse.

"Don't go at him like a common scold," Orr engagingly pleaded at one stage of the game. "Why browbeat and bully a witness as you do?" he expostulated at another. "That's all, my friend," he said to one witness, "and let me apologize for the District Attorney's remarks."

From his tone and manner never in the world would you have thought him the man who, but a little before, had so thoroughly sandbagged Harris.

Meanwhile questions coa.r.s.e as oaths, answers frank as sword thrusts, clashed and resounded. One and all Orr's charges were substantiated.

The testimony was d.a.m.ning to Harris, infecting everything he had said.

From behind the rail Peac.o.c.k volleyed and thundered. But truth when you get at it is a stubborn thing. So far as Harris was concerned there it stood and there too, during the production of it, Orr stood, quite like an Angora lapping milk. You could hear him purr. The eyes of Sylvia glistened like mica. Now and again Annandale laughed outright.

It is always insufficient to be innocent of a given charge. You must appear so. Annandale did not. Alternately he was bored and buoyant.

But not dejected, never depressed. He did not seem to feel that his life was at stake. That is the att.i.tude of the habitual ruffian. But sentiment was veering. Public opinion is a wave that thinks, thinks again, changes its mind, volatile as a woman. At the opening everybody knew that Annandale was guilty. Now n.o.body was quite so sure.

The Recorder caressed his beard. "I think," he announced, "that I will give the jury a recess."

CHAPTER IX

THE TWELFTH JUROR

Tumultuously the session was resumed. At the door was a riot. There a squad of police fought back surging nondescripts clamoring for admission, fighting for entrance to the continuous show. A woman fainted. Another had her gown torn off. One man retired with a blackened eye.

During the recess Orr got for a moment with Sylvia and Mrs. Waldron.

"Aren't you hungry?" he asked.

Sylvia took his hand and pressed it. In her eyes was victory, in her face delight. "I never knew before how Protean you are. You have won."

Orr tossed his head. "Not by a long shot. Besides, there is the jury.

Eleven look imbecile and the twelfth looks ill. There is no telling at all what they will do or will not. But aren't you to eat anything?" He turned to Mrs. Waldron. "Aren't you hungry?"

"Very," said the lady, "but I can't do a thing with Sylvia. I----"

She would have said more, but the jury had filed in. The judge was entering, preceded by the cry "Hats off!"

Orr slipped back to his corner, to which Annandale, with his matinee air and the keeper for usher, had already returned. For a moment Orr bent to him, then to his a.s.sociates but briefly. Bending again to Annandale he told him to take the stand.

The move, wholly unexpected, unusual, almost exceptional in murder cases, created an impression that was excellent, a sense of admiration for the fearlessness of the defense. From the prosecution came low growls of content. They were to be fed at last. In antic.i.p.ation they licked their chops.

But the excellence of the impression dwindled. In the direct, Annandale denied, of course, that he had committed the murder, denied that he had ever contemplated it, swearing that to the best of his recollection he had made no threat at all.

"To the best of your recollection," Orr repeated after him. "Now please tell me, had anything occurred that night to impair your memory in any way?"

"Well--er--yes. Yes. I had been drinking."

"Had you any animosity toward the deceased?"

"Toward Loftus? None whatever. On the contrary, he was my best friend."

Peac.o.c.k jumped. "I ask that that be stricken out."

Quietly Orr continued: "Had you known Loftus long?"

"All my life."

"Was he a friend of yours?"

"An intimate friend."

Orr turned to Peac.o.c.k. "Your witness."

Peac.o.c.k jumped again. "You say that on the night of the murder you had been drinking. Were you drunk?"