The Perfume of Eros: A Fifth Avenue Incident Part 27

He has adduced nothing to show that he was not robbed. The caretaker has testified that he was away from the park ten or fifteen minutes.

The policeman who returned with him has testified that when he got there the gate was open. In the interim anyone may have entered, gone through the suicide, bagged his pistol for further booty and away.

"No, the District Attorney has not excluded these hypotheses, he has confined himself to picturing this defendant as a husband jealous of the deceased. But a.s.suming that he was, how many other husbands may not have been jealous of him also? The bullet in evidence, the bullet extracted from the brain of the deceased, is one which, from a calculation of its lands and grooves, may or may not have come from a thirty-two calibre pistol. Anyway a thirty-two calibre pistol is among the exhibits. But how many more such pistols are there in this great city? The owners.h.i.+p of one is not a proof of crime. Nor is the fact that the body of the deceased was found in front of this defendant's residence proof either. On the contrary. The park wherein it lay is a parallelogram, and a body in it would be practically in front of every other house in the square. How many jealous husbands reside in these houses I am not competent to say, but I am competent to tell you that the prosecution might just as well have arraigned any other resident there as this defendant; yes, and better, were it not for Harris."

Orr paused. "Reptile," he cried. "Knave, fraud, thief, liar----"

But the Court admonished him that his time was up. Without a murmur, in the middle of a sentence, he sat down. It was another point that he had scored.

"Gentlemen----"

The Recorder's charge to the jury followed, a charge clear, undeclamatory, without literature or bias, in which they were instructed regarding the law and left to determine the facts.

The jury filed out. The Recorder evaporated. Annandale sauntered away.

Into adjacent corridors the great room emptied itself.

Orr, stationing a.s.sociates on guard, went over to Sylvia, urging her to go.

But Sylvia refused at first to budge. The jury, she declared, would be back in five minutes.

"It may be five hours," said Orr. "You had far better go home. No?

Well then I will take you to my offices and have something brought in."

"Is it far?" Sylvia warily asked. But presently she a.s.sented, stipulating however that Annandale should be brought there the moment he was freed.

Orr tossed his head. "That may not be for years, until after an appeal. I have not an idea what the jury will do. But I know one thing: the last of the lot, the twelfth, looked at me during my summing up with something that was a cross between a sneer and a scowl."

"Yes," Mrs. Waldron interjected, "I noticed him. But it seemed to me that he was not listening. It seemed to me that he was in pain. But do, Sylvia, let us go. It is cruel of you. I am starving."

In Orr's neighborly offices shortly the lady was fed. Sylvia too ate something. Orr himself would have bolted a bite, but he had to hurry away, though promising as he did so everything that Sylvia asked, promising to stand on his head if she wished it.

Once back in the court he found it still empty. In the corridors reporters and idlers lounged, speculating on the verdict, prophesying that the deliberations of the jury would be brief. But time limped. An hour pa.s.sed, two hours, three. Enervated and empty Orr went down and out to a little restaurant across the street. Presently it was reported that the jury were coming in. Orr hurried back, but however he hurried, he was late. The court had refilled. As he entered he heard someone say:

"Not guilty."

Abruptly the room hummed like a wasps' nest. There were raps for order, commands for silence, threatened punishments for contempt.

The hubbub subsided, the Recorder thanked and dismissed the jury. He turned to Peac.o.c.k. "Are there any further charges against the prisoner?"

"There are none, Your Honor."

The Recorder nodded at Annandale. "You are discharged."

Orr tried to get at him. But at that moment the crowd interfered. In making a circuit to reach Annandale, he found himself among the departing jury. They had all left the box, all save the twelfth, who apparently had stumbled.

About them reporters circled. The foreman was relating that they had been practically unanimous for conviction, but that one of them, the twelfth, had insisted so obstinately on the poverty of the evidence that with him finally they had voted to acquit.

"But where is he?" the foreman interrupted himself to ask. "Where is the twelfth juror? Where is Durand?"

Then only was it seen that he was still in the box, crouching there, his face ashen where it was not violet, a hand held to his side.

In a moment he was surrounded. To those nearest he looked and gasped.

"Give him some brandy," a reporter suggested. But now into the little group Peac.o.c.k had forced his way. Orr edged nearer.

The juror gasped again. "I am dying," he groaned. "It is my heart.

Send for a priest. I killed him. I am the man."

Skeptically Peac.o.c.k sniffed. "You killed whom?"

"He is delirious," the reporter exclaimed.

"I killed him," Durand repeated.

"But whom? And why?" Peac.o.c.k, bending a bit, impressed in spite of himself, inquired.

Slowly, laboriously, painfully at that, Durand from a pocket drew a picture.

"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.

Peac.o.c.k 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.

Peac.o.c.k, 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.

Peac.o.c.k 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, a.s.sented. "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 att.i.tude 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. Good-bye, Peac.o.c.k. 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 pa.s.sed from the General Sessions, told him what had occurred.