The Shadow of the Rope Page 3

  CHAPTER III

  NAME AND NATURE

  The prisoner's evidence concluded with a perfectly simple if somewhathesitating account of her own doings during the remainder of the nightof her husband's murder. That story has already been told in greaterdetail than could be extracted even by the urbane but deadlycross-examiner who led for the Crown. A change had come over the mannerin which Rachel was giving her evidence; it was as though her strengthand nerve were failing her together, and henceforth the words had to beput into her mouth. Curiously enough, the change in Mrs. Minchin'sdemeanor was almost coincident with the single and rather sinisterdisplay of feeling upon the part of the white-haired gentleman who hadfollowed every word of the case. On the whole, however, her story borethe stamp of truth; and a half-apologetic but none the less persistentcross-examination left it scarcely less convincing than before.

  There was one independent witness for the defence, in addition to theexperts in photography and chains. The landlady of the house at whichRachel called, in the early morning, on her way home with the cab, wasabout five minutes in the witness-box, but in those five minutes shesupplied the defence with one of its strongest arguments. It was atleast conceivable that a woman who had killed her husband might coollyproceed to pack her trunk, and thereafter fetch the cab which was toremove herself and her effects from the scene of the tragedy. But was itcredible that a woman of so much presence of mind, to whom every minutemight make the difference between life and death, would, having foundher cab, actually drive out of her way to inquire after a sick friend,or even a dying lover, before going home to pick up her luggage and toascertain whether her crime was still undetected? Suppose it were alover, and inquire one must: would one not still leave those inquiriesto the last? And having made them, last or first; and knowing the grimnecessity of flight; would one woman go out of her way to tell anotherthat she "had to go abroad very suddenly, and was going for good?"

  "Inconceivable!" cried the prisoner's counsel, dealing with the point;and the word was much upon his lips during the course of a long and verystrenuous speech, in which the case for the Crown was flouted frombeginning to end, without, perhaps, enough of concentration on its moreobvious weaknesses, or of respect for its undoubted strength. For theprisoner's proceedings on the night of the murder, however, supposingshe had committed it, and still more on the morning after, it would havebeen difficult to find a better epithet; the only drawback was that thisone had seen service in the cause of almost every murderer who ever wentto the gallows--as counsel for the prosecution remarked in his reply,with deadly deference to his learned friend.

  "On the other hand," he went on, wagging his eyeglasses with leisurelydeliberation, and picking his words with a care that enhanced theireffect, after the unbridled rhetoric of the defence--"on the other hand,gentlemen, if criminals never made mistakes, inconceivable or not as wemay choose to consider them--if they never made those mistakes, theywould never stand in that dock."

  It was late on the Saturday afternoon when the judge summed up; but apleasant surprise was in store for those who felt that his lordship mustspeak at greater length than either of the counsel between whom he wasto hold the scales. The address from the bench was much the shortest ofthe three. Less exhaustive than the conventional review of acomplicated case, it was a disquisition of conspicuous clearness andimpartiality. Only the salient points were laid before the jury, for thelast time, and in a nutshell, but with hardly a hint of the judge's ownopinion upon any one of them. The expression of that opinion wasreserved for a point of even greater import than the value of anyseparate piece of evidence. If, said the judge, the inferences andtheory of the prosecution were correct; if this unhappy woman, driven todesperation by her husband, and knowing where he kept his pistols, hadtaken his life with one of them, and afterwards manufactured the tracesof a supposititious burglary; then there was no circumstance connectedwith the crime which could by any possibility reduce it from murder tomanslaughter. The solemnity of this pronouncement was felt in thefarthest corner of the crowded court. So they were to find her guilty ofwilful murder, or not guilty at all! Every eye sped involuntarily to theslim black figure in the dock; and, under the gaze of all, the figuremade the least little bow--a movement so slight and so spontaneous as tosuggest unconsciousness, but all the more eloquent on that account.

  Yet to many in court, more especially to the theatrical folk behind theman with the white hair, the gesture was but one more subtle touch inan exhibition of consummate art and nerve.

  "If they do acquit her," whispered one of these wiseacres to another,"she will make her fortune on the stage!"

  Meanwhile the judge was dealing at the last with the prisoner's evidencein her own behalf, and that mercifully enough, though with lessreticence than had characterized the earlier portions of his address. Hedid not think it possible or even desirable to forget that this was theevidence of a woman upon trial for her life. It must not be discreditedon that account. But it was for the jury to bear in mind that the storywas one which admitted of no corroboration, save in unimportant details.More than that he would not say. It was for them to judge of that storyas they had heard it for themselves, on its own merits, but also inrelation to the other evidence. If the jury believed it, there was anend of the case. If they had any reasonable doubt at all, the prisonerwas entitled to the full benefit of that doubt, and they must acquither. If, on the other hand, the facts taken together before and afterthe murder brought the jury to the conclusion that it was none otherthan the prisoner who had committed the murder--though, of course, noone was present to see the act committed--they must, in duty to theiroaths, find her guilty.

  During the judge's address the short November day had turned fromafternoon to night, and a great change had come over the aspect of thedim and dingy court. Opaque globes turned into flaring suns;incandescent burners revealed unsuspected brackets; the place was warmedand lighted for the first time during the week. And the effect of thelight and warmth was on all the faces that rose as one while the judgesidled from the bench, and the jury filed out of their box, and theprisoner disappeared down the dock stairs for the last time in ignoranceof her fate. Next moment there was the buzz of talk that you expect in atheatre between the acts, rather than in a court of justice at thesolemn crisis of a solemn trial. It was like a class-room with themaster called away. Hats were put on again in the bulging galleries;hardly a tongue was still. On the bench a red-robed magnate and anotherin knee-breeches exchanged views upon the enlarged photographs which hadplayed so prominent a part in the case; in the well the barristers' wigsnodded or shook over their pink blotters and their quill pens; gentlemenof the Press sharpened their pencils and indulged in prophecy; and ontheir right, between the reporters and the bench, the privileged few,the literary and theatrical elect, discussed the situation with abnormalcallousness, masking emotion with a childlike cynicism of sentiment andphrase.

  And for once the stranger in their midst, the man with more outwarddistinction than any one of them, the unknown man with the snowy hair,could afford to listen to what they had to say.

  "No chance, my dear man. Not an earthly!"

  "I'm not so sure of that."

  "Will you bet?"

  "No, hang it! What a beast you are! But I thought the woman was speakingthe truth."

  "You heard what the judge said. Where's your corroboration? No, theyought never to have let her go into the box. I hear she insisted. But ithasn't saved anybody yet."

  "The new law? Then it shows her pluck!"

  "But not necessarily her innocence, dear boy."

  Thus one shaven couple. Others had already exhausted the subject.

  "Yes, I finished it down at Westgate last week."

  "Satisfied?"

  "In a way. It depends so much on the cast."

  "These actor-managers--what?"

  "More or less. I must be off. Dining out."

  "What! Not going to wait for the end of the fourth act?"

  "No, I'm late as
it is. Ta-ta!"

  The white-haired man was amused. He did not turn round, nor, if he had,would he have known the retreating gentleman for the most eminent ofliving playwrights; but he knew the reason for his sudden retreat. Ahush had fallen, and some one had whispered, "They're coming!" Thelight-hearted chatter had died away on the word; perhaps it was not solight-hearted after all. But the alarm was false, there was no sign ofthe jury, and the talk rose again, as the wind will in a storm.

  "We shall want a glass when this is over," whispered one of the pair whohad argued about the case.

  "And we'll have it, too, old man!" rejoined his friend.

  The white-haired man was grimly interested. So this was the way mentalked while waiting to hear a fellow-creature sentenced to death! Itwas worth knowing. And this was what the newspaper men would call a lowbuzz--an expectant hush--this animated babble! Yet the air was chargedwith emotion, suppressed perhaps, but none the less distinguishable inevery voice. Within earshot a perspiring young pressman was informinghis friends that to come there comfortably you should commit the murderyourself, then they gave you the Royal Box; but his teeth could be heardchattering through the feeble felicity. The white-headed listener curleda contemptuous nostril. They could joke, and yet they could feel! Hehimself betrayed neither weakness, but sat waiting patiently and idlylistening, with the same grim jaw and the same inscrutable eye withwhich he had watched the prisoner and the jury alternately throughoutthe week. And when the latter at last returned, and then the former, itwas the same subtle stare that he again bent upon them both in turn.

  The jury had been absent but forty minutes after all; and theirexpedition seemed as ill an omen as their nervous and responsible faces.There was a moment's hush, another moment of prophetic murmurs, and thena stillness worthy of its subsequent description in every newspaper. Theprisoner was standing in the front of the dock, a female warder uponeither hand. The lightning pencil of the new journalist had its will ofher at last. For Mrs. Minchin had dispensed not only with the chairwhich she had occupied all the week, but also with the heavy veil whichshe had but partially lifted during her brief sojourn in thewitness-box, and never once in the dock. The veil was now flung backover the widow's bonnet, peaking and falling like a sable cowl, againstwhich the unearthly pallor of her face was whiter far then that of themerely dead, just as mere death was the least part of the fateconfronting her. Yet she had raised her veil to look it fairly in theface, and the packed assembly marvelled as it gazed.

  Was that the face that had been hidden from them all these days? It wasnot what they had pictured beneath the proud, defiant carriage of itsconcealing veil. Was that the face of a determined murderess?

  Beautiful it was not as they saw it then, but the elements of beauty layunmistable beneath a white mist of horror and of pain, as a lovelylandscape is still lovely at its worst. The face was a thin but perfectoval, lengthened a little by depth of chin and height of forehead, asnow also by unnatural emaciation and distress. The mouth was at oncebloodless, sweet, and firm; the eyes of a warm and lustrous brown,brilliant, eloquent, brave--and hopeless!

  Yes, she had no hope herself! It was plain enough at the first glimpseof the deadly white, uncovered face, in the cruel glare of gas. But itbecame plainer still as, with sad, unflinching eyes, she watched andlistened while, for the last time, the jurymen answered to their names.

  Now they were done. The foreman shifted nervously in his place. In theoverstrain of the last dread pause, the crowded court felt hotter andlighter than ever. It seemed to unite the glare of a gin palace with thetemperature of a Turkish bath.

  "Gentlemen, are you greed upon your verdict?"

  "We are."

  "Do you find the prisoner guilty or not guilty?"

  "Not guilty."

  There was a simultaneous gasp from a hundred throats--a distinct cryfrom some. Then the Clerk of Arraigns was seen to be leaning forward, ahand to his ear, for the foreman's voice had broken with excitement. Andevery soul in court leaned forward too.

  But this time his feelings had a different effect upon the excitedforeman.

  "_Not_ guilty!" he almost bawled.

  Dead silence then, while the clock ticked thrice.

  "And that is the verdict of you all?"

  "Of every one of us!"

  The judge leant back in his place, his eyes upon the desk before him,without a movement or a gesture to strike the personal note which hadbeen suppressed with such admirable impartiality throughout the trial.But it was several moments before his eyes were lifted with his voice.

  "Let her be discharged," was all he said even then; but he would seem tohave said it at once gruffly, angrily, thankfully, disgustedly, withemotion, and without any emotion at all. You read the papers, and youtake your choice.

  So Rachel Minchin was supported from the court before the round eyes ofa hundred or two of her fellow-creatures, in the pitiable state of onewho has been condemned to die, and not set free to live. It was asthough she still misunderstood a verdict which had filled most faceswith incredulity, but none with an astonishment to equal her own. Herwhite face had leaped alight, but not with gladness. The pent-up emotionof the week had broken forth in an agony of tears; and so they half led,half carried her from the court. She had entered it for the last timewith courage enough; but it was the wrong kind of courage; and, for theone supreme moment, sentence of life was harder to bear than sentence ofdeath.

  In a few minutes the court was empty--a singular little theatre of palevarnish and tawdry hangings, still rather snug and homely in the heatand light of its obsolete gas, and with as little to remind one of theplay as any other theatre when the curtain is down and the house empty.But there was clamor in the corridors, and hooting already in thestreet. Nor was the house really empty after all. One white-hairedgentleman had not left his place when an attendant returned to put outthe lights. The attendant pointed him out to a constable at the door;both watched him a few moments. Then the attendant stepped down andtouched him on the shoulder.

  The gentleman turned slowly without a start. "Ah, you're the man I wantto see," said he. "Was that the Chief Warder in the dock?"

  "Him with the beard," said the attendant, nodding.

  "Well, give him this, and give it him quick. I'll wait up there till hecan see me."

  And he pressed his card into the attendant's palm, with a couple ofsovereigns underneath.

  "Wants to see the Chief Warder," explained the attendant to theconstable at the door.

  "He's been here all the week," mused the constable aloud. "I wonder whohe is?"

  "Name of Steel," whispered the other, consulting the card, as thegentleman advanced up the steps toward them, the gaslight gleaming inhis silver hair, and throwing his firm features into strong relief.

  "And not a bad name for him," said the constable at the door.