Kitabı oku: «The House of the White Shadows», sayfa 8
CHAPTER XVII
THE ADVOCATES DEFENCE-THE VERDICT
He spoke in a calm and passionless voice, the clear tones of which had an effect resembling that of a current of cold air through an over-heated atmosphere. The audience had been led to expect a display of fevered and passionate oratory; but neither in the Advocate's speech nor in his manner of delivering it was there any fire or passion; it was chiefly remarkable for earnestness and simplicity.
His first words were a panegyric of justice, the right of dispensing which had been placed in mortal hands by a Supreme Power which watched its dispensation with a jealous eye. He claimed for himself that the leading principle of his life, not only in his judicial, but in his private career, had been a desire for justice, in small matters as well as in great, for the lowliest equally with the loftiest of human beings. Before the bar of justice, prince and peasant, the most ignorant and the most highly cultured, the meanest and the most noble in form and feature, were equal. They had been told that justice was demanded from them by law and by society. He would supply a strange omission in this appeal, and he would tell them that, primarily and before every other consideration, the prisoner it was who demanded justice from them.
"That an innocent girl has been done to death," said the Advocate, "is most unfortunately true, and as true that a man who inspires horror is charged with her murder. You have been told that you have but to glance at him to assure yourself of his guilt. These are lamentable words to be used in an argument of accusation. The facts that the victim was of attractive, and that the accused is of repulsive appearance, should not weigh with you, even by a hair's weight, to the prejudice of the prisoner. If it does, I call upon you to remember that justice is blind to external impressions. And moreover, if in your minds you harbour a feeling such as exists outside this court against the degraded creature who stands before you, I charge you to dismiss it.
"All the evidence presented to you which bears directly upon the crime is circumstantial. A murder has been committed-no person saw it committed. The last person proved to have been in the murdered girl's company, is Gautran, her lover, as he declares himself to have been.
"And here I would say that I do not expect you to place the slightest credence upon the statements of this man. His unblushing, astonishing falsehoods prove that in him the moral sense is deadened, if indeed it ever existed. But his own statement that, after the manner of his brutal nature, he loved the girl, may be accepted as probable. It has been sufficiently proved that the girl had other lovers, who were passionately enamoured of her. She was left to herself, deprived of the protection and counsel of a devoted woman, who, unhappily, was absent at the fatal crisis in her life. She was easily persuaded and easily led. Who can divine by what influences she was surrounded, by what temptations she was beset, temptations and influences which may have brought upon her an untimely death?
"Gautran was hear to say, 'I will kill you-I will kill you!' He had threatened her before, and she lived to speak of it to her companions, and to permit him, without break or interruption in their intimacy, to continue to associate with her. What more probable than that this was one of his usual threats in his moments of passion, when he jealously believed that a rival was endeavouring to supplant him in her affections?
"The handkerchief found about her neck belonged to Gautran. The gift of a handkerchief among the lower classes is not uncommon, and it is frequently worn round the neck. Easy, then, for any murderer to pull it tight during the commission of the crime. But apart from this, the handkerchief does not fix the crime of murder upon Gautran or any other accused, for you have had it proved that the girl did not die by strangulation, but by drowning. These are bare facts, and I present them to you in bare form, without needless comment. I do not base my defence upon them, but upon what I am now about to say.
"If in a case of circumstantial evidence there is reasonable cause to believe that the evidence furnished is of insufficient weight to convict; and if on the other side, on the side of the accused, evidence is adduced which directly proves, according to the best judgment we are enabled to form of human action in supreme moments-as to the course it would take and the manner in which it would be displayed-that it is almost beyond the bounds of possibility and nature that the person can have committed the deed, you have no option, unless you yourselves are bent upon judicial murder, than to acquit that person, however vile his character may be, however degraded his career and antecedents. It is evidence of this description which I intend to submit to you at the conclusion of my remarks.
"The character of Gautran has been exposed and laid bare in all its vileness; the minuteness of the evidence is surprising; not the smallest detail has been overlooked or omitted to complete the picture of a ferocious, ignorant, and infamous being. Guilty, he deserves no mercy; innocent, he is not to be condemned because he is vile.
"In the world's history there are records of countries and times in which it was the brutal fashion to bring four-footed animals to the bar of justice, there solemnly to try them for witchcraft and evil deeds; and you will find upon examination of those records of man's incredible folly and ignorance, that occasionally even these beasts of the earth-pigs and such-like-have been declared innocent of the crimes of which they have been charged. I ask no more for Gautran than the principle involved in these trials. Judge him, if you will, as you would an animal, but judge him in accordance with the principles of justice, which neither extenuates nor maliciously and unreasonably condemns.
"The single accusation of the murder of Madeline, a flower-girl, is the point to be determined, and you must not travel beyond it to other crimes and other misdeeds of which Gautran may have been guilty.
"It has been proved that the prisoner is possessed of great strength, that he is violent in his actions, uncontrollable in his passions, and fond of inflicting pain and prolonging it. He has not a redeeming feature in his coarse, animal nature. Thwarted, he makes the person who thwarts him suffer without mercy. An appeal to his humanity would be useless-he has no humanity; when crossed, he has been seen to behave like a wild beast. All this is in evidence, and has been strongly dwelt upon as proof of guilt. Most important is this evidence, and I charge you not for one moment to lose sight of it.
"I come now to the depiction of the murdered girl, as it has been presented to you. Pretty, admired, gentle in her manners, and poor. Although the fact of a person being poor is no proof of morality, we may accept it in this instance as a proof of the girl's virtue. She was fond of life: her disposition was a happy one; she was in the habit of singing to herself.
"Thus we have the presentment of a young girl whose nature was joyous, and to whom life was sweet.
"Another important piece of evidence must be borne in mind. She possessed strength, greater strength than would have been supposed in a form so slight. This strength she would use to protect herself from injury: it has been proved that she used it successfully to protect herself from insult. In the whole of this case nothing has been more forcibly insisted upon than that she resisted her murder, and that there was a long and horrible struggle in which she received many injuries, wounds, bruises, and scratches, and in which her clothes were rent and torn.
"This struggle, in the natural order of things, could not have been a silent one; accompanying the conflict there must have been outcries, frenzied appeals for mercy, screams of terror and anguish. No witness has been called who heard such sounds, and therefore it must be a fact that the murder must have been committed some time after Gautran's threat, 'I will kill you, I will kill you!' was heard by persons who passed along the bank of the river in the darkness of that fatal night. Time enough for Gautran to have left her; time enough for another-lover or stranger-to meet her; time enough for murder by another hand than that of the prisoner who stands charged with the commission of the crime.
"I assert, with all the force of my experience of human nature, that it is impossible that Gautran could have committed the deed. There was a long and terrible struggle-a struggle in which the murdered girl's clothes were torn, in which her face, her hands, her arms, her neck, her sides were bruised and wounded in a hundred cruel ways. Can you for one moment entertain the belief that, in this desperate fight in which two persons were engaged, only one should bear the marks of a contest so horrible? If you bring yourselves to this belief it must be by the aid of prejudice, not of reason. Attend to what follows.
"On the very morning after the murder, within four hours of the body being discovered in the river, Gautran was arrested. He wore the same clothes he had worn for months past, the only clothes he possessed. In these clothes there was not a rent or tear, nor any indication of a recent rent having been mended. How, then, could this man have been engaged in a violent and prolonged hand-to-hand conflict? It is manifestly impossible, opposed to all reasonable conjecture, that his garments could have escaped some injury, however slight, at the hands of a girl to whom life was very sweet, who was strong and capable of resistance, and who saw before her the shadow of an awful fate.
"Picture to yourselves this struggle already so vividly painted, so graphically portrayed. The unhappy girl clung to her destroyer, she clutched his dress, his hands, his body in her wild despair-a despair which inspired her with strength beyond her ordinary capacity. And of still greater weight is the fact that there was not to be found on any part of Gautran's body a scratch, a wound, or a bruise of any description.
"What, then, becomes of the evidence of a terrible life and death struggle in which it is said he was engaged? Upon this point alone the entire theory of the prosecution breaks down. The absence from Gautran's clothes and person of any mark or identification of a physical contest is the strongest testimony of his innocence of this ruthless, diabolical crime; and, wretched and degraded as is the spectacle he presents, justice demands from you his acquittal.
"Still one other proof of his innocence remains to be spoken of; I will touch upon it lightly, but it bears a very strange aspect, as though the prosecution were fearful that its introduction would fatally injure their case.
"When Gautran was searched a knife was found upon him-the knife, without doubt, with which he inflicted upon the face of a comrade a wound which he will bear to the grave. Throughout the whole of the evidence for the prosecution I waited and looked for the production of that knife; I expected to see upon it a blood proof of guilt. But it was not produced; no mention has been made of it. Why? Because there is upon its blade no mark of blood.
"Do you believe that a ruffian like Gautran would have refrained from using his knife upon the body of his victim, to shorten the terrible struggle? Even in light quarrels men in his condition of life threaten freely with their knives, and use them recklessly. To suppose that with so swift and sure a means at hand to put an end to the horrible affair, Gautran, in the heat and fury of the time, refrained from availing himself of it, is to suppose a thing contrary and opposed to reason.
"Remember the answer given by one of the witnesses who knows the nature of the man well, when I asked him whether in his passionate moods Gautran would be likely to show coolness or cunning. 'He would have no time to think; he would be carried away by his passion.' His is the nature of a brute, governed by brute laws. You are here to try, not the prisoner's general character, not his repulsive appearance, not his brutish nature, but a charge of murder of which he is accused, and of which, in the clear light of human motive and action, it is impossible he can be guilty."
The Advocate's speech, of which this is but a brief and imperfect summary, occupied seven hours, and was delivered throughout with a cold impressive earnestness and with an absence of passion which gradually and effectually turned the current which had set so fatally against the prisoner. The disgust and abhorrence he inspired were in no wise modified, but the Advocate had instilled into the minds of his auditors the strongest doubts of Gautran's guilt.
Two witnesses were called, one a surgeon of eminence, the other a nurse in an hospital. They deposed that there were no marks of an encounter upon the prisoner's person, that upon his skin was no abrasion, that his clothes exhibited no traces of recent tear or repair, and that it was scarcely possible he could have been engaged in a violent personal struggle.
Upon the conclusion of this evidence, which cross-examination did not shake, the jury asked that Gautran should be examined by independent experts. This was done by thoroughly qualified men, whose evidence strengthened that of the witnesses for the defence. The jury asked, also, that the knife found upon Gautran should be produced. It was brought into court, and carefully examined, and it was found that its blade was entirely free from blood-stain.
The jury, astounded at the turn the affair had taken, listened attentively to the speech of the judge, who dwelt with great care upon every feature in the case. The court sat late to give its decision, and when the verdict was pronounced, Gautran was a free man.
Free, to enjoy the sunlight, and the seasons as they passed; free, to continue his life of crime and shame; free, to murder again!
BOOK II. – THE CONFESSION
CHAPTER I
A LETTER FROM JOHN VANBRUGH
For a little while Gautran scarcely comprehended that he was at liberty to wander forth. He had so completely given himself up as lost that he was stupefied by the announcement that his liberty was restored to him. He gazed vacantly before him, and the announcement had to be twice repeated before he arrived at an understanding of its purport; then his attitude changed. A spasm of joy passed into his face, followed immediately by a spasm of fear; those who observed him would indeed have been amazed had they known what was passing through his mind.
"Free, am I?" he asked.
"You have been told so twice," a warder answered. "It astonishes you. Well, you are not the only one."
As the warders fell from his side he watched them warily, fearing they were setting a trap which might prove his destruction.
From where he stood he could not see the Advocate, who was preparing to depart. Distasteful as the verdict was to every person in court, with the exception of Gautran and his counsel, those members of the legal profession who had not taken an active part in the trial were filled with professional admiration at the skill the Advocate had displayed. An eminent member of the bar remarked to him:
"It is a veritable triumph, the greatest and most surprising I have ever witnessed. None but yourself could have accomplished it. Yet I cannot believe in the man's innocence."
This lawyer held too high and honourable a position for the Advocate to remain silent. "The man is innocent," he said.
"You know him to be so?"
"I know him to be so. I stake my reputation upon it."
"You almost convince me. It would be fatal to any reputation were Gautran, after what has passed, to be proved guilty. But that, of course, is impossible."
"Quite impossible," said the Advocate somewhat haughtily.
"Exactly so. There can be no room for doubt, after your statement that you know the man to be innocent."
With no wish to continue the conversation, the Advocate turned to leave the court when an officer presented himself.
"He wishes to speak to you, sir."
"He! Who?" asked the Advocate. He was impatient to be gone, his interest at the trial being at an end. The victory was gained; there was nothing more to be done.
"The prisoner, sir. He desired me to tell you."
"The prisoner!" said the Advocate. "You forget. The man is free."
He walked towards Gautran, and for the first time during the long days of the trial gazed directly in his client's face. The magnetism in the Advocate's eyes arrested Gautran's speech. His own dilated, and he appeared to forget what he had intended to say. They looked at each other in silence for a few moments, the expression on the face of the Advocate cold, keen, and searching, that on the face of Gautran as of a man entranced; and then the Advocate turned sternly away, without a word having been spoken between them. When Gautran looked again for his defender he was gone.
Gautran still lingered; the court was nearly empty.
"Be off," said the warder, who had been his chief attendant in his cell; "we have done with you for the present."
But Gautran made no effort to leave. The warder laid his hand upon the ruffian's shoulder, with the intention of expelling him from the court.
Gautran shook him off with the snarl of a wild beast.
"Touch me again," he cried, "and I'll strangle you! I can do it easily enough-two of you at a time!"
And, indeed, so ferocious was his manner that it seemed as if he were disposed to carry his threat into execution.
"Women are more in your way," said the warder tauntingly. "Look you, Gautran; if Madeline had been my daughter, your life would not be worth an hour's purchase, despite the verdict gained by your clever Advocate."
"You would not dare to say that to me if you and I were alone," retorted Gautran, scowling at the sullen faces of the officers about him.
"Away with you!" exclaimed the warder, "at once, or we will throw you into the streets!"
"I will go when I get my property."
"What property?"
"The knife you took from me when you dragged me to prison. I don't move without it."
They deemed it best to comply with this demand, the right being on his side, and his knife was restored to him. It was an old knife, with a keen blade and a stout handle, and it opened and closed with a sharp click. Gautran tried it three or four times with savage satisfaction and then, with another interchange of threatening glances, he slunk from the court.
The Advocate's carriage was at the door, ready to convey him to Christian Almer's villa. But after his long confinement in the close court, he felt the need of physical exercise, and he dismissed his coachman, saying he intended to walk home. As the carriage drove off, a person plucked him by the sleeve, and pressed a letter into his hand. It was dusk, and the Advocate, although he looked quickly around, could not discover the giver. His sight was short and strong, and standing beneath the light of a street-lamp he opened and read the letter.
"Old Friend,
"It will doubtless surprise you to see my handwriting, it is so long since we met. The sight of it may displease you, but that is of small consequence to me. When a man is in a desperate strait, he is occasionally driven to desperate courses. When needs must, as you are aware, the devil drives. I have been but an hour in Geneva, and I have heard of your victory; I congratulate you upon it. I must see you-soon. I know the House of White Shadows in the pretty valley yonder. At a short distance from the gates-but far enough off, and so situated as to enable a man to hide with safety if he desires-is a hill upon which I will wait for your signal to come to you, which shall be the waving of a white handkerchief from your study window. At midnight and alone will be best. You see how ready I am to oblige you. I shall wait till sunrise for the signal. If you are too busy to-night, let it be tomorrow night, or the next, or any night this week.
"I am, as ever, your friend,"John Vanbrugh."
The Advocate placed the letter in his pocket, and murmured as he walked through the streets of Geneva:
"John Vanbrugh! Has he risen from his grave? He would see me at midnight and alone! He must be mad, or drunk, to make such a request. He may keep his vigil, undisturbed. Of such a friendship there can be no renewal. The gulf that separates us is too wide to be bridged over by sentimental memories. John Vanbrugh, the vagabond! I can imagine him, and the depth to which he has sunk. Every man must bear the consequences of his actions. Let him bear his, and make the best, or the worst, of them."
