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CHAPTER VII
HELD WITHOUT BAIL

THE theories and clues in the now celebrated case Orr related to Sylvia one after another as they reached him through different channels. To the story of Marie Leroy she listened, her face averted, without a word. The footpad theory she dismissed. It was absurd. But the suicide theory impressed her. Even to her mind it was not logical. Loftus was too cavalier, too supremely indifferent, to make it plausible. On the other hand, it disposed of the whole matter. Moreover, as she put it to Orr, what is suicide but the sinful end of a sinful life? "Who knows," she asked, "what sudden remorse he may have experienced that last night when he was alone there in the park?"

"Suicide," Orr had replied, "is assassination driven in. It is the crisis of a pre-existing condition, a condition wholly pathological, one which remorse may complicate but which it cannot directly induce. There was nothing whatever the matter with Loftus. He may have been sinful, as you express it, but he was sound. Besides, the man had no more conscience than a tom cat."

Nevertheless Sylvia clung to the theory. She had no other. Hopelessly she hoped that time would verify it. But she suffered acutely. Orr's account of Fanny's attitude frightened her. What frightened her most was the tale that Harris told. The latter she learned from the press.

Meanwhile she had gone to Mrs. Loftus. The old lady had not recognized her, or, rather, had mistaken her for someone else. "My boy is away, Fanny," she said, her head shaking as she spoke. "He is away. I don't know where." She began to whimper.

Sylvia, too, had wept. It was pitiful. The proud, arrogant woman Fate had reduced to a cowering crone.

Meanwhile also Sylvia had tried to see Fanny. But at the hotel where Mrs. Price had been stopping she was informed that both were away. An address was given her to which she wrote. For a time no answer came. Finally from a different address Mrs. Price replied saying that Fanny was ill and asking that their whereabouts be a secret. In spite of the little threat Fanny was not anxious to be subpœnaed.

But that was much later, long after Harris had told the story which Mr. Digby declared to be very good.

This opinion, editorial and offhand though it was, was immediately and officially indorsed. For the story had a double merit. It supplied not merely a clue but a case. A very clear case, too. There was the antecedent threat, the opportunity, the instrument, everything even to the motive which was reasonable enough. The inevitable ensued. Annandale, arrested, was held without bail.

At the news of that Sylvia shuddered. Time touched her. Her eyes ringed themselves with sudden circles. The shuddering passed, but the rings remained. She became whiter, harder, more resolute, divining dimly that somewhere, somehow, there was a duty to be performed. What the duty was to be the press disclosed. Against Annandale was public opinion. There he was convicted instanter. At the injustice, or what seemed to her the injustice, of that she revolted.

But Orr, whom Annandale had immediately retained, dosed her with a platitude. "Public opinion be hanged," he said. "What is it but the stupidity of one multiplied by the stupidity of all. Vox populi, vox stulti. The majority is always cocksure and dead wrong."

In spite, though, of general stupidity there were people sufficiently indulgent to accord Annandale the benefit of extenuating circumstances. The reputation of Loftus, which left rather a little to be desired; the coupling of his name with that of Annandale's wife; the report that for his sake the latter had been preparing to leave her husband; the further report that for the convenience of both Marie Leroy had been shipped abroad; these things reduced the case in the minds of the indulgent to what the French call a crime passionnel, and which, as such, is psychologically and even legally defensible.

But French views are not our views. Besides, admitting their validity, that validity was impaired by the attitude which Annandale assumed. He omitted to admit, and thereby for the time being waived the right to plead, the circumstances advanced in his justification. When charged had he said, "Oh, yes, I did it, and so would you or any other man," there, don't you see, might have been an excuse. But not a bit of it. Up and down he denied that he was the culprit.

A denial such as that has, though, its merits. It puts on the prosecution the burden of proof. Moreover, if you have done anything you should not have it is only common sense to say that you have not done it, to say it in spite of facts, in spite of evidence, in spite of everything and everybody. For if you own up, there you are, while if you don't then no matter what is advanced you may succeed in raising a doubt and in planting it among the jury. But in this case the denial was more serviceable than ordinarily it might have been for the reason that thus far no one had been produced who could say they had been about while Annandale was at it.

These points Orr set before Sylvia. The sophistry of them displeased her. She did not like it, and said so.

"It will get him off, though," Orr confidently replied. "Unless," he hastened to add, "a witness to the act itself should pop up. Then, barring a miracle, he is a goner. But otherwise I will get him off. It may take a year or two, but I'll do it."

"I don't want you to get him off," Sylvia scornfully retorted. "I want him vindicated."

"You see, though," Orr with unruffleable calm continued, "if a witness should pop up, a witness, let us say, whom I cannot discredit, vindication will be difficult. It will be difficult to make twelve imbeciles in a pen believe that when Annandale shot Loftus – "

"He never shot him," Sylvia cried.

"My dear cousin," Orr with the same unruffleable calm pursued, "the beauty of your faith is wonderful. You must come to court and inject it among the jury. Faith that used to move mountains may yet move men. But I doubt it. I doubt that it could make them credit the incredible, the fact patent to me as it should be to you, that though Annandale shot Loftus he was, and for that matter still is, totally unconscious of it."

"He never shot him."

"My dear Sylvia, forgive me. He did. Though what I can say for him and, if needful, I shall say, is that he did not mean to. The intent is the essence of crime. There was no intent here. Of his own free will the man would not hurt a fly. But that night he was not a free agent. He was not even a conscious agent. Of all the cells of his brain but one was awake. In that cell was an incitement inciting him to kill. When the other cells awoke that one cell fell asleep. It has been dormant since then. Only through hypnosis could it awaken. In the interim he knew no more than a somnambulist what he was about. His condition, though, was not somnambulistic, it was a case of psychical epilepsy, a malady superinducible in certain natures by various poisons, of which anger is one and alcohol another."

Orr paused. He looked at his cousin. Incredulity, something else besides, was in her face. He affected not to notice it. "Now," he ran on, "go with a story like that to the average jury. Of course, if need be, I shall have experts, the very best experts, to substantiate it. But the prosecution will have other experts, experts who will be just as good, to deny the possibility of any such thing. In that event it will be only a pleasure to mix them up a bit and to show by their own testimony that they know no more than the law – I don't say allows but – pays them for. Do you mind if I smoke?"

They were seated in the sombre parlor in Irving Place. Meditatively Orr lit a cigarette. Meditatively Sylvia contemplated him.

"Would it not be better," she presently asked, "to show that Loftus committed suicide?"

"Yes, in the event that the pistol is found. It is rather late, though, for that."

Sylvia bent forward. "Melanchthon," she said, "I have heard you say – have I not – that everything is possible?"

"Indeed you have and you will hear me again."

"Then why not ask Miranda?"

Orr looked about for a cendrier; finding one he put his cigarette in it. "You mean the medium. Do you know, I would in a minute, were it not that it will be a long time, perhaps years, before she or any other spook could call Loftus up. When a man is snuffed out as abruptly as he was, he is so stunned and confused that it is quite a while before he can sufficiently collect his wits to reply to any communications from these latitudes. It is tedious that it should be so. The spirit world needs remodeling. But there you are. By the way, where are you to be this summer?"

Sylvia made a gesture. She did not know. It was then June. Fashion had fled. Fifth avenue was empty. The town was an oven. In that oven the girl would have preferred to remain. But at the preference her mother had rebelled. Against Newport Sylvia had rebelled also. She was in no mood for its gaiety. Finally a little place on Long Island suggested itself. Ultimately there they went.

It was in this place that Sylvia heard from Mrs. Price of Fanny's illness. Fanny had disappointed her exceedingly. That she could have so much as contemplated the step which she had in view seemed to Sylvia unspeakable. Her threat, too, in regard to testifying against her husband was in the circumstances but a flagrant avowal of love for the other man. Yet, for that love, how had she been punished! Perhaps now she repented of it. Perhaps now in her illness she needed someone to whom she could unburden her heart. At the thought of that Sylvia wrote at once to Mrs. Price asking might she not come to her. But to this Mrs. Price replied that Fanny after an attack of nervous prostration was now down with typhoid, though with every prospect and assurance of recovery. When she was up again, then, if Sylvia would come, it would, Mrs. Price added, be nice of her.

There is a saying trite yet true that we should hasten to cherish those whom we love lest they leave us forever before we have loved them enough. There is another saying less true and more trite that of those that do leave only good should be said. To Sylvia presently these sayings recurred. Two days after the receipt of the letter from Mrs. Price she read in the papers that Fanny was dead.

The paper fell from her. For an hour, which passed as only such hours do pass, incomprehensibly, without consciousness of time, she sat, still and stricken.

Through raveled skeins of thought of which the tangled threads refused to wholly straighten, she blamed herself for all that had occurred. Not indeed for Loftus. The man, his life, his death, everything concerning him was abhorrent to her. Of him, other than that pity which can mingle with disgust, she had no concern whatever. But when she should have stood most steadfastly by Annandale she had turned from him. Had he not implored her forgiveness, and did she not know that all that God requires is that forgiveness be asked? But no. She had been too proud and that pride she had nursed until it was too late, until Annandale had married, with this double tragedy for climax.

It was all her fault, Sylvia told herself. All her own. Had she not abandoned Annandale he would have had no cause to threaten, Fanny would have lived, there would have been no shock to debilitate her and leave her a prey to disease. Fanny's death was at her door.

Companioned by these thoughts for an hour she sat, still and stricken. When she aroused herself it seemed as though before her two figures stood. One said "I am Duty," the other, "I am Grief."

A message from the latter she imparted to Mrs. Price. Many messages not similar but cognate that lady received. Fanny had been very popular. Her popularity the rumor connecting her with Loftus had necessarily impaired. The arrest of her husband for shooting the man, and for shooting him, as it was generally understood, on her account, impaired it still more. In the upper circles the scandalous may be relished, but it is not indorsed. Had Fanny lived, those circles would have visited their displeasure in not visiting her at all. But death is a peacemaker. It comes and where there was war is a truce. By the worldly Fanny was immediately forgiven and by them as quickly forgot.

It was in July that she died. In September Sylvia returned to town. At once she asked Orr to arrange for her a visit to Annandale in the Tombs.

To that he objected. "You know," he said, "that you will have to testify against him."

"Against him!" Sylvia repeated with an air of utter surprise.

"Why, yes. He was here that night. He has admitted it. You will be asked to tell what he said."

In Sylvia's eyes both disdain and acquiescence surged. "And what of it?"

"But," Orr exclaimed, "there is the threat. He made it in the presence of Harris and repeated it in yours."

"He did nothing of the kind."

"But you told me so."

"You are mistaken. I know nothing of any threat whatever."

"Oh," said Orr with a bow, "this is magnificent."

But he meant heroic. In view of the girl's nature it was certainly that. What is more, it was helpful. With Fanny out of the way, the only one left that could testify to any threat was Harris, and Annandale's word was quite as good as his, better even, for the value of the servant's testimony would be weighed in scales in one of which would be the Chronicle's dollars.

Orr said as much to Sylvia, but apparently his views did not seem to her very novel. It became obvious to him that she had thought it all out for herself.

"Besides," she presently and irrelevantly continued, "I am to blame. If I had not been stupid with him, there would have been nothing to threaten about."

That, Orr thought, was rather putting the dots on the i's. But he did not mind. He was pleased with her. His respect for her had increased. Had she been the kind of a cousin to permit such a thing there and then he would have kissed her.

Yet some reward he felt was her due. As a result the interview which she asked he presently arranged. Under conditions which to her were as tragic as they were humiliating she saw Annandale in the visitors' room at the Tombs. The room itself was not absolutely appalling, and though there was a keeper present, he was quite out of earshot, very oblivious, extremely civil and, parenthetically, handsomely paid.

Orr awaited her at the door. When she rejoined him her eyes were wet.

Orr looked at her. A little tune occurred to him. "Sylvia, Sylvia, I'm a-thinking – " But after all, he reflected, Fanny is dead.

Instantly the girl reddened and very distantly, her head in the air, announced, "We are betrothed."

"Ah," said Orr, "ah, indeed! The engagement will be rather long, I fear."

"Oh, Melanchthon, don't say that. Arthur is as innocent as you are. I know you don't believe it, but – "

Orr interrupted her. "It is not a question of what I believe. Independent of your interest in the man he is my client. I owe him a duty. That duty is to get him off, or to do my best to."

"I know you will," Sylvia fervently replied; "I feel it. So does Arthur. Besides, the only one we have to fear is Harris."

Orr smiled grimly. "Harris, I understand, is not very well."

"Not well? What do you mean?" the girl wonderingly inquired.

"I mean," he enigmatically answered, "that next week when I have him on the stand I propose to give him a little medicine."

Then he smiled again, grimly as before, with an air of personal satisfaction.

CHAPTER VIII
THE DEFENDANT TO THE BAR

"HATS off!"

Through the great white room the cry vibrated, followed instantly by another:

"Hear ye, hear ye, all ye having business with the Court of the General Sessions of the City and County of New York, draw near, give attention and ye shall be heard."

Within the Bar, restless as hyenas awaiting their prey, roamed the district attorneys. Against that Bar, crouching there, were Orr and his associate counsel, restless too, but prepared to spring. To the rear were reporters, the flower of newspaperdom, handsome young men dressed to the ears in resplendent collars and astounding cravats. Back of them were the spectators, a solid mass, ladies of every degree except the high one and, with or without them, men whom you would recognize as first-nighters, others whom you would not recognize at all. To the right of the Bar were witnesses for the prosecution, experts in various matters of which gastronomy evidently was one. To the left was the jury, and above, beneath the amber panoply of the Bench, the Recorder sat, an ascetic Solon.

The atmosphere of the room, high ceiled, close packed, was Senegambian. Without you could see, within you could feel, the heat and eagerness of the autumnal sun.

"Arthur Annandale to the Bar!"

Into the court, as though it were a theatre, the defendant strolled, perfectly groomed, the Tombs pallor on his face but none of its dust on his coat, an air of tranquil boredom about him. At his heels was a keeper. He shook hands with Orr, sat down beside him, turned and gave his hat to the keeper, turned again and looked over to a gated inclosure at the right of the Bench where, in a sort of proscenium box, Sylvia sat with her mother.

The entire settings were those of a play. With this difference, it was real, a drama of mud and blood without orchestral accompaniment. After months of preparation, after days of talesmen baiting, on this Indian Summer forenoon the curtain was rising. The jury it had been a job to get. A full hundred were examined, cross-questioned, challenged and rejected before the dozen were boxed. When the last, the twelfth, a cadaverous individual, was accepted the stage was set.

"May it please the Court; Mr. Foreman and gentlemen of the jury."

With three bows and these rituals, Peacock opened for the State, outlining the case of the People, describing the crime, detailing the motive, summarizing the evidence, expressing the wish that the jury would believe the defendant innocent until his guilt had been proved, but declaring that, personally, for his own part, of that guilt he was thoroughly convinced.

Before he had finished Orr was at him. "I object to the District Attorney prejudicing the jury against this gentleman, my client."

That gentleman did not appear to heed. From Sylvia and her mother he had turned to look at the spectators, from them to fabulous beasts that climbed the fluted columns on the walls.

The objection was not sustained.

"And I object to Your Honor's ruling," Orr with a bulldog look threw up at the Bench.

Peacock proceeded. "There, gentlemen, is the crime, there too, the motive. To finish the picture evidence will be adduced."

He sat down. Then getting up, he called the first witness for the People, the Gramercy Park caretaker, who had found the body. The witness was succeeded by others, by the policeman on the beat, by the coroner's physician, by experts and servants.

By turn Orr took them in hand. With some he was curiously perfunctory. Of the caretaker, a meagre old man, with shifty eyes, who appeared very uncomfortable, he asked but four questions.

"When you found the body what did you do?"

"Ran and got the policeman, sir."

"Where did you get him?"

"On Lexington avenue and Twenty-third street, sir."

"Did you find him at once?"

"No, sir, I had to hunt a bit."

"Between the time you found the body and the time you got back how many minutes would you say had elapsed?"

"About ten or fifteen minutes, sir."

"That's all," said Orr.

It was not much. Yet with the policeman, a fat man with a red face and a blue nose, he was even briefer.

"When you reached the park with the last witness, how did you get in?"

"Walked in, sir," the man answered with a grin.

"The gate was open was it?"

"Yes, sir."

"That will do," said Orr.

It was not much either. But with other witnesses, notably with the experts, he fought, he fought with them, fought with Peacock, fought with the Court, would have fought with more had there been more to fight, fought pertinaciously, step by step, reducing testimony to nothing.

Meanwhile the court-room shimmered 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. Peacock 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 refreshing. 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 assured, from an arsenal 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 pass.

Then, after identifying a pistol as the property of Annandale – an exhibit marked A which Peacock 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, "Damn 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 Duchess of Kincardine. When you absconded from there, where was it that the police caught you? Answer me."

From behind the rail objections exploded like shell. 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. Peacock 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, refreshingly civil.

That civility awoke in Peacock 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 coarse as oaths, answers frank as sword thrusts, clashed and resounded. One and all Orr's charges were substantiated. The testimony was damning to Harris, infecting everything he had said. From behind the rail Peacock 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 attitude 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 nobody was quite so sure.

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