Читать книгу The Holladay Case: A Tale - Burton Egbert Stevenson - Страница 9

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From the breathless silence that followed her answer, she saw that she had somehow dealt her mistress a heavy blow, and the sobs burst out beyond control, choking her. I could see how my chief's face turned livid. He had driven another rivet in the chain—just the one it needed to hold it firmly together. My head was whirling. Could it be possible, after all, that this gentle, cultured girl was really such a fiend at heart that she could strike down. … I put the thought from me. It was monstrous, unbelievable!

The coroner and the district attorney were whispering together, and I saw the former glance from the blood-stained handkerchief on the desk before him to the sobbing woman on the stand. It needed only that—her identification of that square of cambric—to complete the evidence. He hesitated a moment, said another word or two to Singleton, then straightened up again in his chair. Perhaps he thought the chain was strong enough; perhaps he saw only that the witness was in no condition to go on.

"Anything further, Mr. Royce?" he asked.

"Not at present, sir," answered our junior hoarsely. I think he was just beginning fully to realize how desperate our case was.

"We will dismiss the witness, then, temporarily," said the coroner. "We shall probably recall her later on."

The maid was led back to the witness room on the verge of hysteria, and Goldberg looked over the papers on his desk.

"We have one more witness," he said at last, "Miss Holladay's coachman, and perhaps a little testimony in rebuttal. If you wish to adjourn for lunch, Mr. Royce, I'm quite ready to do so."

"Thank you, sir," said my chief, welcoming any opportunity to pull himself together and prepare a plan of defense. "I do wish it."

"Very well, then; we'll adjourn till two o'clock," and he pushed back his chair.

"May I have one word with you, sir?" asked Mr. Royce.

"Certainly."

"I should like to see Miss Holladay a few moments in private. We wish, of course, to arrange our rebuttal."

The coroner looked at him for a moment with eyes in which just a tinge of curiosity flickered.

"I'll be very glad to allow you to see her in private," he answered readily. "I regret greatly that we couldn't find you last night, so that you could have opportunity to prepare for this hearing. I feel that, in a way, we haven't been quite fair to you, though I don't see how delay could have altered matters, and, in a case of this kind, prompt action is important. I had no intention of placing Miss Holladay on the witness stand, so I thought it best to proceed at once with the inquest. You must admit, sir, that, as the case stands, there's only one course open to me."

"I fear so," assented the other sadly. "It's a most incomprehensible case. The chain of evidence seems absolutely complete, and yet I'm convinced—as every sane man must be—that there is in it some fatal flaw, which, once discovered, will send the whole structure tottering. It must be my business to find that flaw."

"Strange things happen in this world, Mr. Royce," observed Singleton with a philosophy born of experience.

"The impossible never happens, sir!" retorted our junior. "I hope to show you that this belongs in that category."

"Well, I hope you will," said the district attorney. "I'd be glad to find that someone else is guilty."

"I'll do my best," and Mr. Royce turned to me. "Lester, you'd better go and get some lunch. You look quite done up."

"Shall I bring you something?" I asked. "Or, better still, have a meal ready for you in half an hour? Rotin's is just around the corner."

He would have refused, I think, had not the coroner interfered.

"You'd better go, Mr. Royce," he said. "You're looking done up yourself. Perhaps you can persuade Miss Holladay to eat something. I'm sure she needs it."

"Very well, then; have two meals ready in half an hour, Lester," he said, "and a lunch we can bring back with us. I'll go to Miss Holladay now, and then come direct to Rotin's."

He hurried away after the coroner, and I walked slowly over to Rotin's to give the necessary orders. I chose a table in a snug corner, picked up a paper, and tried to read. Its one great item of news was the Holladay case, and I grew hot with anger, as I saw how unquestioningly, how complacently, it accepted the theory of the daughter's guilt. Still, I asked myself, was it to blame? Was anyone to blame for thinking her guilty after hearing the evidence? How could one escape it? Why, even I——

Preposterous! I tried to reason calmly; to find an opening in the net. Yet, how complete it was! The only point we had gained, so far, was that the mysterious visitor had asked for Mr. Holladay, not for her father—and what an infinitesimal point it was! Supposing there had been a quarrel, an estrangement, would not she naturally have used those very words? After all, did not the black eyes, the full lips, the deep-colored cheeks bespeak a strong and virile temperament, depth of emotion, capacity for swift and violent anger? But what cause could there be for a quarrel so bitter, so fierce, that it should lead to such a tragedy? What cause? And then, suddenly, a wave of light broke in upon me. There could be only one—yes, but there could be one! Capacity for emotion meant capacity for passion. If she had a lover, if she had clung to him despite her father! I knew his reputation for severity, for cold and relentless condemnation. Here was an explanation, certainly!

And then I shook myself together angrily. Here was I, reasoning along the theory of her guilt—trying to find a motive for it! I remembered her as I had seen her often, driving with her father; I recalled the many stories I had heard of their devotion; I reflected how her whole life, so far as I knew it, pointed to a nature singularly calm and self-controlled, charitable and loving. As to the lover theory, did not the light in her eyes which had greeted our junior disprove that, at once and forever? Certainly, there was some fatal flaw in the evidence, and it was for us to find it.

I leaned my head back against the wall with a little sigh of relief. What a fool I had been! Of course, we should find it! Mr. Royce had spoken the words, the district attorney had pointed out the way. We had only to prove an alibi! And the next witness would do it. Her coachman had only to tell where he had driven her, at what places she had stopped, and the whole question would be settled. At the hour the crime was committed, she had doubtless been miles away from Wall Street! So the question would be settled—settled, too, without the necessity of Miss Holladay undergoing the unpleasant ordeal of cross-examination.

"It is a most extraor-rdinary affair," said a voice at my elbow, and I turned with a start to see that the chair just behind me had been taken by a man who was also reading an account of the crime. He laid the paper down, and caught my eye. "A most extraor-rdinary affair!" he repeated, appealing to me.

I nodded, merely glancing at him, too preoccupied to notice him closely. I got an impression of a florid face, of a stout, well-dressed body, of an air unmistakably French.

"You will pardon me, sir," he added, leaning a little forward. "As a stranger in this country, I am much inter-rested in your processes of law. This morning I was present at the trial—I per-rceived you there. It seemed to me that the young lady was in—what you call—a tight place."

He spoke English very well, with an accent of the slightest. I glanced at him again, and saw that his eyes were very bright and that they were fixed upon me intently.

"It does seem so," I admitted, loth to talk, yet not wishing to be discourteous.

"The ver' thing I said to myself!" he continued eagerly. "The—what you call—coe-encidence of the dress, now!"

I did not answer; I was in no humor to discuss the case.

"You will pardon me," he repeated persuasively, still leaning forward, "but concer-rning one point I should like much to know. If she is thought guilty what will occur?"

"She will be bound over to the grand jury," I explained.

"That is, she will be placed in prison?"

"Of course."

"But, as I understand your law, she may be released by bondsmen."

"Not in a capital case," I said; "not in a case of this kind, where the penalty may be death."

"Ah, I see," and he nodded slowly. "She would then not be again released until after she shall have been proved innocent. How great a time would that occupy?"

"I can't say—six months—a year, perhaps."

"Ah, I see," he said again, and drained a glass of absinthe he had been toying with. "Thank you, ver' much, sir."

He arose and went slowly out, and I noted the strength of his figure, the short neck——

The waiter came with bread and butter, and I realized suddenly that it was long past the half-hour. Indeed, a glance at my watch showed me that nearly an hour had gone. I waited fifteen minutes longer, ate what I could, and, taking a box-lunch under my arm, hurried back to the coroner's office. As I entered it, I saw a bowed figure sitting at the table, and my heart fell as I recognized our junior. His whole attitude expressed a despair absolute, past redemption.

"I've brought your lunch, Mr. Royce," I said, with what lightness I could muster. "The proceedings will commence in half an hour—you'd better eat something," and I opened the box.

He looked at it for a moment, and then began mechanically to eat.

"You look regularly done up," I ventured. "Wouldn't I better get you a glass of brandy? That'll tone you up."

"All right," he assented listlessly, and I hurried away on the errand.

The brandy brought a little color back to his cheeks, and he began to eat with more interest.

"Must I order lunch for Miss Holladay?" I questioned.

"No," he said. "She said she didn't wish any."

He relapsed again into silence. Plainly, he had received some new blow during my absence.

"After all," I began, "you know we've only to prove an alibi to knock to pieces this whole house of cards."

"Yes, that's all," he agreed. "But suppose we can't do it, Lester?"

"Can't do it?" I faltered. "Do you mean——?"

"I mean that Miss Holladay positively refuses to say where she spent yesterday afternoon."

"Does she understand the—the necessity?" I asked.

"I pointed it out to her as clearly as I could. I'm all at sea, Lester."

Well, if even he were beginning to doubt, matters were indeed serious!

"It's incomprehensible!" I sighed, after a moment's confused thought. "It's——"

"Yes—past believing."

"But the coachman——"

"The coachman's evidence, I fear, won't help us much—rather the reverse."

I actually gasped for breath—I felt like a drowning man from whose grasp the saving rope had suddenly, unaccountably, been snatched.

"In that case——" I began, and stopped.

"Well, in that case?"

"We must find some other way out," I concluded lamely.

"Is there another way, Lester?" he demanded, wheeling round upon me fiercely. "Is there another way? If there is, I wish to God you'd show it to me!"

"There must be!" I protested desperately, striving to convince myself. "There must be; only, I fear, it will take some little time to find."

"And meanwhile, Miss Holladay will be remanded! Think what that will mean to her, Lester!"

I had thought. I was desperate as he—but to find the flaw, the weak spot in the chain, required, I felt, a better brain than mine. I was lost in a whirlwind of perplexities.

"Well, we must do our best," he went on more calmly, after a moment. "I haven't lost hope yet—chance often directs these things. Besides, at worst, I think Miss Holladay will change her mind. Whatever her secret, it were better to reveal it than to spend a single hour in the Tombs. She simply must change her mind! And thanks, Lester, for your thoughtfulness. You've put new life into me."

I cleared away the débris of the lunch, and a few moments later the room began to fill again. At last the coroner and district attorney came in together, and the former rapped for order.

"The inquest will continue," he said, "with the examination of John Brooks, Miss Holladay's coachman."

I can give his evidence in two words. His mistress had driven directly down the avenue to Washington Square. There she had left the carriage, bidding him wait for her, and had continued southward into the squalid French quarter. He had lost sight of her in a moment, and had driven slowly about for more than two hours before she reappeared. She had ordered him to drive home as rapidly as he could, and he had not stopped until he reached the house. Her gown? Yes, he had noticed that it was a dark red. He had not seen her face, for it was veiled. No, he had never before driven her to that locality.

Quaking at heart, I realized that only one person could extricate Frances Holladay from the coil woven about her. If she persisted in silence, there was no hope for her. But that she should still refuse to speak was inconceivable, unless——

"That is all," said the coroner. "Will you cross-examine the witness, Mr. Royce?"

My chief shook his head silently, and Brooks left the stand.

Again the coroner and Singleton whispered together.

"We will recall Miss Holladay's maid," said the former at last.

She was on the stand again in a moment, calmer than she had been, but deadly pale.

"Are your mistress's handkerchiefs marked in any way?" Goldberg asked, as she turned to him.

"Some of them are, yes, sir, with her initials, in the form of a monogram. Most of them are plain."

"Do you recognize this one?" and he handed her the ghastly piece of evidence.

I held my breath while the woman looked it over, turning it with trembling fingers.

"No, sir!" she replied emphatically, as she returned it to him.

"Does your mistress possess any handkerchiefs that resemble this one?"

"Oh, yes, sir; it's an ordinary cambric handkerchief of good quality such as most ladies use."

I breathed a long sigh of relief; here, at least, fortune favored us.

"That is all. Have you any questions, Mr. Royce?"

Again our junior shook his head.

"That concludes our case," added the coroner. "Have you any witnesses to summon, sir?"

What witnesses could we have? Only one—and I fancied that the jurymen were looking at us expectantly. If our client were indeed innocent, why should we hesitate to put her on the stand, to give her opportunity to defend herself, to enable her to shatter, in a few words, this chain of circumstance so firmly forged about her? If she were innocent, would she not naturally wish to speak in her own behalf? Did not her very unwillingness to speak argue——

"Ask for a recess," I whispered. "Go to Miss Holladay, and tell her that unless she speaks——"

But before Mr. Royce could answer, a policeman pushed his way forward from the rear of the room and handed a note to the coroner.

"A messenger brought this a moment ago, sir," he explained.

The coroner glanced at the superscription and handed it to my chief.

"It's for you, Mr. Royce," he said.

I saw that the address read,