Only seven were hanged
He resumed his stride, head bent more than ever, shoulders hunched up.
The judge remained silent. He was sure now that he understood the
mania of the waiter. The man was suffering from some real or
imaginary grievance that had become an obsession and had developed
his argumentation until it was mental disease. To such an unbalanced
mind there was no satisfaction unless his opponent admitted defeat.
It was victory in debate that he desired more than anything. Only
the surrender of an antagonist to his deluded logic would calm him.
The judge watched him with a new interest. Was the man really
insane? Would the law accept a plea of insanity when he was in the
dock? For in the dock the judge intended him to be. Anyhow, there
strode the waiter, a tall man, strongly built, his face wrinkled in
perplexity. And around the table sprawled the members of the Clue
Club entirely unconscious of the situation. The flask of liquid that
was the antidote to their sleep was just beyond the judge's reach.
If only he could obtain command of the circumstances! He coughed and
raised his voice.
"Why be so troubled?" he said in a tone he strove to make persuasive.
"Supposing we adjourn the discussion until after Christmas----"
He was thinking that he would have the man under arrest within
twenty-four hours. But that thought was swept from his mind when the
waiter turned on him fiercely.
"There will not be any adjournment!"
"But we are both tired!"
"You may be. I am not. I came here to convince you, and I shall
convince you! I came here to defeat you, and I shall defeat you! I
came here to convict you, and I shall convict you! I came to force
your admission of defeat and the justice of your conviction. I shall
get this admission!"
There was so much energy in the declaration that the judge saw he was
up against a will equal to his own.
"As a counsel," continued the waiter, with emphasis, "you are a
failure. You have not won a case tonight. But that is not all I
wish. I desire most of all your admission of failure."
The judge bowed understandingly. His diagnosis of this queer
temperament was correct!
"Your obstinacy alone remains to be overcome," pursued the other, his
brows lowering. "You ought to throw up the sponge, but your
mentality is unpliable and is petrified. You raise the excuse that
you have not had time to study your brief. More than anything I
desire to leave you no excuse, no consolation in your defeat. I am
thinking how to proceed."
The judge could not hide a smile that crept round his mouth.
"When I said I had not had time to study my brief," he remarked, "I
hinted that as a judge----"
The waiter interrupted him with a shout as if he divined a way.
"As the prosecutor," he cried, "I have the right to make the final
speech. That is needless since you have no chance to win in the
capacity of counsel. Do I take it you prefer to be regarded as a
judge?"
"I have always been perfectly sanguine of my abilities in my judicial
capacity."
"You are willing to be judge in a case that has not yet been tried?"
"A hypothetical case would be welcomed."
"Or an actual case?"
"All the better."
"You will judge it according to law, in the spirit as well as in the
letter thereof?"
"Without fear or favor, without affection or ill-will, according to
the evidence placed before me, as the law does direct, in the
faithful discharge of my duty to my sovereign lord, the king, and a
true and honest direction to the jury will I give, so help me God!"
"The oath!" cried the waiter.
"Test me!" cried the judge.
The waiter sat down and laid the bludgeon by his right hand.
"I propose," he said, gravely, "to submit to your lordship the basest
crime of all."
CHAPTER X
_The Judgment_
My Lord [began the waiter in an even tone in which there was no trace
of excitement] you will not find the case I am about to submit
anywhere referred to in your minute-book. Your members have not
discussed it. But you may rest assured that I am presenting every
fact, and on these facts I ask your learned judgment. Moreover, I
shall relate the circumstances without any embellishment and without
any intention of playing on your dramatic sense or on your emotions.
If you find me straying from the legal method of presenting the case
I trust you will immediately notify me, even although I am quite
aware that your acute and profound knowledge of jurisprudence will,
at the close, sweep aside any irregularities, redundancies, or
extraneous nonessentials of which I may be guilty.
In order, also, that there may be no prejudice and that the course of
justice may not be colored in the slightest degree, and that the case
about to be stated may be regarded equally as hypothetical or actual,
I suggest that real names and places be not mentioned. It is my
humor to treat this case as a problem for the law to solve, for when
one mentions names and places one is often led into matters of
environment and psychological details that influence us to wrong
inferences.
There is just a third and final preliminary that may be mentioned.
We have considered so many cases in which the black cap has figured
that it would do no harm, and perhaps more than a little good, if we
enumerated the various circumstances in which the danger of the black
cap faces a prisoner. Homicide is accepted in law as the general and
neutral term for the killing of one human being by another human
being [pursued the waiter]. It is true to say that one of the most
anxious points of concern in all systems of jurisprudence dealing
with homicide has been the nature and quality of the responsibility
of the killer to the relatives of the person killed and to the state.
This responsibility has been viewed from many angles--from the
standpoint, for instance, of the interests of the state wherein the
act occurred down to the standpoint of a general consideration of the
sanctity of life. There is also the question of moral guilt involved
in motive and intention.
The old Jewish law was compelled to discriminate in cases of
homicide, as anyone will find by a perusal of the Pentateuch, the
first five books of the Old Testament. In Exodus, Deuteronomy, and
elsewhere the law was laid down governing death by misadventure as
well as death by design.
In English law, criminal homicide comes under three heads--murder,
manslaughter, and _felo de se_, or suicide, by which act a man makes
a felon of himself. At one time there was a system by which every
man's life was actually assessed at a price. If a man was killed,
his chief, or his next of kin, received payment for the loss. Until
later than the Norman Conquest it was customary to levy a fine on any
district where a stranger was found murdered, provided the killer was
not discovered. As the stranger was not known, and therefore had no
relatives to claim him, the procedure was to presume that he was a
Frenchman; and the national exchequer was the financial gainer.
Simple, was it not?
There are times, however, when homicide is regarded as justifiable
and not criminal, such as when killing is done in execution by the
law--that is, the hanging of a murderer; and in war; but as
civilization became more complex the need to discriminate more
carefully than ever became apparent. Never has this need been more
apparent than now. Three great authorities prepared a draft of the
code bill of Sir J. Stephens, and on that draft the present legal
code finds a working model and apparatus.
THE BASEST CRIME OF ALL
Now for our experiment [said the waiter]. You will find the
prototype of the first character of this case in almost any chorus of
West End musical comedy. She was a blonde, a peroxide blonde.
Naturally she was a brunette. Imagine her a girl of a distinctly
temperamental type, childlike but not childish, gay and
light-hearted, with a figure and face that would attract any man in
whose veins red blood coursed.
She was musical to her finger tips. In a day when willowy types were
supposed to be desirable on the stage, she was not willowy, but
retained a contour that enhanced her type of beauty; for beautiful
she certainly was. At the period when this case opens she was in a
touring company--one of the many sent out with London successes so
that the plays, if not the players, of note, may be enjoyed by
provincial audiences.
But before she went she made the acquaintance of a young professional
man who was starting out on a career that was in the future to bring
him fame. He was tall, dark, with a personality that commanded
attention. Like many other young men, he was quite sophisticated.
He knew the West End. He attended plays, especially first nights;
but it was not at any theater that he met this beautiful chorus girl.
As a matter of fact, it was in the street.
It was a small matter that brought them together--a rainy day, the
offer of his umbrella to cross the street in order that she could
attend the rehearsal of the company of which she was a member. He
saw her to the stage door. When, several hours later, the rehearsal
was over, he was waiting to meet her again. They went to tea
together.
He was intoxicated with her beauty and her personality. She was
attracted to him. They met often after this, each meeting bringing
out fresh attractions of the girl and binding the two of them
together in a bond that was as subtle as it was strong.
Did he love her? I do not know. But he desired her. Did she love
him? Here, at least, one is on surer ground. There is no doubt that
she was in love with him. When the time came for her to go away on
her tour of the provincial towns, he was up at the railway depot to
see her off. The city seemed very empty for him when she went; to
her the train seemed very cruel.
The tour was just more than half completed when he could stand it no
longer. He took the train to the town where the play was being
presented and, arriving in the evening, went to a hotel, had dinner,
and went down to the theater.
He saw her the moment the curtain went up. There she was, all
dressed in her stage array, in a costume of historical accuracy that
made her look lovelier than ever. She saw him, too, and the smile
she gave him as he sat in the stalls was compensation to him for the
journey he had made. His mind had been filled with doubts as to the
result of his visit. When he saw that smile he did not doubt more.
He knew that he had her when he chose.
He went round to the stage door during the play and was admitted to
see her. He came back and spent the remainder of the time in the
theater glorying in his conquest. When the show was over he took her
and a friend to supper. He spent the next day entirely in her
company, feeling his way toward the object of his visit. Then he
returned to town. He had left her a book which he asked her to read.
It may be that youth is ever daring, or that present youth is more
daring than youth of the past. But why mince matters? It took some
time, but the end was gained. She came to town at the end of the
tour and he was waiting for her. As they sat in a restaurant in the
West End he asked her a question.
"What about it?"
She hesitated, looking at him so that she might read his soul.
"I will see," she answered.
He knew that he would win, for it was his business to read minds and
analyze words and accents.
He won, too, perhaps because she loved him so deeply. They took a
small flat. It was a marriage unencumbered with legal ceremonies or
social customs.
At least she thought it was a marriage; but she discovered reasons
for doubt. For one thing, he often went out to attend dinners,
social functions, professional engagements. He did not take her