Only seven were hanged
concerned. One cannot argue with a mad dog. One just destroys it.
Criminal characteristics must be extirpated.
The judge sat back in his chair and looked at the waiter, who had not
moved during the recital.
"I think," said the judge, "that there can be no two opinions in
regard to that murder. You must allow me credit for having presented
a case that demands the retention of the judgment of death, if
unbridled barbarism is to be held in check at all. I claim the
return to consciousness of the secretary."
The waiter stirred himself and looked up.
"Your claim is premature," he said, quietly. "Ammar Baddan was
justified in killing John Hamlin."
The judge could hardly believe his ears.
"I am speaking according to the code of honor that ruled Ammar
Baddan," went on the waiter. "Let me place that code before you and
also give you the real reason that the murder took place. It is
perhaps more than was to be expected that Ammar Baddan would give
that reason. It would have meant his own humiliation."
"Humiliation cannot be compared to murder," cried the judge. "We all
bear humiliation, but we do not murder the people who humiliate us!"
"That is true," smiled the waiter, "else you would be making an
attempt to kill me this very moment. But I speak of two different
codes of honor. Has it struck you that the Tamil god you have
mentioned has functions other than telling his followers when to
undertake a venture? Among his attributes--according to his
believers--are those of being able to destroy the foes of his
worshipers, through the worshipers themselves. They strike and the
god protects their souls, if not their bodies. One of the highest
aims of any good Brahman is to raise himself in the universal
gradation, and to do this he must subject the senses and life itself
if necessary. Ammar Baddan was but following out the sacrificial
system in the _kalpa-sutras_."
"I do not follow you," said the judge, huskily.
"I will explain more fully, and shortly. The Tamil Book of Wisdom is
called the _Naladiyar_. It enjoins rigid adherence to its teaching.
There are four hundred quatrains in it. The rules of life are as
severe as the Christian teaching--but I beg your pardon, white
civilization does not know much about Christianity. Among the
injunctions given the high-caste Indians are those to see that no
gossip, no humiliation, besmirches the honor of their fathers' names.
Poor Ammar Baddan was betwixt two terrible alternatives. If he
allowed his father's, and his own, name to be sullied, he might
escape a penalty here, but he would endure countless years of
retarded development in the hereafter. Which was he to choose?"
"He must not murder!"
"But one of his codes distinctly told him that it was better to
sacrifice than to endure humiliation from his deities! Would the
gods not make up to him any pain he endured here, even if he died?"
"But what was his humiliation?"
"Answer me first this: are not most religious systems based on the
theory that it is better to suffer here in order to obtain
advancement in the next world?"
"Yes, I agree to that."
"Supposing such a choice were given you, which would you take?"
"I would keep the laws of my land."
"But supposing you were in a land where the laws were opposed to all
you had been taught as sacred and right? Would you keep the laws of
that land?"
"It is a hypothetical question. I do not see what point you are
making."
"No, you say so, but you do. And you do not care to make a brave
answer. But Ammar Baddan was a brave man. He saw according to his
light, and he chose. It is the eternal clash between one's ideas of
justice and the thing we call life. Listen to me. I shall tell you
why Ammar Baddan killed John Hamlin, and despised your law though
that law slew him."
"I have been waiting to hear."
"Hear, then. There is a code in Ammar Baddan's ethics that says that
if a wife proves unfaithful it is better that the mouths of gossipers
be stopped than that her husband's name be dragged in the mire, and
his father's name, too. Ammar Baddan visited the merchant Taylor for
two purposes. One was to get the carpet. But it was not the main
one. It was to see if Taylor was likely to do any gossiping. He
saw, according to your own words, that Taylor, being married, would
be glad to see no more of Ammar Baddan and Ammar Baddan's wife. That
is to say, Taylor, for his own sake, would not gossip. The secret
that was eating at Ammar Baddan's heart was safe so far as Taylor was
concerned."
"You mean to say----"
"That from the moment Ammar Baddan heard from his wife that the
carpet had hung in Taylor's bedroom there arose in Ammar Baddan's
mind a terrible fear and agony. I do not know whether Taylor was
guilty of what Ammar Baddan suspected. It may have been that Ammar
Baddan received a confession from his wife. Who shall ever know?
And yet, I do not think so, or she would have told the defending
counsel. A Tamil does not expect such a confession. He would never
ask for one. But his mind brooded on the fact that she knew the
carpet hung in Taylor's bedroom. How could she know that? Ammar
Baddan's Tamil mind formed its own conclusion.
"There were only four people who could know the dreadful truth. Thus
Ammar Baddan would argue. Taylor had shown that the past was better
unspoken. Therefore Taylor would never voice it. Of these four
people only one might gossip. Are not servants given to gossip?
Ammar Baddan probably asked John Hamlin a question and, on the
answer, killed him for his father's good name, for his own good name,
and for his wife's future. Thus there would be no gossip in the
market place and the house of Baddan would be unsullied. Quaint,
perhaps. All things in this world are quaint when looked at from
unusual angles.
"Has the judgment-of-death code a right to supersede a religious
code? Who are you to say that your law is more just in the ultimate
end than an accepted sacred law? How do you know that Ammar Baddan
is not now far advanced in the scheme of things in the other world?
You made a felon of a religious enthusiast."
The waiter lifted the glass that was near the elbow of the
unconscious secretary and placed it near the bludgeon on the table.
"One point to me," he said in a tone of grim finality.
CHAPTER III
_The Waiter States His First Case_
"I see," said the waiter as he glanced at the clouded features of the
judge, "that you grudge me the first point. If you have any
objection to my claim, please state it at once, for it is now my turn
to present a case."
"I cannot admit that murder, even for a religious object, ought to go
unpunished," replied the judge.
"Who said murder ought to go unscathed? We were not discussing that
at all. We were discussing the right of your penal code to take
life. If you still cling to Biblical authority for taking life, why
do you not believe in the blood atonement for sins and all the rites
of altar sacrifice? You have the precedent of Isaac and his son."
"That is carrying things to the extreme," cried the judge, irritably.
"The teachings of the New Testament are what guide us----"
"Why are you so illogical as to confound the two parts of the Bible?
You will find no authority in the New Testament for taking life. The
reverse is the case. I could quote many texts in this connection,
but I will not weary you. I have already said that Western
civilization does not understand Christianity. If it does, then it
is guilty of the most colossal hypocrisy man can imagine. But we
stray from the issue. Have you any other objection to make?"
The judge wrinkled his face and pondered for a short time, his eyes
roving thoughtfully over the still forms of his fellow members.
"Supposing I concede you Ammar Baddan," he said, "what is your next
case? I shall be glad to hear it. For I am sure that Baddan's case
is exceptional in its elements and the same conditions cannot apply
to any other in my recollection. I hope you will not inflict on me
another ethical or religious problem."
"I can assure you on that at once," smiled the waiter. "As a matter
of fact, I intend to quote all my cases from the minute-book now
before you."
"Really! That gives me confidence. I flatter myself that I know
them and in no other does the law, as I interpret it, err and inflict
what the majority of people would, by any stretch of imagination,
call an injustice."
"You certainly flatter yourself," retorted the waiter, "as I shall
now do my best to prove."
The waiter toyed for a moment with the glass from which the secretary
had drunk and a queer smile played round his mouth. The judge,
watching him narrowly, and with a slightly nervous feeling, observed
that the man's fingers were of an extraordinary length, the whole
hand, indeed, though fine, suggested tremendous strength. Quite
unconsciously the judge's eyes dropped to his own hand. He too had
long, carefully manicured fingers, but while they narrowed toward the
tips, just like those of the waiter, they did not give the same
expression of power. Raising his eyes to the face of the waiter, the
judge was aware that the latter was gazing fixedly at him. The judge
coughed, slipped a lozenge into his mouth, and gave one of his usual,
hardly perceptible nods, signifying that he was ready to listen.
"My lord," immediately began the waiter, "there are one or two
observations I desire to make which, though they may appear
irrelevant, have nevertheless a bearing on the case which I intend to
present before you. In this instance I must accept a rather peculiar
standpoint, which, when I have finished, you will no doubt appreciate.
"May I deal with your statement that in no other case in your
knowledge does the law inflict an injustice? Does it not seem
terrible to think that in the case of capital punishment there can
never be any recompense by the law or the state? If a miscarriage
takes place there can be no apology, no admission of error, no
restitution. Your law, which hangs a man by the neck until he is
dead, has the impudence and the horribly blasphemous offensiveness to
provide him with a parson whose spirit--if he is a decent
man--revolts at the thought of trying to smuggle a criminal out of
the hands of the devil and up the back stairs to heaven at express
speed; and, while it feigns, with its tongue in its cheek, an anxiety
for his soul, yet regards his body as so polluted that it buries him
in a limed coffin that he may rot rapidly.
"Fresh evidence may come before the authorities who, even if they
have secret regrets, can recall nothing of the judgment that is
irrevocable. The stain of the scaffold is on his name and on his
friends' names forever."
"The law takes every possible care to collect its evidence and you
are making reckless statements," interrupted the judge; but the
waiter raised his hand impressively.
"All these plausible anodynes to soothe any opposition," continued
the waiter, "have been heard previously. They are platitudes. Let
us come to facts. There is the frightful injustice of the sentence
of Oscar Slater for the murder of an old woman in Glasgow. He was
found guilty, sentenced to be hanged, then reprieved and spent more
than eighteen years in prison at Peterhead before his innocence was
established. His case would never have received a second
consideration had it not been for the unfaltering pressure brought to
bear on the authorities by Sir A. Conan Doyle and others.
"There was the classic case of the two men in the Midlands who went
through a similar ghastly trial for alleged murder and were sentenced
similarly, were reprieved similarly, and then were set free because
they were innocent.