Yet even as she thrilled to the responsive current, Jessica had not been deceived. She felt the pitiful impotence of mere sympathy against the apparent weight of evidence that had frightened her. Surely, surely, if he was to save himself, the truth must come out speedily! But the end of it all was in sight and he had not spoken. To-day as she watched his face, the thought had come to her that perhaps his rea.s.surance had been given only to comfort her and spare her anguish. The thought had come again and again to torture her; only by a great effort had she been able to give her testimony. As the pall of darkness fell upon the court-room, it brought a sense of premonition, as though the incident prefigured the gloomy end. She turned sick, and stumbled down the aisle, feeling that she must reach the outer air.
A pushing handful opened the way to the corridor, and in a moment more she was in the starlit out-of-doors, fighting down her faintness, with the babble of talk behind her and the cool breeze on her cheek.
CHAPTER x.x.xIX
THE UNSUMMONED WITNESS
In the room Jessica had left, the turmoil was simmering down; here and there a match was struck and showed a circle of brightness. The glimmer of one of them lit the countenance of a man who had brushed her sleeve as he entered. It was Hallelujah Jones. The evangelist had prolonged his stay at Smoky Mountain, for the town, thrilling to its drama of crime and judgment, had seemed a fruitful vineyard. He had no local interest in the trial of Hugh Stires, and had not attended its session; but he had been pa.s.sing the place when the lights went out and in curiosity had crowded into the confusion, where now he looked about him with eager interest.
A candle-flame fluttered now, like a golden b.u.t.terfly, on the judge"s desk, another on the table inside the bar. More grew along the walls until the room was bathed in tremulous yellow light. It touched the profile of the prisoner, turned now, for his look had followed Jessica and was fixed questioningly on her empty seat. In the unseeing darkness Harry had held the white carnation to his lips before he drew its stem through his lapel.
The street preacher"s jaw dropped in blank astonishment, for what he saw before him brought irresistibly back another scene that, months before, had bit into his mind. The judge"s high desk turned instantly to a chapel altar, and the table back of the polished railing to a communion table. The minister that had looked across it in the candle-light had worn a white carnation in his b.u.t.tonhole. His face--
Hallelujah Jones started forward with an exclamation. A thousand times his zealot imagination had pictured the recreant clergyman he had unmasked as an outcast, plunging toward the lake of brimstone. Here it was at last in his hand, the end of the story! The worst of criminals, skulking beneath an alias! He sprang up the aisle.
"Wait! wait!" he cried. "I have evidence to give!" He pointed excitedly toward Harry. "This man is not what you think! He is not--"
Forensic thunder loosed itself from the wrathful judge"s desk, and crashed across the stupefied room. His gavel thumped upon the wood. "How dare you," he vociferated, "break in upon the deliberations of this court! I fine you twenty dollars for contempt!"
Felder had leaped to his feet, every sense on the _qui vive_. Like a drowning man he grasped at the straw. What could this man know? He took a bill from his pocket and clapped it down on the clerk"s desk.
"I beg to purge him of contempt," he said, "and call him as a witness."
The district attorney broke in:
"Your Honor, I think I am within my rights in protesting against this unheard-of proceeding. The man is a vagrant of unknown character. His very action proclaims him mentally unbalanced. Beyond all question he can know nothing of this case."
"I have not my learned opponent"s gift of clairvoyance," retorted Felder tartly. "I repeat that I call this man as a witness."
The judge pulled his whiskers and looked at the evangelist in severe annoyance. "Take the stand," he said gruffly.
Hallelujah Jones s.n.a.t.c.hed the Bible from the clerk"s hands and kissed it. Knowledge was burning his tongue. The jury were leaning forward in their seats.
"Have you ever seen the prisoner before?" asked Felder.
"Yes."
"When?"
"When he was a minister of the gospel."
Felder stared. The judge frowned. The jury looked at one another and a laugh ran round the hushed room.
The merriment kindled the evangelist"s distempered pa.s.sion. Sudden anger flamed in him. He leaned forward and shook his hand vehemently at the table where Harry sat, his face as colorless as the flower he wore.
"That man"s name," he blazed, "is not Hugh Stires! It is a cloak he has chosen to cover his shame! He is the Reverend Henry Sanderson of Aniston!"
CHAPTER XL
FATE"S WAY
Harry"s pulses had leaped with excitement when the street preacher"s first exclamation startled the court-room; now they were beating as though they must burst. He was not to finish the losing struggle. The decision was to be taken from his hands. Fate had interfered. This bigot who had once been the means of his undoing, was to be the _deus ex machina_. Through the stir about him he heard the crisp voice of the district attorney:
"I ask your Honor"s permission, before this extraordinary witness is examined further," he said caustically, "to read an item printed here which has a bearing upon the testimony." He held in his hand a newspaper which, earlier in the afternoon, with cynical disregard of Felder"s tactics, he had been casually perusing.
"I object, of course," returned Felder grimly.
"Objection overruled!" snapped the irritated judge. "Read it, sir."
Holding the newspaper to a candle, the lawyer read in an even voice, prefacing his reading with the journal"s name and date:
"This city, which was aroused in the night by the burning of St.
James Chapel, will be greatly shocked to learn that its rector, the Reverend Henry Sanderson, who has been for some months on a prolonged vacation, was in the building at the time, and now lies at the city hospital, suffering from injuries from which it is rumored there is grave doubt of his recovery."
In the t.i.tter that rippled the court-room Harry felt his heart bound and swell. Under the succinct statement he clearly discerned the fact. He saw the pitfall into which Hugh had fallen--the trap into which he himself had sent him on that fatal errand with the ruby ring on his finger. "Grave doubt of his recovery!"--a surge of relief swept over him to his finger-tips. Dead men can not be brought to bar--so Jessica would escape shame. With Hugh pa.s.sed beyond human justice, he could declare himself. The bishop had guarded his secret, and saved the parish from an unwelcome scandal. He could explain--could tell him that illness and unbalance lay beneath that chapel game! He could take up his career! He would be free to go back--to be himself again--to be Jessica"s--if Hugh died! The reading voice drummed in his ears:
"The facts have not as yet been ascertained, but it seems clear that the popular young minister returned to town unexpectedly last night, and was asleep in his study when the fire started. His presence in the building was unguessed until too late, and it was by little short of a miracle that he was brought out alive.
"As we go to press we learn that Mr. Sanderson"s condition is much more hopeful than was at first reported."
Harry"s heart contracted as if a giant hand had clutched it. His elation fell like a rotten tree girdled at the roots. If Hugh _did not_ die! He chilled as though in a spray of liquid air. Hugh"s escape--the chance his conscience had given him, was cut off. He had not betrayed him when the way was open; how could he do so now when flight was barred? If to deliver him then to the hangman would have been cowardice, how much more cowardly now, when it was to save himself, and when the other was helpless? And the law demanded its victim!
As a drowning man sees flit before him the panorama of his life, so in this clarifying instant these lurid pictures of the tangle of his past flashed across Harry"s mental vision.
The judge reached for the newspaper the lawyer held, ran his eye over it, and brought his gavel down with an angry snort.
"Take him away," he said. "His testimony is ordered stricken from the records. The fine is remitted, Mr. Felder--we can"t make you responsible for lunatics. Bailiff, see that this man has no further chance to disturb these proceedings. The court stands adjourned."
CHAPTER XLI
FELDER WALKS WITH DOCTOR BRENT