The Cheat (Holman)/Chapter 24
Special Attorney David Banning hinted by the difficulty with which he restrained the smile upon his thin face upon the second morning of Dudley Drake's trial that he had a very special sensation in store for the large audience and his friends, the reporters. Banning was very well pleased with himself. The evening papers had been crammed with news of the case. There were photographs, which he had graciously furnished, of himself and sketches made on the spot of Carmelita, with especial note of her stylish black gown and toque, of Dudley, of Lawyer Kendall, and of Judge McIntyre. Banning was sorry he had been unable to furnish his friends, the reporters, with some spicier aspects of the case, but he had been afraid to put the most romantic figure in the room, Carmelita Drake, upon the stand for fear her testimony, while derogatory to herself, would on the whole aid the prisoner's cause. Had Kendall called her as a witness for the defense, he, Banning, would have taken great pleasure in hurling mud at her.
But the reporters had done very well by themselves without the handicap of the facts. They had all but announced in as many words that Rao-Singh was Carmelita's lover. "On very intimate terms" was the favorite locution in describing their relations. And a sob sister had written a touching fantasy in the Freudian manner in which she proved that women of hot Latin temperament are never satisfied with the ardor of American husbands but must inevitably turn to men of Latin or tropical appeal if their love-life is to be satisfied—with references to the Drake-Rao-Singh case to prove the point.
Fortunately newspapers were not allowed in Dudley's cell and Carmelita was too distracted to remember that there was a normal world in which such things as newspapers existed.
The attendance on the second day, which promised the climax of the trial, was greater than on the first, Banning noted with satisfaction. The press tables were crowded until some of the reporters were obliged to stand. There was not a vacant chair among the seats of the morbid, and many had been turned away by the perspiring bailiff.
Even before Dudley was escorted from his cell or Gordon Kendall had appeared, Carmelita walked down the center aisle, was admitted through the little gate by an attendant, and took the same seat under the judge's bench which she had occupied the previous day. She was anxious to avoid as far as possible those cruelly curious eyes that had come to gloat over her husband's fate. She hardly raised her eyes to greet Kendall and his assistant when they arrived. For Dudley, escorted in by the bailiff, she summoned a warm smile which she was pathetically anxious to make reassuring. He responded and pressed her hand.
Dudley scanned the front row on the other side of the rail and turned uneasily to Kendall.
"My uncle is not here to-day?" He was disappointed. He felt that he would need Sanford Drake's cool head and good sense—for Carmelita, if not for himself—before that day was over.
"I haven't seen him," Kendall replied. "He'll be along presently, I fancy." But Sanford Drake did not appear, and his absence filled Dudley with a vague unrest. Had the financier deemed discretion the better part of valor and deserted the sinking ship while there was yet time? No; there was some more honorable explanation than that. Dudley was sure of it.
The courtroom rose as the red-faced Judge McIntyre, who hoped the trial would be over early so that he could get to his golf, entered. The monotonous "Oyez, oyez" rang through the hot room. The bailiff, summoned by the judge, listened respectfully to his whispers and, securing the window pole from the corner, opened a neglected window. So intent were the eyes of the audience and the jury upon the bailiff's manipulation of the long, wobbly pole that no one seemed to note the silent entrance of Rao-Singh at the rear of the courtroom. Banning's sensation as he announced his first witness of the day, "Prince Rao-Singh," with a flourish backward toward the tall, dark, turbaned Hindu, was as stunning as he could have desired.
The judge rapped violently with his gavel to quell the excited buzz that followed this announcement. Rao-Singh, pale, sweeping the court with a haughty, almost insolent smile, made his way slowly and with seeming great difficulty down the aisle toward the witness chair, assisted by Dhinn at his elbow and a cane in his other hand. A physician might have ventured the assertion that the Hindu could walk perfectly well by himself. Except for his paleness, there was no evidence that he had lately been at the point of death. His features were naturally gaunt.
Rao-Singh mounted into the witness chair and handed his cane to his servant. He was dressed in ordinary American business clothes except for the pale blue turban that bound his head. His beady eyes flickered down for an instant and rested upon Carmelita, who looked, startled, at him, as if she were viewing a ghost. She recoiled a little under his scrutiny. Dudley, arms folded, was looking straight ahead. Kendall was surprised but offered a silent, grudging tribute to Banning's strategy. This Hindu might be thoroughly well. Probably his wound, after all, had been a superficial one. Banning had kept him in the hospital—or perhaps it was the Hindu's idea—and not ventured to produce him the first day. Now, with the case already won, he had brought him there to testify for the prosecution, preferring to take no chances.
As for Rao-Singh, he had come for his triumph.
He was sworn in. "Now, Your Highness, do you recognize the prisoner?" Banning's manner was a little obsequious. He pointed to Dudley.
"Yes, he is Dudley Drake." Rao-Singh followed Banning's finger with a malignant eye and his voice was deeply guttural.
"Do you recognize him as the person who fired the shot that wounded you?"
Rao-Singh could not forbear a quick glance at the cringing Carmelita. She was so completely in his power now. He had but to tell the truth. But Drake had seemed so anxious to rush into trouble. On the whole, he would take more pleasure in sending him to prison. The American had neatly wrapped the balk and chain around his own leg—well, he would not deny him the key that would turn the lock.
"Yes, Dudley Drake shot me."
Banning, with a triumphant look at Kendall, indicated that he was finished with the witness, that he would gladly turn him over to the defense for cross-examination. But Kendall's hands were tied. He would only injure an already hopeless cause, if that were possible, by permitting this Hindu to seal his client's fate even more securely. He waived the right to examine him.
Rao-Singh, helped down from the witness box by Dhinn and his cane, did not leave the courtroom. There was a vacant chair just over the rail from Banning's table beside the two corpulent Hindus who had attended both sessions of the trial, in the first row of audience seats. Rao-Singh, as if by a prearranged plan, turned in there, and his countrymen rose to let him pass. He sat down and looked out upon the proceedings much as a conquering general surveys the battlefield he has just won.
"The prosecution rests," announced Banning.
Kendall called his only witness—the prisoner. The jurymen shifted in their positions. The prosecution having offered them a dramatie moment, the defense was matching it with another. Dudley Drake was going to testify in his own behalf. Carmelita could not keep her eyes from him as he mounted the witness stand firmly. He could so easily save himself. Why did he not tell the truth? He was too fine, too good to sacrifice himself this way!
Kendall was speaking, "Mr. Drake, will you give us a frank account of your part in what happened in Prince Rao-Singh's study on the evening of Monday, August 15, the night he was shot?" Dudley wondered wearily if he had made a mistake in consenting to Kendall's urging that he testify for himself. Was it necessary to harry him any longer? He was so tired and utterly sick at heart. Let them sentence him, throw him into prison, ruin his life, but get it over with quickly. Was Kendall hoping that even yet he would come out with the secret he had been concealing?
"I went to Rao-Singh's study to talk with him," he repeated monotonously the story he had concocted to appease Kendall. "We quarreled. He seized the gun from his desk drawer. We struggled. The gun went off and he fell to the floor. I saw that he had been shot in the side and summoned his servants. The rest you know."
It seemed to Carmelita that at last she could stand it no longer. She must shriek out the truth. She scanned the jury box and saw only incredulity and hostility on the faces of the men and women. They would condemn him.
Kendall had played his only possible card in the deck that had been stacked against him from the start—and lost. The veteran lawyer mopped his brow with his handkerchief. It was no use. He could get nothing more out of the witness. He turned him over to Banning, who seized upon him like a cat who has at last maneuvered into a position to pounce upon a particularly juicy mouse.
"Why did you go to Prince Rao-Singh's house on the night of August 15?" he snapped at Dudley.
"I decline to answer."
"What was the cause of the quarrel which you say you had with him?"
"I decline to answer." Dudley's jaw was set. He hardly seemed to be hearing the questions hurled at him, but he answered in a low, steady voice.
Banning made a motion of mock exasperation in the direction of the jury as if to say, "You see, he hasn't a leg to stand on. He is afraid to answer me."
And then he put his final question, "Am I to understand then that you decline to furnish this court with one single motive that would explain your invasion of Prince Rao-Singh's house? That you decline to state any reason whatever for this cowardly assault upon a defenseless man in his own home?"
Dudley raised his head wearily and faced his tormentor, "I shot him—that's absolutely all I care to say."
To Carmelita, sitting on the edge of her chair, digging her two hands into the table in front of her until the knuckles were white, it seemed that she must scream out that an injustice was being done. She swept the jury with her agonized eyes and she saw that their minds were made up. There was only one verdict, "Guilty!" and no escape. She did not hear Dudley's last words nor the curt dismissal of the witness by Banning. Dudley was stumbling past her to his chair, his shoulders slumped, his whole body like a taut spring that has been at last relaxed. A great wave of love and pity surged out of her. No, no, she could not let him do it! And suddenly the path of duty gleamed bright and broad ahead of her.
Banning was announcing to the judge that the "prosecution rests" when she sprang to her feet, eyes flashing, every nerve on the qui vive. Dudley, sensing what was going to happen, made a quick motion to catch her wrist. But she swept him aside.
"I am the guilty one!" she cried.
Her voice was a primitive, choking, half-hysterical scream.
It struck the courtroom like a thunderclap.
There was a stunned silence as she groped her way up to the witness-chair and stood there quivering with emotion.
"I shot him. My husband is innocent. He has been trying to protect me. But I can't let him go to prison—I can't!" She was shaken by sobs and she wondered if she were going to faint. But she recovered her grip upon herself and her voice rang out firmly. She was facing the jury. "I needed money desperately. I borrowed it from Rao-Singh and when I went to pay it back alone in his study—he—attacked me. I seized his gun to defend myself. In the desperate struggle the gun went off—he was shot. It was an accident, but if you would still say that I shot him—"
She seized her gown at the left shoulder and ripped it savagely to her waist.
She turned her exposed back to the jury. She pointed to the red Bengal tiger scar, where the fiendish hate of Rao-Singh had branded her, lividly disfiguring her back forever.
"—this is my defense! It is the seal which he burns upon all of his possessions. He tried to make me his. When he couldn't, he overcame by brute force and branded me—and I shot him!"
The courtroom was in an uproar. Half of the jury was out of their seats. The spectators were all up staring, buzzing. Judge McIntyre was pounding fiercely with his gavel for order with no more effect than if the heavy mallet had been a feather. Rao-Singh sat gazing at Carmelita incredulously, sensing that the tide was turning. Carmelita had been a lovely object of pity to most of the courtroom ever since the trial started. This Hindu fiend had—the horrifying scar upon her white shoulder—the sudden stunning drama of it—
A young voice rang out loud and clear: "Lynch him!" It was enough. The ominous murmur that had denoted the mob spirit was germinating had found a nucleus. A husky farm-hand in the same row with Rao-Singh struck at him heavily with his fist. The Indian arose quickly, very quickly for a man as lame as he had purported to be, his two Hindu associates with him. They started to make their way toward the rear of the room. A score of flaying fists blocked their way. A chair, five chairs, were overturned. A woman screamed. There was a flash of the bailiff as he flung himself into the fray. A court attendant rushed through a rear door for the police. But the police had heard the uproar and almost crashed the Paul Revere over as three of them rushed into the room, throwing themselves in the direction where the turbaned head of Rao-Singh, like the helmet of Henry of Navarre, was buffeted back and forth.
Faces scratched and eyes blackened, clothes ripped and turbans awry, the three Hindus were slowly but surely gaining the door, aided by the three policemen and the bailiff. One of the police was Patrolman Delaney, eyes alight with battle, mouth in a broad grin, having the time of his life as he wielded his nightstick. Out of the door swept the battling throng and over the broad sidewalk, where another mob of the curious was seething in from all directions. Their way momentarily cleared by the police, the Hindus made a swift dash for Rao-Singh's limousine waiting at the curb. An officer swung on the running board and drew his revolver, waving the more venturesome away with the threat of it and shouting to the Indian chauffeur, "Step on the gas, man, for God's sake." And thus Rao-Singh departed from what had been intended as his triumph.
At the first sign of the disturbance an attendant had leaped to the jury box, locked the gate, and devoted himself exclusively to keeping the jurymen in their places. Banning stood at his place facing the rear of the now almost deserted courtroom, a blank stare upon his face, trying to believe that what he had seen was something in the movies. Kendall was slowly comprehending that the tide had marvelously changed in his direction. He turned to Dudley, and Dudley was not there. But he was coming, leading Carmelita down from the witness chair to her seat behind the table.
"You are foolish, foolish," he was telling her softly. "You should have left things as they were—but I love you for it."
Kendall, all smiles, was leaning over toward her as they sat down. "I congratulate you, Mrs. Drake—you were marvelous. You've saved the day. The truth will out, you know, Drake."
Kendall proved to be a prophet. Judge McIntyre who knew that to his dying day he would never witness such a scene again in his courtroom but who nevertheless was intent upon the proprieties of the law, was again rapping for order. A few stragglers were coming back into the courtroom, standing in the rear of the room, sensing that it would be all over before they could get to their seats.
Kendall rose and said, "The defense rests."
He was a gentleman but he could not resist a significant glance at his chagrined colleague, Banning.
Judge McIntyre made a short charge entirely favorable to the defense and delivered the case into the hands of the jury. No jury would have dared to convict. The mob was coming back, orderly now but watchful, standing twenty rows deep in the space at the rear of the courtroom. The air was electric, and the currents were all sympathetic with Mr. and Mrs. Dudley Drake.
Holmes, the foreman of the jury, proprietor of the Hedgewood stationery and newspaper store, seemed to have been waiting for the moment when he could take an active hand. He now bustled among the other jurors. There were emphatic nods as he asked each the same question. And his fat smiling face wore a broad grin as he turned to the judge and nodded also.
"Has the jury arrived at a verdict?" asked Judge McIntyre, as if he could not guess in advance that they had.
An attendant motioned to Dudley to stand up.
"Jury, look upon the prisoner. Prisoner, look upon the jury. Gentlemen of the jury, what is your verdict?"
"Not guilty!"
With a glad sob Carmelita flung her arms around her husband's neck before he could sit down again. They were heedless for the moment of the attempts of the audience to cheer concertedly, of the efforts of Kendall to shake their hands, of the efforts of each man and woman on the jury to beat the other to them with congratulations. They stood locked in each other's arms, in a haze of emotions, a reaction that left them seemingly powerless to move. It was Gordon Kendall and his ase sistant who finally brought them back to earth.
In ten minutes Carmelita and Dudley were walking out of the courthouse between cheering lines of sympathizers that filled the sidewalk from the door to the curb, to Kendall's automobile.