"Yes."

"Do you expect them to believe that?"

"If they knew me they would."

"Well, we haven't all the privilege of knowing you as well as the defendant does. You may step down, Mrs. Cheever, thank you."

McNiven rose. "One moment, Mrs. Cheever. You testified on direct examination that the defendant left you immediately after the waiter did?"

"Yes."

"And that he did not return till the next morning, just before the waiter returned."

"Yes."

"That is all, Mrs. Cheever."

McNiven would have done better to leave things alone. The st.u.r.dy last answer of Charity and the unsportsmanlike sneer of Kedzie's lawyer had inclined the jury her way. McNiven's explanation awoke again the skeptic spirit.

Charity descended from her pillory with a feeling that she had said none of the things she had planned to say. The eloquence of her thoughts had seemed incompatible somehow with the witness-stand. At a time when she needed to say so much she had said so little and all of it wrong.

CHAPTER XIII

Jim Dyckman's heart was so wrung with pity for Charity when she stepped down and sought her place in a haze of despair that he resolved to make a fight for her himself. He insisted on McNiven's calling him to the stand, though McNiven begged him to let ill enough alone.

He took the oath with a fierce enthusiasm that woke the jury a little, and he answered his own lawyer's questions with a fervor that stirred a hope in the jury's heart, a sorely wrung heart it was, for its pity for Charity was at war with its pity for Kedzie, and its admiration for Jim Dyckman, who was plainly a gentleman and a good sport even if he had gone wrong, could only express itself by punishing Kedzie, whose large eyes and sweet mouth the jury could not ignore or resist.

When his own lawyer had elicited from Jim the story as he wanted it told, which chanced to be the truth, McNiven abandoned him to Beattie with the words:

"Your witness."

Beattie was in fine fettle. He had become a name talked about transcontinentally, and now he was crossing swords with the famous Dyckman. And Dyckman was at a hideous disadvantage. He could only parry, he could not counter-thrust. There was hardly a trick forbidden to the cross-examiner and hardly a defense permitted to the witness.

And yet that very helplessness gave the witness a certain shadowy aide at his side.

Jim's heart was beating high with his fervor to defend Charity, but it stumbled when Beattie rose and faced him. And Beattie faced him a long while before he spoke.

A slow smile crept over the lawyer's mien as he made an excuse for silence out of the important task of scrubbing his eye-gla.s.ses.

Before that alkaline grin Jim felt his faith in himself wavering. He remembered unworthy thoughts he had entertained, graceless things he had done; he felt that his presence here as a knight of una.s.sailable purity was hypocritical. He winced at all points from the uncertainty as to the point to be attacked. His life was like a long frontier and his enemy was mobilized for a sudden offensive. He would know the point selected for the a.s.sault when he felt the a.s.sault. The first gun was that popular device, a supposit.i.tious question.

"Mr. Dyckman, you are accused of--well, we'll say co-respondence with the co-respondent. You have denied your guilt in sundry affidavits and on the witness-stand here. Remembering the cla.s.sic and royal ideal of the man who 'perjured himself like a gentleman,' and a.s.suming--I say 'a.s.suming' what you deny--that you had been guilty, would you have admitted it?"

"I could not have been guilty."

"Could not? Really! you astonish me! And why not, please?"

"Because Mrs. Cheever would never have consented. She is a good woman."

This unexpected answer to the old trick question jolted Beattie perceptibly and brought the jury forward a little. The tears gushed to Charity's eyes and she felt herself unworthy a champion so pious.

Beattie acknowledged the jolt with a wry smile and returned:

"Very gallant, Mr. Dyckman; you want to be a gentleman and avoid the perjury, too. But I must ask you to answer the question. Suppose you had been guilty."

Silence.

"Answer the question!"

Silence.

"Will his Honor kindly instruct the witness to answer the question?"

Jim broke in, "His Honor cannot compel me to suppose something that is impossible."

The jury rejoiced unwillingly, like the crowd in the bleachers when a man on the opposing team knocks a home run. The jury liked Jim better.

But what they liked, after all, was what they falsely imagined. They a.s.sumed that Jim had been out on a lark and got caught and was putting up a good sc.r.a.p for his lady friend. He was a hum-dinger, and no wonder the lady fell for him. Into such slang their souls translated the holiness of his emotions, and they voted him guilty even in awarding him their admiration for his defense.

Beattie paused again, then suddenly asked, "Mr. Dyckman, how long have you loved Mrs. Cheever?"

"What do you mean by 'loved'?"

"It is a familiar word. Answer the question."

"I have admired Mrs. Cheever since she was a child. We have always been friends."

"Your 'friendship' was considerably excited when she married Mr.

Cheever, wasn't it?"

"I--I thought he was unworthy of her."

"Was that why you beat him up in a fist fight at your club?"

This startled the entire court. Even reporters who had missed the news were excited. McNiven sprang to his feet, crying:

"I 'bject! There is no evidence before the court that there ever was such a fight. The question is incompirrelvimmaterial."

"S'tained!" said the judge.

Beattie was satisfied. The arrow had been pulled out, but its poison remained. He made use of another of his tantalizing pauses, then:

"It was shortly afterward that Mrs. Cheever divorced her husband, was it not?"

"I 'bject," McNiven barked.