CHAPTER XXVII.
THE TRIAL.
Edith Hudson spent a restless night, and early in the morning, as early
as she thought she could reach him, she called the office of Jimmy's
attorney. She told the lawyer that some new evidence was to have been
brought in to him and asked if he had received it. Receiving a negative
reply she asked that she be called the moment it was brought in.
All that day and the next she waited, scarcely leaving her room for fear
that the call might come while she was away. The days ran into weeks and
still there was no word from the Lizard.
Jimmy was brought to trial, and she saw him daily in the courtroom and
as often as they would let her she would visit him in jail. On several
occasions she met Harriet Holden, also visiting him, and she saw that
the other young woman was as constant an attendant at court as she.
The State had established as unassailable a case as might he built on
circumstantial evidence. Krovac had testified that Torrance had made
threats against Compton in his presence, and there was no way in which
Jimmy's attorneys could refute the perjured statement. Jimmy himself had
come to realize that his attorney was fighting now for his life, that
the verdict of the jury was already a foregone conclusion and that the
only thing left to fight for now was the question of the penalty.
Daily he saw in the court-room the faces of the three girls who had
entered so strangely into his life. He noticed, with not a little sorrow
and regret, that Elizabeth Compton and Harriet Holden always sat apart
and that they no longer spoke. He saw the effect of the strain of the
long trial on Edith Hudson. She looked wan and worried, and then finally
she was not in court one day, and later, through Harriet Holden, he
learned that she was confined to her room with a bad cold.
Jimmy's sentiments toward the three women whose interests brought them
daily to the court-room had undergone considerable change. The girl that
he had put upon a pedestal to worship from afar, the girl to whom he had
given an idealistic love, he saw now in another light. His reverence for
her had died hard, but in the face of her arrogance, her vindictiveness
and her petty snobbery it had finally succumbed, so that when he
compared her with the girl who had been of the street the latter
suffered in no way by the comparison.
Harriet Holden's friendship and loyalty were a never-ending source of
wonderment to him, but he accepted her own explanation, which, indeed,
was fair enough, that her innate sense of justice had compelled her to
give him her sympathy and assistance.
Just how far that assistance had gone Jimmy did not know, though of late
he had come to suspect that his attorney was being retained by Harriet
Holden's father.
Bince appeared in the court-room only when necessity compelled his
presence on the witness stand. The nature of the man's testimony was
such that, like Krovac's, it was difficult of impeachment, although
Jimmy was positive that Bince perjured himself, especially in a
statement that he made of a conversation he had with Mr. Compton the
morning of the murder, in which he swore that Compton stated that he
intended to discharge Torrance that day.
The effect of the trial seemed to have made greater inroads upon Bince
than upon Jimmy. The latter gave no indication of nervous depression or
of worry, while Bince, on the other hand, was thin, pale and haggard.
His hands and face continually moved and twitched as he sat in the
courtroom or on the witness chair. Never for an instant was he at rest.
Elizabeth Compton had noticed this fact, too, and commented upon it one
evening when Bince was at her home.
"What's the matter with you, Harold?" she asked. "You look as though
you are on the verge of nervous prostration."
"I've had enough to make any man nervous," retorted Bince irritably. "I
can't get over this terrible affair, and in addition I have had all the
weight and responsibility of the business on my shoulders since, and the
straightening out of your father's estate, which, by the way, was in
pretty bad shape.
"I wish, Elizabeth," he went on, "that we might be married immediately.
I have asked you so many times before, however, and you have always
refused, that I suppose it is useless now. I believe that I would get
over this nervous condition if you and I were settled down here
together. I have no real home, as you know--the club is just a
stopping place. I might as well be living at a hotel. If after the day's
work I could come home to a regular home it would do me a world of good,
I know. We could be married quietly. There is every reason why we
should, especially now that you are left all alone."
"Just what do you mean by immediately?" she asked.
"To-morrow," he replied.
For a long time she demurred, but finally she acceded to his wishes, for
an early marriage, though she would not listen to the ceremony being
performed the following day. They reached a compromise on Friday
morning, a delay of only a few days, and Harold Bince breathed more
freely thereafter than he had for a long time before.
Mr. and Mrs. Harold Bince entered the court-room late on Friday morning
following the brief ceremony that had made them man and wife. It had
been generally supposed that to-day the case would go to the jury as the
evidence was all in, and the final arguments of the attorneys, which had
started the preceding day, would be concluded during the morning
session. It had been conceded that the judge's charge would be brief and
perfunctory, and there was even hope that the jury might return a
verdict before the close of the afternoon session, but when Bince and
his bride entered the court-room they found Torrance's attorney making a
motion for the admission of new evidence on the strength of the recent
discovery of witnesses, the evidence of whom he claimed would materially
alter the aspect of the case.
An hour was consumed in argument before the judge finally granted the
motion. The first of the new witnesses called was an employee of the
International Machine Company. After the usual preliminary questions the
attorney for the defense asked him if he was employed in the plant on
the afternoon of March 24. The reply was in the affirmative.
"Will you tell the jury, please, of any occurrence that you witnessed
there that afternoon out of the ordinary?"
"I was working at my machine," said the witness, "when Pete Krovac comes
to me and asks me to hide behind a big drill-press and watch what the
assistant general manager done when he comes through the shop again. So
I hides there and I saw this man Bince come along and drop an envelope
beside Krovac's machine, and after he left I comes out as Krovac picks
it up, and I seen him take some money out of it."
"How much money?" asked the attorney.
"There was fifty dollars there. He counted it in front of me."
"Did he say what it was for?" "Yes, be said Bince gave it to him to
croak this fellow"--nodding toward Jimmy.
"What fellow?" asked the attorney. "You mean Mr. Torrance, the
defendant?"
"Yes, sir."
"And what else? What happened after that?"
"Krovac said he'd split it with me if I'd go along and help him."
"Did you?"
"Yes."
"What happened?"
"The guy beat up Krovac and come near croaking me, and got away."
"That is all," said the attorney.
The prosecuting attorney, whose repeated objections to the testimony of
the witness had been overruled, waived cross-examination.
Turning to the clerk, "Please call Stephen Murray," said Jimmy's
attorney.
Murray, burly and swaggering, took the witness chair. The attorney
handed him a letter. It was the letter that Murray had written Bince
enclosing the supposed I.W.W. threat.
"Did you ever see that before?" he asked.
Murray took the letter and read it over several times. He was trying to
see in it anything which could possibly prove damaging to him.
"Sure," he said at last in a blustering tone of voice. "I wrote it.
But what of it?" "And this enclosure?" asked the attorney. He handed
Murray the slip of soiled wrapping paper with the threat lettered upon
it. "This was received with your letter."
Murray hesitated before replying. "Oh," he said, "that ain't nothing.
That was just a little joke."
"You were seen in Feinheimer's with Mr. Bince on March--Do you recall
the object of this meeting?"
"Mr. Bince thought there was going to be a strike at his plant and he
wanted me to fix it up for him," replied Murray.
"You know the defendant, James Torrance?"
"Yes."
"Didn't he knock you down once for insulting a girl?" Murray flushed,
but was compelled to admit the truth of the allegation.
"You haven't got much use for him, have you?" continued the attorney.
"No, I haven't," replied Murray.
"You called the defendant on the telephone a half or three-quarters of
an hour before the police discovered Mr. Compton's body, did you not?"
Murray started to deny that he had done so. Jimmy's attorney stopped
him. "Just a moment, Mr. Murray," he said, "if you will stop a moment
and give the matter careful thought I am sure you will recall that you
telephoned Mr. Torrance at that time, and that you did it in the
presence of a witness," and the attorney pointed toward the back of the
court-room. Murray looked in the direction that the other indicated and
again he paled and his hand trembled where it rested on the arm of his
chair, for seated in the back of the courtroom was the head-waiter from
Feinheimer's. "Now do you recall?" asked the attorney.
Murray was silent for a moment. Suddenly he half rose from his chair.
"Yes I remember it," he said. "They are all trying to double-cross me. I
had nothing to do with killing Compton. That wasn't in the deal at all.
Ask that man there; he will tell you that I had nothing to do with
killing Compton. He hired me and he knows," and with shaking finger
Murray pointed at Mr Harold Bince where he sat with his wife beside the
prosecuting attorney.
