CHAPTER XIV
Watchmen guarded the doors of the court, which were closed and therefore denoted to Calvin that the courtroom was crowded to capacity. In fact, the police recently had cleared the halls of an overflow and only those persons who had business in the court were permitted to approach.
The doors were opened to a hushed hum of voices and to heads turning countless eyes upon Ellison and Calvin Clarke.
"The State's attorneys," he heard the whispers in tones of awe which heralded him as the awaited agent of death.
He halted for an instant as the doors closed behind him.
The court-room was divided into a large public section which occupied about two-thirds of the space, and into the section set off for the judge, the jury, the prisoner and his counsel and witnesses, for the attorneys and clerks of the State. In this court, the public section lay to Calvin's left, as he entered, and claimed the south half and also the center of the room. It was furnished with rows of brown, massive oak benches arranged in even files, and from end to end every bench this morning held humanity. They faced the judge's seat, the witness stand and the jury box; the windows were behind the benches and on the further side, to the west.
In front of the public section was an open space—an aisle bounded by an oak railing beyond which all the actual processes of trial went on.
By common custom the prosecutors established them selves within the rail to the right; the clerks and court
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