CHAPTER XIII
A FORLORN HOPE
About a quarter to eleven next morning, before the adjourned examination had been many minutes in progress, a smart, slight gentleman was seen to shoulder his way into the well of the Marylebone police-office and touch the prosecuting barrister on the arm. The capable face, now a trifle flushed, was well known in that court, and at sight of it the learned counsel shrugged his shoulders and sat down. Thereupon the interloper bowed briskly to his worship, who had already recognised him with a sigh.
“Well, Mr. Bassett?”
“I must apologise to your worship for being late; but, in point of fact, I have just this minute been instructed for the defence.”
“Do I understand that you have not yet seen the prisoner with reference to the charge I am now hearing against him?”
“There has been no opportunity, your worship. Up to ten o’clock this morning I had received no communication upon the matter.”
“Dear me! dear me! Then I suppose you want to confer with him here in court?”
“With your worship’s leave—”
“And mine!” said a hollow voice heard for the first time by every ear; it was that of the prisoner in the dock.
The effect was instantaneous; a volley of eyes hit the accused as one pair; but his own remained unshaken upon the raised eyebrows and creased forehead of the smart young solicitor secured by Daintree that morning.
“Do you object to being defended?” inquired this mercenary.
“Certainly; until I know by whom.”
“Indeed! Well, my name is Bassett. I am tolerably well known in this court—”
“That’s not what I mean, sir,” said Tom, respectfully. “Who has instructed you? That is what I want to know.”
“One who has taken your case and your interests to heart.”
“An anonymous friend?” And the prisoner’s voice trembled.
“Exactly.”
“Then I’ll take nothing from him. I know that friend! I know him!”
A policeman whispered to Bassett, who approached the dock and said in a lower and a friendlier voice, “You are quite mistaken. This is another gentleman altogether. He wishes you to have fair play.”
“Then let him give his name.”
Bassett turned and ran a keen eye over the crowded court. At the same moment a slip of paper was passed across the sea of heads, and put into his hand. “Ah! Here it is, I make no doubt,” said he. It was not, however, and his eyebrows showed it; but he handed the paper to the accused without comment.
And Tom read—
“Solicitor instructed by one who believes you innocent, and will save you if he can. For God’s sake let us try.”
The words danced beneath his eyes, and these were swimming when he raised them behind the iron railing of the dock.
“I accept with gratitude!” said he, searching pitifully among the faces for that of his unknown ally; and he placed the slip of paper in an inside pocket, with expressive deliberation and a touching smile.
“Then if your worship will grant us a few minutes?”
And as the magistrate bowed, the dead silence, which had prevailed ever since the prisoner opened his lips, ended as suddenly; it was like the upsetting of a slumbering hive.
“They’ve been telling you about yesterday,” said Tom, nervously, through the rails. “The fellow took it for granted I was guilty—among other things. Do you?”
The smart solicitor shook his head, and said they had no time to waste. What he wished to hear was the prisoner’s version of his last interview with Blaydes, from its origin to its end, and the prisoner would please be brief, and speak in a whisper.
Tom was brevity itself; indeed, he had his story almost suspiciously pat, for he had already made up his mind as to the one fact which he intended to suppress. This was the source of his information as to Blaydes’s latest whereabouts. He owned to no such information at all. The meeting was a chance meeting, that was to be his solitary lie.
He told it and it passed unchallenged; but when he came to the transaction of the watch, the solicitor’s eyebrows shot to such an involuntary height, that the glib flow froze that instant.
“Go on, go on.”
“You don’t believe a word I say!”
“Nonsense, my good fellow. I believe every word. Come, come, they’re getting impatient. You gave him a receipt—and then?”
Tom finished with a leaden heart and tongue. To his surprise, however, Mr. Bassett was all smiles when he had done; then he put a few questions; and the lamer the answer, the sprightlier the solicitor’s nod. The latter, in fact, foresaw a defence about as weak as one could be, but a case even more sensational than he had supposed. And sensation happened to be this brisk practitioner’s professional loadstar.
Proceedings were resumed at two minutes past eleven, when the witness Adcock, recalled, identified a pair of dilapidated shoes, and the mutilated elements of a beaver, as having belonged to the accused. Bassett had no idea what point the prosecution designed to make, but at once he gave a taste of his quality. He pressed the witness, and shook her as to the hat; but to the shoes she stood firm; she had cleaned them oft enough, so she ought to know. Then she cleaned the lodgers’ boots herself? Well, not all; and an adroit question or two revealed the fact that Erichsen had been her pet, and “one it was a pleasure to do for,” against whom she had appeared with profound reluctance. Indeed, she left the box, and rejoined the husband who had brought her there, in tears; and so the defence made a first meretricious point.
Nor was it the last. Jonathan Butterfield, unlike his relatives, had not been called at the previous examination; but he was now; and his feelings were worked upon in the same deft fashion. As, however, there was no jury to be simultaneously touched, all this was wasted dexterity; but it looked neat in the newspapers; and (what was better, but unintentional) imposed upon poor Tom, and gave him momentary heart.
Meanwhile the shoes and hat had done real damage; and this evidence was the more deleterious from being new to all. Guilty flight and ultimate capture had been fully dealt with on the previous occasion; but the equally incriminating interim was only now filled in, by the officers who had chased and lost a desperate housebreaker in the small hours of Saturday, but only afterwards connected him with the Hampstead murderer. The connection was established by the beaver hidden but discovered in the empty house, and by the shoes left on either side of the nursery-garden gate. Only two officers appeared; the third was in hospital, and one of the two had a bandaged head.
The medical evidence had been taken on the Monday morning; so had that of the crafty householder of Kew; yet his powdered head was again in court, and his humorous, sly smile looked as benevolent as ever, only broader and more subtly droll. Tom heard this public benefactor taking snuff in every pause.
The other new witness was one Richard Vale, who brought a whiff of cognac into the crowded court. His words ran into one another, but his evidence was all too clear. Witness described himself as a very old friend of the deceased. He swore that deceased had frequently told him he went in fear of the prisoner, who had repeatedly threatened him by letter, and to whom, in fact, the deceased owed a sum of money. The letters were now put in. They all related to a worthless cheque for £35—the sum in question—and without a blush witness explained about the cheque. The cheque-book was an old one of his own; he remembered the deceased telling him he had made use of it in the manner alleged in the letters; but he could not himself describe the incident, as, to the best of his belief, he was intoxicated on that occasion. And the witness stood down, having supplied the motive of revenge to a case strong enough, in all conscience, as it was.
Bassett hurried to the dock.
“I suppose you lost that cheque?” he whispered.
“No; I gave it him back with the receipt.”
Bassett turned abruptly and stated that the prisoner reserved his defence; a minute later he stood formally committed for trial at the next sessions of the Central Criminal Court.
“I’ll see you down below,” said Bassett, nodding airily to trembling Tom; but the latter pulled himself together on his blessed release from the public gaze; and the subsequent interview, in the bowels of the police-office, was business-like on both sides.
“When are the sessions?” asked Tom.
“They begin next Monday. No time to be lost!”
“Five days more. Well, it’s better than waiting. So you won’t give me my benefactor’s name?”
“I am pledged not to reveal it to a soul.”
“Do I know him?”
“No.”
“Does he know me?”
“No.”
“Yet he thinks me innocent! God bless him!—God bless him! He must be an eccentric man, though, to help the helpless like that?”
“Somewhat,” said the solicitor, so dryly that Tom winced.
“You think I haven’t the ghost of a chance?”
“I never said so. Nor do I think it. But you made a mistake in destroying that cheque.”
“He destroyed it when I gave it him back.”
“There would have been less possible motive with the cheque in your possession; you could have taken proceedings on that alone.”
“Ay, but I meant to take them with my own hands!”
Tom would have recalled the words next instant. He saw even the hardened and alert police-court attorney shrink away as he said them. Bassett took a handful of silver from his pocket, counted a sovereign’s-worth, and handed it to Tom.
“There,” said he coldly, “I had that for you with my instructions, and you will need it at Newgate if you want to be comfortable. Use it freely. See you there tomorrow.” And he was gone with repulsion ill-concealed. Half-way to his office in Clipstone Street, he overhauled Daintree crossing Portland Place.
“Well? well?” cried Daintree. “I didn’t want to be seen waiting for you; but what do you make of it?”
“You’ll be throwing your money away—that’s a guilty man.”
“You think so?”
"Think?" said Bassett. "Why, he's as good as confessed to me already! But that doesn't matter; if you still wish it I'll do my best."
"I do wish it, sir," replied Daintree, sternly. "Either the best you ever did in your life, or nothing more. Which do you say, sir?"
"Oh, I'll do all I know; that I promise you," said the solicitor. "I was thinking of you entirely. Why, the case fits me like a coat of paint!"