Part 31 (1/2)

”I have heard your explanation of the circ.u.mstances that led you to the bed-side of Rosa Blondelle, at the moment in which her murderer had left her, but I heard it at second hand. I would now hear it from yourself,”

said Mr. Sheridan.

Sybil began and related the whole story, which the lawyer took down from her lips.

”Now,” he said, ”Mr. Berners, I would have your statement, commencing from the moment the deceased rushed into the library.”

Lyon Berners related the circ.u.mstances attending Rosa Blondelle's death, as far as he knew them.

”And now I would like to minutely examine the room in which the crime was committed,” said Mr. Sheridan.

”Come, then,” answered Lyon Berners. And he led the lawyer to the rooms lately occupied by Rosa Blondelle.

”A man might easily have escaped by these windows an instant after having committed the crime. They close with a spring catch. The fact of their having been found fastened when the room was examined, proves nothing whatever against my client. The murderer could in an instant unfasten one of them from within, jump through, and clap it to behind him, when it would be as fast as if secured by a careful servant within,” said the lawyer, after the examination was complete.

Then they all returned to the library, where Mr. Sheridan summed up his brief for the defence.

”Give yourself no uneasiness, Mrs. Berners,” he said. ”Your case lies in a nut-sh.e.l.l. It is based upon your own explanation of your att.i.tude at the bed-side of the victim, and upon the fact, which I shall undertake to prove, that the a.s.sa.s.sin had escaped from the window at the foot of the bed.”

The lawyer spoke so cheerfully that Sybil's spirits rose again.

He then, as a precautionary measure, he said, to give them the help of the greatest bulwarks of the bar, advised that they should write to Was.h.i.+ngton to engage the services of the celebrated Ishmael Worth, who, in a case like this, would apply in the regular way to be admitted to plead.

Mr. Berners accepted this advice, and said that he would lose no time in following it.

Then the lawyer took his leave.

He had scarcely got out of sight before Captain Pendleton and his sister Beatrix drove up to the door.

”I have come to stay with you as long as you will let me, my darling,”

said Beatrix, as Sybil hastened to welcome her.

”Then you will stay with me forever, or until you are happily married, dearest,” answered Sybil, hospitably, as she led her friend up to a bedroom to lay off her bonnet.

Captain Pendleton, meantime, was taken care of by Mr. Berners.

”Clement!” said the latter, when he had taken his guest to his dressing-room, ”we are old, tried friends, and need not fear to speak the truth to each other. Tell me now, frankly, has not the action of the judge, in admitting Sybil to bail, been very much censured? Will it not injure him and affect his position, even to the risk of impeachment?”

”Oh, no! There is a great deal of talk, to be sure. Malcontents complain that he has exceeded his prerogative, that he has overstepped the law, that he has tried to establish a dangerous precedent, and so on, and so on.”

”And what does Judge Ruthven say to all this?”

”Nothing, nothing whatever! Do you suppose for an instant he is going to condescend to defend himself to such a.s.ses? He says nothing.”

”But his friends! his friends! surely _they_ defend him?”

”They do. They tell the donkeys that a judge has certain discretionary powers to modify the severity of the law when justice requires it; that these modifications become precedents for other judges to follow, and finally they become laws that none may dispute; that in this case Judge Ruthven has followed the spirit of the law, if not its letter; that he based his act upon the fact that the accused lady, being perfectly safe from the officers of the law at the time, voluntarily came forward, delivered herself up, and challenged a trial; and that therefore she was a worthy object of the privilege of bail.”

Honest Clement Pendleton was no lawyer, and he had spoken a trifle unprofessionally; but it was no matter. Lyon Berners understood him, and was satisfied.