Part 43 (2/2)

The prosecutor pa.s.sed these witnesses with serene confidence. He probably believed that his case was already made, people said, or else he was reserving his fire for Isom's widow, who, it seemed to everybody, had turned against nature and her own interests in allying herself with the accused.

The morning was consumed in the examination of these character witnesses, Hammer finis.h.i.+ng with the last of them just before the midday adjournment. The sheriff was preparing to remove the prisoner. Joe's hand had been released from the arm of the chair, and the officer had fastened the iron around his wrist. The proceeding always struck Joe with an overwhelming wave of degradation and now he stood with bowed head and averted face.

”Come on,” said the sheriff, goggling down at him with froggish eyes from his vantage on the dais where the witness-chair stood, his long neck on a slant like a giraffe's. The sheriff took great pleasure in the proceeding of attaching the irons. It was his one central moment in the eyes of the throng.

Joe looked up to march ahead of the sheriff out of the room, and his eyes met the eyes of Alice. She was not far away, and the cheer of their quick message was like a spoken word. She was wearing the same gray dress that she had worn on that day of days, with the one bright feather in her bonnet, and she smiled, nodding to him. And then the swirl of bobbing heads and moving bodies came between them and she was lost.

He looked for her again as the sheriff pushed him along toward the door, but the room was in such confusion that he could not single her out. The judge had gone out through his tall, dark door, and the court-room was no longer an awesome place to those who had gathered for the trial. Men put their hats on their heads and lit their pipes, and bit into their twists and plugs of tobacco and emptied their mouths of the juices as they went slowly toward the door.

Mrs. Greening was the first witness called by Hammer after the noon recess. Hammer quickly discovered his purpose in calling her as being nothing less than that of proving by her own mouth that her husband, Sol, was a gross and irresponsible liar.

Hammer went over the whole story of the tragedy--Mrs. Greening having previously testified to all these facts as a witness for the state--from the moment that Sol had called her out of bed and taken her to the Chase home to support the young widow in her hour of distraction and fear. By slow and lumbering ways he led her, like a blind horse floundering along a heavy road, through the front door, up the stairs into Ollie's room, and then, in his own time and fas.h.i.+on, he arrived at what he wanted to ask.

”Now I want you to tell this jury, Mrs. Greening, if at any time, during that night or thereafter, you discussed or talked of or chatted about the killing of Isom Chase with your husband?” asked Hammer.

”Oh laws, yes,” said Mrs. Greening.

The prosecuting attorney was rising slowly to his feet. He seemed concentrated on something; a frown knotted his brow, and he stood with his open hand poised as if to reach out quickly and check the flight of something which he expected to wing in and a.s.sail the jury.

Said Hammer, after wiping his glistening forehead with a yellow silk handkerchief:

”Yes. And now, Mrs. Greening, I will ask you if at any time your husband ever told you what was said, if anything, by any party inside of that house when he run up to the kitchen door that night and knocked?”

”I object!” said the prosecutor sharply, flinging out his ready hand.

”Don't answer that question!” warned the judge.

Mrs. Greening had it on her lips; anybody who could read print on a signboard could have told what they were shaped to say. She held them there in their preliminary position of enunciation, pursed and wrinkled, like the tied end of a sausage-link.

”I will frame the question in another manner,” said Hammer, again feeling the need of his large handkerchief.

”There is no form that would be admissible, your honor,” protested the prosecutor. ”It is merely hearsay that the counsel for the defense is attempting to bring out and get before the jury. I object!”

”Your course of questioning, Mr. Hammer, is highly improper, and in flagrant violation to the established rules of evidence,” said the judge. ”You must confine yourself to proof by this witness of what she, of her own knowledge and experience, is cognizant of. Nothing else is permissible.”

”But, your honor, I intend to show by this witness that when Sol Greening knocked on that door----”

”I object! She wasn't present; she has testified that she was at home at that time, and in bed.”

This from the prosecutor, in great heat.

”Your honor, I intend to prove--” began Hammer.

”This line of questioning is not permissible, as I told you before,”

said the judge in stern reproof.

But Hammer was obdurate. He was for arguing it, and the judge ordered the sheriff to conduct the jury from the room. Mrs. Greening, red and uncomfortable, and all at sea over it, continued sitting in the witness-chair while Hammer laid it off according to his view of it, and the prosecutor came back and tore his contentions to pieces.

<script>