Part 20 (2/2)
”Granville Jarvis; is that the name?”
The light had gone out of Kenwick's eyes and the fire out of his voice.
He had crumpled down in his chair like a man suddenly overcome with a spinal disease. He looked at Dayton with dead eyes.
”The name,” he said bitterly, ”is Judas Iscariot!”
CHAPTER XVIII
It was two o'clock before court, which had been dismissed for lunch after Richard Glover's testimony, convened again. During the noon hour a tray containing the only tempting food which the prisoner had seen since his incarceration was brought up to his cell. It had become apparent to the jailer that he had friends, and perhaps he was moved thereby to a tardy compa.s.sion. But Kenwick, despite Dayton's admonition to ”Brace up and eat a good meal,” waved it indifferently aside.
”I'm done for,” he said simply. ”I don't see how any twelve men could hear the evidence that was presented this morning and find me innocent.
And by the time Jarvis gets through telling anything he likes, and proving it----Well, it appears that every person who has been connected in any way with me since this trouble fell upon me has taken advantage of my misfortune to enrich himself. I don't care much now what they do with me. When you lose your faith in humanity it's time to die. I'm no religious fanatic, Dayton, but for these last two months I've thanked G.o.d on my knees every night of my life for having brought me back into the light. Now I wish that I had died instead.”
Dayton made no further effort to rouse him from his despair. For although not of a sensitive or particularly intuitive temperament himself, he had come to realize the utter impossibility of finding this other man in his trouble. ”You don't seem to have much faith in me,” was all he said as he made some notes on the back of an envelope. But he finally induced his client to eat some of the food upon his tray and after the first few mouthfuls Kenwick was surprised to find that he was ravenously hungry.
”That's something like,” the lawyer approved, as they made their way back through the court-house grounds. ”Now you're good for another three hours.”
It hadn't seemed possible to Kenwick that he was, that his nerves could stand the strain of hours and hours more of this, and there was no a.s.surance that the ordeal would end to-day or to-morrow. But Dayton's easy a.s.surance gave him a new grip upon himself.
They found the audience waiting and eager. None of them seemed to have moved since they had been dismissed for recess two hours before. Only the jury were absent, but five minutes after Kenwick's arrival they filed in and took their places. The district attorney appeared to have lost interest in the case. He sat staring out of the window with a sort of wistful impatience as though he were visualizing a potential game of golf. Dayton glanced at some notes on the table at his elbow and issued his first command. ”Call Madeleine Marstan.”
In response to this summons one of the veiled women in the rear of the room rose and came forward. She was quietly dressed in a gown of clinging black silk and a black turban with a touch of amethyst. Every eye in the court-room was fixed upon her, but she took the oath with the unembarra.s.sed self-possession of one long accustomed to the public gaze.
Kenwick, turned toward her, detected a faint odor of heliotrope.
”Where do you live, Mrs. Marstan?” Dayton inquired.
She gave a street and number in San Francisco.
”What is your occupation?”
”I am an actress.”
”Do you know the prisoner?”
Without glancing at him she replied, with her unruffled composure, ”I do.”
”How long have you known him?”
”About two months.”
”Describe the occasion on which he was first brought to your notice.”
She settled back slightly in her chair, like a traveler making herself comfortable for what promised to be a long journey. ”It was on the afternoon of November 19 that my husband, a physician, came into our apartment in San Francisco and announced to me that he had just secured a remunerative position with a wealthy man down at Mont-Mer. He said that the work would begin immediately and we must be ready to leave the following day. I asked him for more details and he told me that the position was a secretarys.h.i.+p which would involve little labor and afford us a luxurious home with excellent salary. He had never been a success in his profession, owing chiefly to the fact that he was dissipated, and I had seriously considered leaving him and going back to the stage. But I had decided to give him another chance, and since he appeared to find my questions concerning this new work annoying, I agreed to go and allow him to explain more fully when we should arrive.
”We went down in our own car and arrived at Rest Hollow in mid-afternoon. My husband showed me over the house and grounds and I thought I had never seen such a beautiful place. There was no one about when we came, and after he had given me every opportunity to be favorably impressed with the new home, we went to an upstairs sitting-room in the left wing, and he told me, while he smoked one of the expensive-looking cigars that he found there, further details concerning his employer. I learned that he was an invalid, a young man by the name of Roger Kenwick, who was recuperating from too strenuous service overseas. We discussed the matter for only a few minutes before my husband announced that it was time for him to go to the depot and meet his charge, who was being brought up from Los Angeles by the previous companion, who had taken him there to be outfitted with winter clothes.
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