Part 23 (1/2)
The reply came haltingly, as though the witness were feeling her way over uneven ground. ”My brother and I had consulted Mr. Jarvis about that and he had advised against it. He didn't wish to arouse any suspicions in--in the prisoner's mind just then. And--well, you see, Mr.
Kenwick and I had not seen each other since his--illness and during that first meeting we both avoided everything connected with--with the tragedy as much as possible. Of course if we had known that this charge of--of crime was to be preferred against him, I suppose we would have acted differently.”
This was no carefully rehea.r.s.ed response, but nothing that she could have said would have disclosed more clearly the inside workings of the opposition's conspiracy. The web that had been woven around the prisoner had enmeshed with him every one who had ever been intimately a.s.sociated with his past.
And now that romance had entered upon the sordid scene the whole aspect of the case was changed. The air became charged all at once with an electric current of sympathy. To every man and woman in the room Richard Glover now appeared in the guise of a baffled adventurer, and Roger Kenwick as a man who had loved, and because of cruel circ.u.mstance had lost. But had he really lost? The crux of public interest s.h.i.+fted with the abruptness of a weatherc.o.c.k, from mystery to romance.
”You a.s.sert, Miss Morgan, that you knew this story, 'A Brother of Bluebeard,' to be the one which the prisoner had read to you before he left for the East almost two years ago. What proof could you furnish of this?”
”At the time that Mr. Glover read the story to me I had in my possession the sequel to it, which Mr. Kenwick had sent me in ma.n.u.script for my criticism, just before he left for training-camp. It used many of the same characters and was rooted in the same plot.”
”Could you produce that ma.n.u.script?”
”Mr. Jarvis can produce it. I turned it over to him.”
The former witness leaned forward and laid a heap of pencil-written ma.n.u.script upon the table. But Dayton scarcely glanced at it. With one hand he pushed it aside, and then s.h.i.+fted the current of his interest into another channel. ”When, and by what means, Miss Morgan, did you discover that Roger Kenwick had returned from France mentally disabled?”
Her reply to this question came in a voice that was struggling against heavy odds for composure. ”It was exactly one year ago to-day that I received that news. Several letters of mine to--the prisoner were returned to me unopened. And with them came a communication from Mr.
Everett Kenwick telling me that--that it had become necessary for them to send his brother to a private asylum.”
”Did you know where that asylum was?”
”Not then. He told me that he was debating over several different places but that he had almost decided upon a friend's home in southern California. He didn't tell me where this home was. I think he realized that--that I would rather not know.”
”And when did you discover that that place was Mont-Mer?”
”On the night that Mr. Kenwick was reported dead.”
A murmur that was distinctly a wave of sympathy filled the chamber. But eagerness to catch the next question quieted it.
”After that first letter telling you about the prisoner's misfortune, did you ever hear from Mr. Everett Kenwick again?”
”Only once. Just a week before he died, he wrote again. He had just lost his wife and he seemed to have a premonition that he was not going to live very long.”
She was feeling for her handkerchief in the pocket of the fur-trimmed coat. Some of the men in the court-room averted their eyes. The face of more than one woman softened. Clinton Morgan sat regarding his sister with a curious composure. In his eyes was that mixture of compa.s.sion and awe that he had worn on the night when the gold and ivory book had betrayed to him her secret.
”Yes?” Dayton went on gently, but with the same relentless persistence.
”He wrote to you again? And what did he say?”
”He said that he wanted me to have something that had belonged--to his brother. He told me that he felt that Roger Kenwick would have wished me to have it. And with the letter there came a box in which I found----”
She had finished her search in the pocket of the motor-coat, and now she held something between her gloved fingers. ”Mr. Everett Kenwick himself had only received it a short time before. There had been some delay and confusion about it, owing I suppose to his brother having been sent home--in just the way that he was. He himself never knew that he had won it. But it was such a wonderful display of courage----And the French officer whose life he had saved sent a letter, too, saying that France was grateful and wanted to express her appreciation in some way so----”
And then she held it up before them; before the lawyers and the jury and the crowd of spectators--a bit of metal on its patch of ribbon.
Holding it out before them, she sat there like a sovereign waiting to confer a peerage. And not the judge's gavel nor the commanding voice of the district attorney could still the tumult that rose and swelled into tumultuous applause.
On the day following the notorious Kenwick murder trial, the Mont-Mer papers carried little other news. A special representative from the ”San Francisco Clarion” and several Los Angeles journalists fed their copy over the wires and had extras out in both cities by eight o'clock.
”Kenwick Acquitted” was the head-line which his own paper ran, with his picture and one of Richard Glover sharing prominence upon the front page. And because of Kenwick's previous connection with this daily and the fact that the two star witnesses for the defense were well known in the Bay region, the ”Clarion's” story was the most comprehensive and colorful.
It opened with a report of Dayton's speech which, it appeared, had electrified every one in the court-room, including the prisoner himself.