Part 4 (1/2)
CHAPTER VI.
AND IS FOUND WANTING.
After the noon recess Bertha was called to finish her testimony, with the promise that she would not be detained long.
”A description of the study, Miss Lund, when you were dusting.”
”Everything was left just as it was when the professor fell dead on the threshold Tuesday evening.”
”Did you notice any foreign substance--any acc.u.mulation of what might afford fuel for a fire?”
”No, sir.”
”Any odor?”
”Only that the room was close from being shut up.”
”Describe the contents of the room.”
”Well, it was full of books, on shelves that ran all around.”
”Yes?”
”Two windows; a cage before one, the nearest to the door, and a writing desk before the one in the farthest corner.”
”Well?”
”A safe partly built in the wall beside the door.”
”How high from the ground?”
”About up to my waist.”
”Did you notice anything underneath it?”
”Yes, there was the gunpowder box Mr. Robert put there.”
”A box full of gunpowder placed there by Floyd?”
”Yes, sir.”
This statement made a profound impression, but Badger did not push the subject further. The prisoner almost smiled.
”Well?” Badger said.
”Oh, everything else was just as the professor left it. His slippers under his chair, his dressing-gown over the back of it, his spectacles on the desk, his bible laid down open. He was going to meet a caller, you know, when he was taken with the st.i.tch.”
”Very well. Perhaps we have had enough of the professor,” said Badger. But the accused did not find these minutiae trivial. For the first time his proud face broke and he hid the tears with his hand. The mention of the bible, slippers and the other personal mementos had called up the dearest picture he ever knew.
All the grand life, equally compounded of whims and principles, pa.s.sed before him at Bertha's mention of the empty chair.
But the sympathy of the spectators was short-lived. While Robert wept a strain of sad music stole into the court-room. Faint at first, it rose in volume as the players approached, but still with a muted sound, as if their instruments were m.u.f.fled. The drum-beats were rare and un.o.btrusive, and the burden of the melody, if melody it were, was borne by proud bugles and quivering oboes. Its cadences were old and mysterious, like some Gregorian chant intoned in cloisters before organ and orchestra had trained our ears to the chords of harmony. No wonder the court-room was hushed until it died away in the distance.
It was the Masonic dead march, for on this day the funerals of the dead whom Robert Floyd was accused of murdering were being held. Oscar Schubert, as a member of the mystic order, was buried with all the pomp of its ceremonies, and it was his cortege, proceeding to the sepulcher, whose pa.s.sage occasioned this pause in the trial.
The revulsion of sympathy was instant. Every man in the court-room saw the wife and two children, sitting behind drawn curtains in the carriage of the chief mourners, and beyond this picture the bodies of six victims, four of them young girls, done to death at the prompting of avarice. The prisoner himself seemed to understand, for he shut his teeth, though his bold eyes still dared the mult.i.tude. But they rested more and more upon the lovely face which was his one point of consolation in that unfriendly a.s.semblage. Badger's indifferent voice showed no quiver when he asked Miss Lund to step down and called for Robert Floyd. It was a brusque opening.
”What was contained in the safe in your uncle's study?”
”I never opened it.”
”You knew, however?”
”What he had told me.”
”Was his will there?”
”I have reason to believe so.”
”Did you believe so on Sat.u.r.day, while you were in the room with Miss Lund?”
”I did not give the matter any thought at that time.” Floyd spoke as though the spirit burned hot within him. ”And I will add----”
”Nothing,” said Badger. But the judge looked up.
”This is a court, not a court-martial,” he said, quietly, a pale, studious man. ”The witness has a right to modify his answers.”
”I have only this to say,” continued Floyd, ”to hasten as much as possible this preposterous trial, that I indorse every word of Miss Lund's testimony, and accept it and proffer it as my own upon the points which it covers.”
”We prefer----” But the district attorney interrupted his a.s.sistant. ”Are you aware, Mr. Floyd, of the gravity of the position in which Miss Lund's testimony involves you? Sole opportunity is almost the major head among those which the government is required to prove.”
”I accept it in toto, subject to the privilege of volunteering a statement if my examination is incomplete or misleading.”
”We shall endeavor to make it both adequate and fair,” said the district attorney.
”Leaving the safe for a moment,” resumed the examiner, ”will you kindly relate your movements, Mr. Floyd, subsequent to the time when Bertha left you to go upstairs?”
The young man hesitated. The pause was so long as to be embarra.s.sing. Old John Davidson coughed loudly to relieve his agitation. When the witness spoke at last he seemed to be remembering with difficulty.
”I remember leaving the house and walking about among the fields, in the park, I think. Yes, I took a car for the park. In the evening I called upon Miss Barlow.”
He looked up at the aureoled face and faintly smiled. The sight appeared to revive him. ”From that point my recollections become as distinct as usual. But----” He hesitated once more and Badger left him unaided in his distress. ”The truth is, this was my first visit since his death to my uncle's study. The executor had telegraphed and afterward written me to close and lock it. This I did. But that afternoon I was expecting a visit from him----”
”Who is this executor?”
”Mr. Hodgkins Hodgkins.”
”Of the firm of Hodgkins, Hodgkins & Hodgkins?”