Part 4

“Nay, you go too fast, my friend. It must be left to the future to place the name of Henry Northcote, but let me confess that in the meantime the bearer of it has not wholly escaped my vigilance.”

“In your capacity as a connoisseur in young men of promise?”

“Precisely.”

“Upon what data have you built, when you have never seen him in open court?”

“My dear fellow, you are as curious as a woman.”

“Every comprehensive mind is partly feminine.”

“No mind can be in any sense feminine. It is a contradiction in terms.”

“Well, well! From what data have you derived the courage to entrust an untried man with the defence in a trial for murder?”

“To be perfectly frank, it was Tobin who found the courage for me.”

“Tobin!”

“No less.”

“Why, Tobin doesn’t know me from Adam.”

“Not so fast, my friend; don’t come to conclusions so abruptly. Tobin has his eyes about him.”

“Well, yes, that is an attribute that is common to all who become first-rate in anything.”

“Let me tell you exactly what occurred. I was on the point of leaving Chancery Lane about six, and beginning to think about my dinner, when I received poor Tobin’s telegram to say he was tucked up in hospital with a broken thigh, and would I come to him at once. Of course I went; and there the poor fellow was in a devilish uncomfortable attitude, as white as the sheets, face drawn with pain, but himself as cool as ice.

“‘We shall have to apply for a postponement,’ were his first words.

“‘In any case, old boy,’ said I, ‘I shall relieve you of further responsibility.’

“‘Not much!’ said he. ‘Get a postponement until next sessions; I am going to save the poor beggar’s neck.’

“‘Why, old boy,’ I said, fixing him up with a cigarette, ‘you will be lying here in your little bed until next sessions.’

“‘Not for me,’ he said; ‘not for Michael. I shall be in court on two sticks a-saving the poor beggar’s neck.’

“‘Now, look here, old son,’ said I, ‘just let the whole thing go, and we’ll put up somebody else.’

“‘If you do,’ said he, ‘as sure as a gun she’s a gonner.’

“‘I am afraid I agree,’ said I; ‘but if our fair client is not a fit subject for the rope, upon my soul there’s no need to hang anybody.’

“Well, the next thing I saw was that his eyes were full of tears.

“‘Oh, damn it all!’ he said, ‘I can’t stand this hanging of women.’

“‘She’s an out-and-outer,’ said I.

“‘That doesn’t alter her sex,’ said the Irishman.

“‘Well,’ said I, ‘who can you suggest to put up in your stead with your plea of insanity? The difficulty is the brief is only marked twenty guineas, and you can’t get much for that money with you fellows.’

“‘You can’t,’ said he; ‘besides, this is a case for Michael. Unless it is handled in a certain way she is certain to hang. Apply for a postponement.’

“‘Why, you old sentimentalist, I don’t think we could get one,’ said I, having pretty well made up my mind that we could not.

“‘Who is the judge?’ said he.

“‘Bow-wow Brudenell,’ said I, ‘the most pedantic and cantankerous old man on the bench. And Weekes is leading for the Crown. There will not be much in the way of accommodation in that quarter.’

“‘Oh, come, old Bow-wow is not such a bad old sportsman,’ said the Irishman. ‘Tell him just how it is; tell him I’m suddenly laid by the wing, and it will be all right.’

“‘But,’ said I, ‘even if we get a postponement, we shall be none the better for it. It can’t be extended indefinitely; and I am afraid, old boy, this is going to be a long business of yours. I think I shall hand the brief over to Harris.’

“At first I was afraid the wild Irishman was going to jump out of his plaster of Paris.

“‘Harris!’ said he. ‘My aunt! I wouldn’t brief Harris to defend a fox-terrier for worrying a tortoise-shell kitten.’

“‘I’ll admit,’ said I, ‘that Christopher is not a genius, but at least he will get our unfortunate client hanged like a Christian and a gentleman.’

“I spent nearly an hour arguing the point with the poor old fellow. ‘I don’t hold with dumb animals performing on the stage, and I don’t hold with the hanging of women,’ he kept saying, in that odd way of his which one doesn’t know exactly how to take.

“‘Look here, old son,’ I said at last, growing impatient, ‘this will have to be fixed up with Harris to-night; and if I can’t get Harris, I shall get Westby.’

“‘She can hand in her checks if you get either,’ said he. ‘She’ll be hanged by the neck without even a run for her money.’

“‘Well, you can’t get “silk” for twenty guineas,’ said I; ‘and you can’t get a really useful junior.’

“Now, here follows another of the ‘peculiar’ circumstances. Suddenly the wild Irishman lifted himself in his bed, and again there was that odd look in his eyes.

“‘I’ll tell you who you _can_ get,’ said he; ‘he’s come to me in a flash. Get that fellow Northcote.’

“‘Northcote?’ said I; ‘never heard of him.’

“‘Never mind, get him,’ said the wild Irishman. ‘He’s young, and they say he’s mad, but he might bring us luck.’

“‘For a chap with as brilliant a set of brains as are to be found in London,’ said I, ‘you do come out with some of the oddest suggestions. How did you come to think of this fellow Northcote, when you won’t allow Harris and Westby to be good enough?’

“‘Oh,’ said he, ‘he’s one of my inspirations,’

“‘Inspiration my foot!’ said I. ‘I’m off to Christopher Harris.’

“Well, as I was about to go, poor Tobin raised himself again, and those queer eyes came at me in a way I don’t like.

“‘Look here, Whitcomb,’ he said; ‘you were a pal to me when I had hardly a boot to my foot, but if you go to Harris I’ll never speak to you again.’

“‘Lie down, you damned Celt, and go to sleep,’ I said, ‘and I’ll come and talk to you another day.’

“‘I won’t lie down until you promise to go to Northcote at No. 3 Shepherd’s Inn.’

“‘King’s Bench Walk,’ I assured him, ‘will be far better. If I can’t have a reckless fellow like you, I mean to play for safety.’

“‘All the safety in the world,’ said he, ‘won’t save the poor beggar’s neck.’

“‘That’s all very well,’ said I, ‘but an inexperienced man might come a dreadful cropper in a case of this kind. I believe myself in a moderate amount of speculation, but not in a capital charge.’

“‘It’s her only chance,’ said the Irishman.

“‘I am afraid,’ said I, ‘her attorneys are not willing to provide her with it at the risk of decency.’

“‘There’s your Saxon,’ said he. ‘Even when they hang a woman, they insist on decency. Praise be to the saints, we haven’t got any decency in our dirty old island.’

“‘No,’ said I; ‘but you’ve got a good deal of superstition. Whatever put this fellow Northcote into your wild head? I never remember to have heard of him in court.’

“‘I don’t care what you’ve heard of him,’ said the Irishman, ‘this is where he gets his chance. He’ll bring us luck.’

“‘Luck!’ said I. ‘A lawyer’s luck is based on common sense and the capacity to see into the future.’

“‘We crack-brained Celts possess that capacity,’ said Tobin. ‘You can come and tell me on Monday whether I’ve been wrong.’

“‘Is Northcote an Irishman, too?’ I asked, feeling myself beginning to waver; and I don’t mind confessing that I have never been able to withstand Michael Tobin from the first hour I met him.

“‘I’ve only seen the man twice,’ said he; ‘but if he doesn’t carry a drop of the Celt under his waistcoat, Cork was not my birthplace.’

“‘Have you seen him in court?’

“‘Not I. The first time I saw him he was addressing a few well-chosen remarks, quoting the pagan philosophers, to a select gathering of the unemployed in Hyde Park. M’Murdo was with me. “My hat,” said he, “that’s a fellow called Northcote; he’s at the bar. A nice place for a barrister, isn’t it?” “Personally,” said I, “I don’t care a curse about the place, but I’d give ten years of my life to have his voice.” There the thing was booming like an organ, and we stayed half an hour listening to rhetoric that might have come out of Burke.’

“‘And the second time?’

“‘I have only the haziest recollection of the occasion. Where it was I can’t recall, but the mob orator was paraphrasing “Hamlet” to gain facility of expression. But I remember thinking, “My son, you will be bursting upon an astonished world one of these fine afternoons, and then we shall all be complaining about your luck for being born so gifted.”’

“And so, my dear Northcote, to round up a long story, thus it was I came to stand in your chambers, dinnerless, at a quarter-past ten of a winter’s night.”

As is not uncommon with those who possess mental energy, the solicitor, under the stimulus of wine and events, had an immense volubility. During this recital the claret had circulated freely between his companion and himself. Both their faces were flushed, and, moreover, the emotions which had been excited in the young advocate had filled him with a kind of vertigo.

“After all,” said he, resting his forehead on his hand and staring into vacancy, “it is most probably Tobin who is the genie.”

“Set a thief to catch a thief,” laughed the solicitor. “Michael Tobin and yourself are well matched--a pair of deuced odd fellows.”

“In any case,” persisted Northcote, “if a genie you are, you would say you are a genie in spite of yourself.”

“I say nothing at all when it comes to genies,” said the solicitor with emphasis. “I don’t know anything about them; they are not in my line. They don’t trouble the common lawyer in the pursuit of his bread. What does trouble him is time, for time is money.”

The solicitor took out his watch, a thing of value.

“Twenty past eleven,” he said. “There’s a fortune awaiting the fellow who invents an automatic brake to slip on old Father Time. I’ve got to get out to Norbiton to-night,--I promised my little girl, and she will be sitting up. But before I go I wish you would cast your eyes over your brief, and tell me precisely what you think about it.”

The solicitor handed to Northcote the document tied with red tape, and called again for the waiter.

“You’ll have a liqueur?--they’ve got some white curaçao that might be worse. And perhaps some coffee might help us at this stage. Fortunately, this is the one place in London where they know how it’s made. And, Alphonse, you might bring some of those fireworks that you call cigars.”

VIII

EQUITY A FRUIT OF THE GODS

By the time the waiter had returned, the young advocate was addressing himself to the bundle of papers with a remarkable energy. Already a fierce mental excitement had stirred him. His senses, overstimulated by a wine of great potency, and by a too sudden reaction from a state of actual bodily starvation, a fever had been kindled in his frame. And those high ambitions which had reconciled him to existence through so long a period of the most abject penury, yet whose only home had been his wild dreams, had suddenly, at the touch of the magic wand of the enchanter, acquired a name and a local habitation.

It was no wonder that to the eyes of the solicitor, that cool, mature, and rather cynical man of the world, this young man, in whom strong and deep emotions had been let loose, soon became an object of scientific interest. Mr. Whitcomb felt himself to be even a little disconcerted by the feverish manner in which the young advocate tossed about the pages of his brief. As he came to note the vivid pallor of the face before him, the burning of the eyes, the twitching of the lips, he felt a qualm of uneasiness. Perchance it had been neither wise nor kind to be so lavish of the Château Margaux. Blood which had been deteriorated by a course of insufficient food was only too likely to be over-charged by an unaccustomed accession of heat. Already it had seemed to be waxing too high.

“Here is your liqueur,” said Mr. Whitcomb, with a slight perturbation, “and here’s a cigar I’ve chosen for you. And here’s a nice black coffee that may steady you a bit.”

“Thanks, thanks,” muttered Northcote, nodding his head in a mechanical manner.

The solicitor gulped his liqueur, and cut off the end of his cigar.

“Well, old boy,” he said, letting a somewhat whimsical gaze fall upon the man who sat opposite, “do you feel like giving us a bit of a run for our money at the hour of ten-thirty at the Central Criminal Court on Friday morning next, or would you prefer that the chance should be offered to Harris?”

The advocate swallowed his coffee.

“You will have a run for your money all right,” said he, “on Friday morning next. Upon my soul, I believe you have given me a start with the most fascinating case in the world.”

The solicitor pursed up his lips in an expression of genial contradiction.

“If you find fascination in a thing like that,” he said, “you must look very deep. The whole business is sordid, atrocious, bestial. The crime is brutal and perfectly commonplace.”

“Is it not a mere question,” said the advocate, “of the fashion in which one uses one’s eyes, of the plane over which one permits them to stray?”

“There is only one plane, my friend,” said the solicitor, “over which an attorney permits _his_ eyes to stray. That is the obvious diurnal one of matter-of-fact common sense.”

“Yet it may happen,” Northcote rejoined, “that the plane of matter-of-fact common sense may not be identical in the eyes of attorney and advocate.”

“Is not the hour somewhat advanced for a Socratic dialogue?” said the solicitor.

“Also,” persisted Northcote, “the plane of matter-of-fact common sense, in whatever it may consist, may not prove identical in the eyes of the jury and the judge; also in the eyes of the person who committed the crime, and the person who was the victim of it.”

“We are not here to traverse the moral code,” said the solicitor, “or to enter the domain of abstract reason. The English penal law is perfectly explicit upon the point at issue, as I think you will find on Friday.”

Of a sudden Northcote struck the table a violent blow.

“This unhappy woman has been deeply wronged by circumstance,” he said, with a vehemence that was totally unexpected.

“It will do your case no harm to show that to the jury,” said the solicitor, sucking quietly at his cigar. “There is not a scrap of evidence to support such a contention, but it might be of service if it could be upheld.”

“Is it not here that we enter on the higher function of the advocate’s art?” said the young man. “Does it not consist in the evocation of that which lies outside the obvious?”

“You must have it entirely your own way, my dear fellow,” said the solicitor warily. “I don’t propose to play the rôle of Adeimantus at this hour of the night. But I don’t mind remarking that you will have to evoke that which is very far outside the obvious to secure the acquittal of my client on Friday.”

“That is viewing the subject from the plane of matter-of-fact common sense which you are content to inhabit?”

“That is so; I can view it from no other. But may I remark in parenthesis that you are also likely to find the judge and jury inhabiting that plane on Friday.”

“You permit yourself a greater definiteness than I dare to employ,” said Northcote. “But the point I would like to fix is this: Assuming that I am able to evoke that which in your view lies so far outside the obvious as to be non-existent, will you countenance my so doing in the prisoner’s interest?”

The solicitor gave a short nervous jerk to his mustache.

“That is a rather extraordinary proposition to advance,” he said disconcertedly; “and as you are a young man, a beginner, perhaps you will forgive my saying that I consider you hardly wise to advance it.”

“Because we cannot contrive to keep our corns out of the way, eh? We would look upon equity as a sort of fruit of the gods, which mankind may eat of, but may not analyze.”

“I shall not attempt to follow you. But what I would like to say is this,--and I hope, my dear fellow, you, as an advocate, will not consider this as a breach of etiquette on the part of your client,--I don’t like your question at all. In a word, speaking with twenty years’ experience behind me, I hardly think it ought to have been put.”

The accession of somewhat strenuous solemnity to a manner which a minute ago had been grossly, carelessly genial, filled Northcote with a heavy mocking laughter.

“I don’t like it at all; oughtn’t to have been put,” Mr. Whitcomb reaffirmed, with a curious admixture of nervousness and sternness.

“I wonder if I shall ever acquire the most valuable of all the arts,” said the young man, with an arch smile; “the art of knowing where not to look.”

“That art comprises the first law of success,” said the solicitor sententiously.

“I omitted to append a rather important corollary to that extraordinary proposition of mine,” said Northcote, with a mischievous air. “It is this: Is the advocate entitled to evoke what is non-existent in the eyes of his client, providing it has an existence in his own?”

“I hope to be spared anything further upon the subject,” said the solicitor. “I don’t aspire to be a casuist; I’m a common lawyer. But I feel I am entitled to say this: use this subtlety of yours on Friday to a full advantage, and you will have no cause to regret having done so.”

“Yes, it’s the voice of the genie, right enough,” said the young man, in a hollow voice, as he toyed with an empty wine-glass.

“And I feel I am also entitled to say,” said the solicitor, with emphasis, “since your mind appears to be exercised by the question, that when an advocate accepts a brief, his whole duty is to his client.”

“And in the case of this unfortunate woman, will serve the interests of his client by securing her acquittal?”

“Unquestionably.”

“If the ends of justice are thereby defeated?”

“Well, since you force one to say it, the interests of the prisoner’s attorney may not always be coincident with those of justice.”

“My dear Adeimantus, that is well said,” the young man exclaimed. “Yet I have your assurance that the interests of client and advocate should be always identical?”

“Yes, I think you are entitled to say that,” said the solicitor; “although understand, if you please, I speak entirely in my capacity as an attorney.”

“From which I gather that as a unit of mankind, as a subscriber to the common equity, you reserve to yourself the right to appease your private gods subsequently in your own private fashion?”

“I suppose one does.”

“And in the meantime, you and I, attorney and advocate, must compass the liberation of this foul murderess, must, if we can, give her back to society?”

“Personally, I shall be content if we enable her to escape the extreme penalty.”

“You balk my question.”

“Pray have it as you choose. Thank God, I am only a common lawyer!”

“My dear Samuel Whitcomb,” said the young man, peering at him with gaunt eyes, “you would do well to get down here and now on your knees, and thank Him for a dispensation of that kind.”

IX

THE BRIEF WITHDRAWN

“Waiter!” called the solicitor at this point. “More coffee, if you please. Let it be hot and strong.” Turning to Northcote, he added: “Our minds have grown so subtle with that claret we’ve got to find out where we are.”

“Narcotics are not usually the friends of truth,” said his companion.

“My worthy Samuel Taylor,” laughed the solicitor, “I hope you will not forget I want to get to Norbiton to-night.”

“There is one other point,” said the young man imperturbably, “on which I wish to render myself clear.”

Mr. Whitcomb permitted himself a shrug of unmistakable expostulation.

“What, another!” he muttered under his breath. “This fellow is the devil!”

“I do not propose to take the line of insanity.”

Northcote spoke with a quietness which seemed to deepen the reverberation of Mr. Whitcomb’s subsequent exclamation.

“Then you hang her!”

“On the contrary,” said Northcote, “I promise an acquittal.”

For a moment the solicitor was robbed of speech by this extraordinary announcement.

“Upon my word,” he exclaimed, with a more manifest impatience than any he had yet shown, “you can hardly have read your brief. There is nothing to extenuate the crime; and the evidence of it is overwhelming.”

“Circumstantial, apparently.”

“You must know that in a capital charge the prosecution relies almost invariably upon circumstantial evidence.”

“So much the worse for it in this particular instance.”

“I am at a loss to understand.” The solicitor spoke in accents of alarm. “There is not a man living who could overthrow the present evidence.”

The young man smiled darkly. The symptoms of his inebriation had yielded to the clarifying influence of a liqueur and two cups of strong black coffee. His calmness was now forming a memorable contrast to the marked excitement of the older man.

“My dear Mr. Whitcomb,” he said, “I suggest, as you wish to get to Norbiton, that we adjourn this discussion until Friday evening, by which time Emma Harrison, _alias_ Cox, _alias_ Marshall, will be restored to society.”

“Such an undertaking is entirely reckless,” said the solicitor bluntly. “Quite the last thing that Tobin himself would attempt would be to upset the theory of the prosecution. The chain of evidence could not be more complete. Even he, in the opinion of many the most brilliant common law man we have at the present moment at the bar, would be content to urge extenuating circumstances, and call witnesses in their support.”

“Since you have seen fit to entrust the conduct of this case to me,” said Northcote, “I shall beg to be conceded as free a hand as would have been conceded to Michael Tobin.”

“Is your request quite reasonable?” said the solicitor. “Tobin has years of experience and success behind him.”

“You can trust me not to attempt more than I can perform,” said Northcote.

“Really, sir,” said Mr. Whitcomb, genuinely alarmed by such an obduracy, “I cannot admit your right, in the circumstances in which you stand at present, to overstep the bounds that are so clearly indicated by persons of experience.”

“I take this brief into court free of all restriction,” was the young man’s rejoinder.

“That one can hardly consent to,” said the solicitor. “Would you say it is quite legitimate to make such a stipulation? We have our witnesses on the line of insanity, and we must ask to have them called.”