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The discomposure of the solicitor and the nervous tension of the
advocate were intruded upon at last by the constable, who had taken
rather more than three-quarters of an hour to perform his mission.
“Will you come this way, gentlemen?” he said.
They were conducted along more dark and apparently interminable
passages, up one flight of stone steps and down two others, until at
last they found themselves in a room similar to the one they had left,
except that it was larger and gloomier, smelt rather more poisonous,
and looked somewhat more funereal.
Northcote’s heart was again beating violently as he stepped over its
threshold, and his excitement was not in the least allayed when he
discovered that there was no one in it.
“If you will kindly take a seat, gentlemen,” said their guide, “Harrison
will be here in a few minutes.”
“In other words, twenty,” said Mr. Whitcomb, beginning a tour of
inspection of this dismal apartment. “These small mementoes may
have some slight interest for you, my friend,” he said to Northcote.
He drew the young man’s attention to a row of shelves placed at
right angles to the window. They were raised tier upon tier to the
height of the ceiling, and were crammed with crude staring objects. A
close inspection revealed them to be busts made of plaster of Paris.
“Why, what are these horrible things supposed to represent?” said
Northcote, with a thrill in his voice.
“These,” said Mr. Whitcomb cheerfully, “are the casts taken after
death of a number of ladies and gentlemen who have had the
distinction of being hanged within the precincts of this jail during the
past hundred years. If you will examine them closely, you will be able
to observe the indentation of the hangman’s rope, which has been
duly imprinted on the throat of each individual. Also, you may discern
the mark of the knot under the left ear. Interesting, are they not? The
official mind is generally able to exhibit itself in quite an amiable light
when it stoops to the æsthetic.”
“I call it perfectly devilish,” said Northcote, shuddering with horror.
“They must have quite a peculiar scientific interest,” said Mr.
Whitcomb, “for each lady or gentleman who may chance to enter this
apartment to consult his or her legal adviser. Are you able to
recognize any of these persons of distinction? If I am not mistaken,
the elderly gentleman on the third row on the right towards the door
is no less an individual than Cuttell, who poisoned a whole family at
Wandsworth. High-minded and courteous person as he undoubtedly
was, I must say Cuttell certainly looks less outré now he is dead, and
more in harmony with his surroundings, than when he entered this
room, and asked me in a mincing tone, with all the aitches
misplaced, whether in my opinion any obstacle would be raised
against his getting his evening clothes out of pawn, as he desired to
wear them in the dock during his trial.”
“For the love of pity, spare me!” cried Northcote, pressing his fingers
into his ears, “or I shall run away.”
“The gentleman with the protruding lip on the second shelf towards
the window is, unless my eyes deceive me, one Bateman, who
slaughtered his maiden aunt with a chopper and buried her in a drain
—”
Northcote spared himself further details in the history of Mr. Bateman
by laying violent hands upon his counterfeit presentment, and hurling
it with terrific force against the iron window bar, whence it fell to the
floor in a thousand pieces.
“Upon my soul, I have a great mind to go through the lot,” he said,
livid with fury.
“Pray do so, by all means, dear boy,” said Mr. Whitcomb, with that
unction which never forsook him, “and you will find your art-loving
countrymen will avenge this outrage upon the private and peculiar
form of their culture by one day insisting that your own effigy is
placed on these historic shelves.”
XIX
THE ACCUSED
The final consultation of Northcote and his client took place in the
open street in the heavily raining December afternoon, with their
backs against Mr. Whitcomb’s brass plate. The spot selected for their
last utterances on this momentous affair was incongruous indeed,
but each had grown so impatient of the other, that if their last words
were spoken here, the clash of their mental states was the less likely
to invite disaster than in a more formal council-chamber of four walls.
The robust common sense of the solicitor had never shown itself to
be more incisive than now as he stood with his back to his own door,
under a dripping umbrella, his hat pushed to the back of his head,
and his trousers turned up beyond his ankles. His twenty years of
immensely successful practice, his exact knowledge of human
nature, his ruthless worldliness, his reverence for the hard fact, stood
forth here in the oddest contrast with the somewhat “special” and
rarefied quality of this youthful advocate whom he had seen fit to
entrust with so important a case.
“It’s a pity, it’s a pity,” he brought himself to say at last, his veneer
falling off a little under the stress of his chagrin, and revealing a
glimpse of the baffled human animal beneath. “It is a serious mistake
to have made; but we have got to stand to it. You are not the man for
this class of work, to speak bluntly. You are either too deep or you
are not deep enough. But as I say, we have got to stand to it now.
My last words will be to urge you to put as good a face upon it as
you can.”
“In other words,” said Northcote, stiffening, “you will look to me to do
my best.”
“I don’t put it in that form exactly,” said the solicitor, midway between
exasperation and a desire to be courteous. “I want you fully to
appreciate that you are handling an extremely tough job, and I
merely want you to make the best of it, that’s all.”
“I will tell you, Mr. Whitcomb,” said Northcote, striving in vain to avert
the explosion that had been gathering for so long, “that if it were not
now the eleventh hour, if I had not pledged myself to this thing more
deeply than you know, if it were not a matter of life and death to me
as well as to your client, I would throw your brief back at you rather
than submit to this. It will be time enough for you to get upon your
platform when I have made a hash of everything.”
“Yes, I think you are entitled to say that,” said the solicitor impartially,
having made a successful effort to recapture his own serenity. “I
have no right to talk as I am doing; I have never done so to any one
else. I suspect you have got on my nerves a bit.”
“Yes, the whole matter throws back to the clash of our
temperaments,” said Northcote, unable to cloak his own irritation
now that it had walked abroad. “It is a pity that we ever attempted to
work together. Yet for one who envelops himself in the serene air of
reason, you are somewhat illogical, are you not? You enter the
highways and hedges in search of a particular talent; you have the
fortune to light upon it; and then you turn and rend its unhappy
possessor for possessing it.”
“As I say, my dear boy, this particular talent of yours—or is it your
temperament?—you see I am not up in these technical names—has
got on my nerves a little.”
“And your temperament, my friend, to indulge a tu quoque, is
covered with a hard gritty outer coating, for which I believe the
technical name is ‘practicality,’ which positively sets one’s teeth on
edge.”
“So be it; we part with mutual recriminations. But this is my last word.
Firmly as I believe I have committed an error of judgment, if to-
morrow you can prove that I have deceived myself, you will not find
me ungrateful. I can speak no fairer; and this you must take for my
apology. It is not too much to say that since I have come to know you
I have ceased to recognize myself.”
“I accept your amende” said Northcote, without hesitation. “I see I
have worried you, but if I might presume to address advice to the
fount of all experience, never, my dear Mr. Whitcomb, attempt to
formulate a judgment upon that which you cannot possibly
understand.”
“After to-morrow there is a remote chance that I may come to heed
your advice. In the meantime we will shake hands just to show that
malice is not borne. Don’t forget that you will be the first called to-
morrow, at half-past ten. It is quite likely to last all day.”
The solicitor turned into his offices and Northcote sauntered along
Chancery Lane. The twilight which had enveloped the city all day
was now yielding to the authentic hues of evening. The dismal
street-lamps were already lit, the gusts of rain, sleet, and snow of the
previous night had been turned into a heavy downpour which had
continued without intermission since the morning. The pavements
were bleached by the action of water, but a miasma arose from the
overburdened sewers, whose contents flowed among the traffic and
were churned by its wheels into a paste of black mud. Northcote was
splashed freely with this thick slushy mixture, even as high as his
face, by the countless omnibuses; and in crossing from one
pavement to another he had a narrow escape from being knocked
down by a covered van.
It was in no mood of courage that the young man pushed his way to
his lodgings through the traffic and the elbowing crowds who
thronged the narrow streets. Even the mental picture that was
thrown before his eyes of this garret which had already devoured his
youth had the power to make him feel colder than actually he was.
Never had he felt such a depression in all the long term of his
privation as now in wending his way towards it laboriously, heavily,
with slow-beating pulses.
He was sore, disappointed, angry; his pride was wounded by the
attitude of his client. His self-centred habit caused him to take
himself so much for granted, that at first he could discern no reason
for this volte-face. In his view it was inconsiderate to withhold the
moral support of which at this moment he stood so much in need.
Truly the lot of obscurity was hard; its penalties were of a kind to
bring many a shudder to a proud and sensitive nature. The
patronizing insolence of one whom he despised was beginning to fill
him with a bootless rage, yet in his present state how impotent he
was before it. He must suffer such things, and suffer them gladly,
until that hour dawned in which his powers announced themselves.
That time was to-morrow—terrible, all-piercing, yet entrancing
thought! The measure of his talent would then be proclaimed. Yet all
in an instant, like a lightning-flash shooting through darkness, for the
first time the true nature of his task was revealed to him. Doubt took
shape, sprang into being. Its outline seemed to loom through the
dismal shadows cast by the lamps in the street. Who and what was
he, after all, in comparison with a task of such immensity? With
startling and overwhelming force the solicitor’s meaning was
suddenly unfolded to him.
He took himself for granted no more. He must be mad to have gone
so far without having paused to subject himself to the self-criticism
that is so salutary. How could he blame the solicitor whose eminently
practical mind had resented this inaccessibility to the ordinary rules
of prudence? Was he not the veriest novice in his profession, without
credentials of any kind? And yet he arrogated to himself the right to
embark upon a line of conduct that was in direct opposition to the
promptings of a mature judgment.
How could he have been so sure of this supreme talent? It had never
been brought to test. The only measure of it was his scorn of others,
the scorn of the unsuccessful for those who have succeeded. The
passion with which it had endowed him was nothing more, most
probably, than a monomania of egotism. How consummate was the
folly which could mistake the will for the deed, the vaulting ambition
for the thing itself!
On the few occasions, some seven or eight in all, in which he had
turned an honest guinea, mostly at the police-court, he had betrayed
no surprising aptitude for his profession. There had been times, even
in affairs so trivial, when his highly strung nervous organization had
overpowered the will. He had not been exempt from the commission
of errors; he recalled with horror that once or twice it had fallen to his
lot to be put out of countenance by his adversary; while once at least
he had drawn down upon himself the animadversions of the
presiding deity. Surely there was nothing in this rather pitiful career
to provide a motive for this overweening arrogance.
He grew the more amazed at his own hardihood as he walked along.
To what fatal blindness did he owe it that from the beginning his true
position had not been revealed to him? Where were the credentials
that fitted him to undertake a task so stupendous? What
achievement had he to his name that he should venture to launch his
criticisms against those who had been through the fray and had
emerged victorious? How could he have failed to appreciate that
abstract theory was never able to withstand the impact of
experience! It was well enough in the privacy of his garret to
conceive ideas and to sustain his faculties with dreams of a future
that could never be, but once in the arena, when the open-mouthed
lion of the actual lay in his path, he would require arms more
puissant than these.
To overcome those twin dragons Tradition and Precedent, behind
which common and vulgar minds entrenched themselves so
fearlessly, the sword of the sophist would not avail. It would snap in
his fingers at the first contact with these impenetrable hides. His
blade must be forged of thrice-welded steel if he were to have a
chance on the morrow. He had decided to promulgate like a second
Napoleon the doctrine of force, and for his only weapon he had
chosen a dagger of lath. Well might Mr. Whitcomb smile with
contempt. Where would he find himself if he dared to preach the
most perilous of gospels, if he could not support it with an enormous
moral and physical power?
For years he had dwelt in a castle which he had built out of air,
secure in the belief that he was endowed in ample measure with
attributes whose operations were so diverse yet so comprehensive,
that in those rare instances in which they were united they became
superhuman in their reach. An Isaiah or a Cromwell did not visit the
world once in an era. How dare such a one as he fold his nakedness
in the sacred mantle of the gods! It was the act of one whose folly
was too rank even to allow him to pose as a charlatan. If he ventured
to deliver one-half of these astonishing words he had prepared for
the delectation of an honest British jury, these flatulent pretensions
would be unveiled, he would be mocked openly, his ruin would be
complete and irretrievable.
Never had irresolution assailed him so powerfully. This review at the
eleventh hour of the unwarrantable estimate he had formed of
himself rendered it imperative that he should change his plans. The
opinion of others, acknowledged masters of the profession in which
he was so humble a tyro, was incontrovertible. Evidence in support
of a perfectly rational plea was provided for him, would be ready in
court. His client had demanded that it should be used. To disregard
that demand would be to rebuff his only friend, one of great influence
who had been sent to his aid in his direst hour. And it was for nothing
better than a whim that he was prepared to yield his all. No principle
was at stake, no sacrifice of dignity was involved. That which his
patron had asked of him was so natural, so admirably humane, that
the mere act of refusal would be rendered unpardonable unless it
were vindicated by complete success. No other justification was
possible, not only in the eyes of himself and in those of his client, but
no less was exacted of him by the hapless creature whose life was in
his keeping.
Stating it baldly, let him fail in the superhuman feat which had been
imposed upon him by a disease which he called ambition, and this
wretched woman would expiate his failure upon the gallows. Had
any human being a right to incur such a penalty, a right to pay such a
price in the pursuit of his own personal and private aims? The middle
course was provided for him. It would deliver the accused and
himself from this intolerable peril; it opened up a path of safety for
them both.
Already he could observe with a scarifying clearness, that here and
now, at the eleventh hour, he must defer to the irresistible impact of
the circumstances. The risk was too grave; he was thrusting too
cruel a responsibility upon his flesh and blood. He must hasten to
make terms with that grossly material world of the hard fact which he
scorned so much. He must submit to one of those pitiful