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Page 3
The steady voice stopped a moment and the young man shivered slightly;
his look was strained. Steadily he went on.
"That's the story. From that the coroner's jury have found that Jack
killed Ben Armstrong--that he bought the pistol to kill him, and went
to his rooms with that purpose; that in his haste to escape, he missed
seeing that the elevator was down, as Mr. Newbold all but missed seeing
it later, and jumped into the shaft and was killed instantly himself.
That's what the jury get from the facts, but it seems to me they're
begging the question. There are a hundred hypotheses that would fit
the case of Jack's innocence--why is it reasonable to settle on the
one that means his guilt? This is my idea. Jack and Ben Armstrong had
been friends since boyhood and Jack, quick-tempered as he was, was
warm-hearted and loyal. It was like him to decide suddenly to go to Ben
and make friends. He had been to a play in the evening which had more
or less that _motif_; he was open to such influences. It was like
the pair of them, after the reconciliation, to set to work looking at
Jack's new toy, the pistol. It was a brand-new sort, and the two have
been interested always in guns--I remember how I, as a youngster, was
impressed when Ben and Jack bought their first shot-guns together. Jack
had got the pistol at Mellingham's that evening, you know--he was likely
to be keen about it still, and then--it went off. There are plenty of
other cases where a man has shot his friend by accident--why shouldn't
poor Jack be given the benefit of the doubt? The telephone wouldn't
work; Jack rushed out with the same idea which struck Mr. Newbold later,
of getting Dr. Avery--and fell down the shaft.
"For me there is no doubt. I never knew him to hold malice. He was
violent sometimes, but that he could have gone about for hours with
a pistol in his pocket and murder in his heart; that he could have
planned Ben Armstrong's death and carried it out deliberately--it's
a contradiction in terms. It's impossible, being Jack. You must know
this--you know your son--you know human nature."
The rapid _r�sum�_ was but an impassioned appeal. Its answer came
after a minute; to the torrent of eager words, three words:
"Thank you, Dick."
The absolute lack of impression on the man's judgment was plain.
"Ah!" The clergyman sprang to his feet and stood, his eyes blazing,
despairing, looking down at the bent, listless figure. How could he let
a human being suffer as this one was suffering? Quickly his thoughts
shifted their basis. He could not affect the mind of the lawyer; might
he reach now, perhaps, the soul of the man? He knew the difficulty,
for before this his belief had crossed swords with the agnosticism of
his uncle, an agnosticism shared by his father, in which he had been
trained, from which he had broken free only five years before. He had
faced the batteries of the two older brains at that time, and come out
with the brightness of his new-found faith untarnished, but without, he
remembered, scratching the armor of their profound doubt in everything.
One could see, looking at the slender black figure, at the visionary
gaze of the gray wide eyes, at the shape of the face, broad-browed,
ovalled, that this man's psychic make-up must lift him like wings into
an atmosphere outside a material, outside even an intellectual world.
He could breathe freely only in a spiritual air, and things hard to
believe to most human beings were, perhaps, his every-day thoughts. He
caught a quick breath of excitement as it flashed to his brain that now,
possibly, was coming the moment when he might justify his life, might
help this man whom he loved, to peace. The breath he caught was a
prayer; his strong, nervous fingers trembled. He spoke in a tone whose
concentration lifted the eyes below him, that brooded, stared.
"I can't bear it to stand by and see you go under, when there's help
close. You said that if you could believe that they were living, that
you would have them again, you would be perfectly happy no matter how
many years you must wait. They are living as sure as I am here, and as
sure as Jack was here, and Jack's mother. They are living still. Perhaps
they're close to you now. You've bound a bandage over your eyes, you've
covered the vision of your spirit, so that you can't see; but that
doesn't make nothingness of God's world. It's there--here--close,
maybe. A more real world than this--this little thing." With a boyish
gesture he thrust behind him the universe. "What do we know about the
earth, except effects upon our consciousness? It's all a matter of
inference--you know that better than I. The thing we do know beyond
doubt is that we are each of us a something that suffers and is happy.
How is that something the same as the body--the body that gets old
and dies--how can it be? You can't change thought into matter--not
conceivably--everybody acknowledges that. Why should the thinking part
die then, because the material part dies? When the organ is broken is
the organist dead? The body is the hull, the covering, and when it has
grown useless it will fall away and the live seed in it will stand free
to sunlight and air--just at the beginning of life, as a plant is when
it breaks through earth in the spring. It's the seed in the ground,
and it's the flower in the sunlight, but it's the same thing--the same
life--it is--it _is_." The boy's intensity of conviction shot like
a flame across the quiet room.
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