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Page 104
The butler had been arrested, charged with the crime, and his
trial was now going on in the Criminal Court. Circumstantial
evidence was strong against him. The woman spoke as though she
echoed the current comment of the courtroom without realizing how
it affected her. She had done what she could. She had employed
an attorney at the recommendation of a person who had come to
interview her. She did not know who the person was nor why she
should have employed this attorney at his suggestion, except that
some one must be had to defend her husband, and uncertain what to
do, she had gone to the first name suggested.
The girl listened, putting now and then a query. She spoke
slowly, careful to use only English words. And while the woman
talked she made a little drawing on the blank back of a menu
card. Now she began to question the woman minutely about the
details of the room and the position of the furniture where the
tragedy had occurred, the desk, the attitude of the dead man, the
location of the wound, and exact distances. And as the woman
repeated the evidence of the police officers and the experts, the
girl filled out her drawing with nice mathematical exactness like
one accustomed to such a labor.
This was the whole story, and now the woman added the final
interview with the attorney. She made a sort of hopeless
gesture.
"Nobody believes us," she said. "My husband did not kill him.
He was at home with me. He knew nothing about it until he found
his master dead at the table in the morning. But there is only
our word against all the lawyers and detectives and experts that
Mr. Thompson has brought against us."
"Who is Mr. Thompson?" said the girl. She was deep in a study of
her little drawing.
"He's Mr. Marsh's nephew, Mr. Percy Thompson."
The girl, absorbed in the study of her drawing, now put an
unexpected question.
"Has your husband lost an arm?"
"No," she said, "he never had any sort of accident."
A great light came into the girl's face. "Then I believe you,"
she said. "I believe every word . . . . I think your husband is
innocent."
The girl was aglow with an enthusiastic purpose. It was all
there in her fine, expressive face.
"Now," she said, "tell me about this nephew, this Mr. Percy
Thompson. Could we by any chance see him?"
"It won't do any good to see him," replied the woman. "He is
determined to convict my husband. Nothing can change him."
The girl went on without paying any attention to the comment.
"Where does he live - you must have heard?"
"He lives at the Markheim Hotel," she said.
"The Markheim Hotel," repeated the girl. "Where is it?"
The woman gave the street and number. The girl rose. "That's on
my way; we'll stop."
The two-went out of the cafe to the motor. The whole thing,
incredible at any other hour, seemed to the woman like events
happening in a dream or in some topsy-turvy country which she had
mysteriously entered.
She sat back in the tonneau of the motor, huddled into the
corner, a rug around her shoulders. The flashing lights seemed
those of some distant, unknown city, as though she were
transported into the scene of an Arabian tale.
The motor stopped before a little shabby hotel in a neighboring
cross-street, and the footman, in livery beside the driver, got
down at a direction of the girl and went up the steps. In a few
moments a man came out and descended to the motor standing by the
curb. He was about middle age. He looked as though Nature had
intended him, in the beginning, for a person of some distinction,
but he had the dissipated face of one at middle age who had
devoted his years to a life of pleasure. There were hard lines
about his mouth and a purple network of veins showing about the
base of his nose.
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