Henry Northcote

Calling the name of the solicitor, Northcote broke away abruptly from the prisoner and left the room. It had seemed to be charged with a pestilence. Mr. Whitcomb was soon at his side, and hastily they wended their way up and down various flights of stone steps, along the noisome corridors of the huge building, until daylight came in sight once more through the doorway at the end of the passage at which their cab was standing. Their relief was very real at being able to breathe again the living air, fog-laden as it was.

“I don’t know how many times,” said Mr. Whitcomb, as they drove from the portals of the jail, “on one errand and another, I have descended into this inferno, but it never loses its power to give me the blues.”

“I am regretting,” said Northcote, “that I did not take your advice. I wish I had not come near it. I cannot shake off the impression it has made. Ugh! it gets into one’s blood. I don’t know anything quite so overpowering as the nausea of locality.”

“You are too impressionable, my son,” said the solicitor, with a furtive smile. “You will never be able to get through life at this rate. It wants one of some hardihood, one who is robust in each one of his five senses, to practise law.”

“I would say,” Northcote rejoined, with a shudder, “that to be armed for this calling each particular nerve he has got in his body must be shod with iron.”

The solicitor laughed at so palpable a discomposure.

“What did you make of the prisoner?” he asked, suddenly. “You appeared to find a great deal to say to one another.”

“Personally I hardly spoke a word to her,” said the young man, seeking to gather his recollection of that strange interview.

“She appeared to find a good deal to say to you,” said the solicitor. “In that respect you have been more fortunate than myself. I have spoken with her three times, and I don’t think I have been able to extract three words from her. Do you mind telling me what she said?”

“To the best of my remembrance she said nothing that could have the least interest for anybody.”

“Tell me, what impression of her have you brought away?”

“I hardly know whether she allowed me to form one. Our communication seemed so indirect. She kept her face in the shadow all the time; I could not discern a feature.”

“Surely you were able to gather some sort of general idea?”

“That is the strange thing—I seem to have formed no opinion about her. One would not have thought it conceivable that one should have conversed with a person, dealt at least in an actual exchange of words at close quarters, and that they should remain so null. I think I should have been better acquainted with her had I not seen her at all.”

“Come, my dear fellow, you can surely recall a word or two of what she said? She is an enigma; and she is said not to have spoken six words since she was first remanded in custody.”

“That certainly makes the volubility in which she indulged this afternoon the more astonishing.”

“Indeed it does. Would you say that she expects an acquittal?”

“Well, now you come to mention that, I would say she does.”

“It is an extraordinary thing that they are all so sanguine. It hardly ever seems to occur to any of them that by any possibility they can meet with their deserts. Indeed, one might say the bigger the criminal, the greater their confidence that they will escape.”

“I am going to ask you what opinion you have formed of her,” said Northcote.

“It follows the lines of your own. When I have come into personal contact with her, I have been able to make rather less than nothing of her. At first I thought she seemed sullen, and quite reconciled to her position, indeed, that she was too callous to care about anything; but upon seeing her to-day, I was rather struck by the fact that her attitude had undergone a change.”

“How long has she been in prison?”

“Nearly three months. She is an odd sort of creature—her former associates are agreed upon that—and doubtless some sort of change has taken place in her. I am more than ever convinced that insanity is your line; and by this time it should not be too much to hope that you are.”

“She will expect her liberty.”

“She will expect! My dear boy, it is when you permit yourself to talk in this fashion that you fill one with so much distrust. Her position entitles her to expect nothing.”

“No sort of doubt overtakes you then in regard to her guilt?”

“None. I have suggested that to you over and over again. My dear fellow, it is as I feared; you have not permitted yourself a due appreciation of the overwhelming nature of the evidence. I do not see how she can hope to escape; and this is pretty plain speaking on the part of her attorney. Just look at the array of facts—her course of life, her purchase of the poison, the result of the post-mortem, the presence of motive. Again and again I have felt it to be my duty to suggest to you that Tobin would not have attempted to shake the evidence.”

“Well, you must permit me to say that, reflect upon the question as I will, it does not seem easy to reconcile the woman in that room with the cold-blooded monster who will be presented to the jury.”

“That phenomenon is by no means rare. It has been my fortune to undertake the defence of more than one finished example of moral obliquity who has presented not the least indication of such a condition. Besides, do you not admit that the impression that this woman made upon you was one of absolute nullity? Were you not unable to divine anything in regard to her?”

“Yes, that was my first feeling; but I am now confessing that after all, in some mysterious way, she has contrived to shake these preconceived ideas about her, now that from this distance I can view the room and what transpired in it. I dare not say by what means she has contrived to produce this effect; indeed, it is so subtle that I can hardly say what it amounts to, because if I begin to recall her words she seems almost to have admitted her guilt. Yet of one thing I am convinced—she presented no evidence of her depravity.”

“One can easily concede the probability of that.”

“Yes, but had it been as complete as you insist, I must have seen it.”

“Pardon me, but I am afraid it does not follow. What is easier than to hide its traces from the eyes of inexperience?”

“Have I not the talisman in my pocket which transcends experience?”

“Talisman be damned,” said Mr. Whitcomb, with a jovial brutality.

Before his companion could frame an answer to a scorn so unconciliatory, the hansom stopped before the offices of Messrs. Whitcomb and Whitcomb. They alighted together.