Part 24 (1/2)
”Doctor,” he said, in a tone that implored, ”I'm obliged to see Webster today.”
”Sorry, Mr. Hastings,” came the instant refusal; ”but it can't be done.”
”For one question,” qualified Hastings; ”less than a minute's talk--one word, 'yes' or 'no'? It's almost a matter of life and death.”
”If that man's excited about anything,” Garnet retorted, ”it will be entirely a matter of death. Frankly, I couldn't see my way clear to letting you question him if his escaping arrest depended on it. I called in Dr. Welles last night; and I'm giving you his opinion as well as my own.”
”When can I see him, then?”
”I can't answer that. It may be a week; it may be a month. All I can tell you today is that you can't question him now.”
With that information, Hastings decided to interview Judge Wilton.
”He's the next best,” he thought. ”That whispering across the woman's body--it's got to be explained, and explained right!”
As a matter of fact, he had refrained from this inquiry the day before, so that his mind might not be clouded by anger. His deception by the judge had greatly provoked him.
XIII
MRS. BRACE BEGINS
Court had recessed for lunch when Hastings, going down a second-story corridor of the Alexandria county courthouse, entered Judge Wilton's anteroom. His hand was raised to knock on the door of the inner office when he heard the murmur of voices on the other side. He took off his hat and sat down, welcoming the breeze that swept through the room, a refres.h.i.+ng contrast to the forenoon's heat and smother downstairs.
He reached for his knife and piece of pine, checked the motion and glanced swiftly toward the closed door. A high note of a woman's voice touched his memory, for a moment confusing him. But it was for a moment only. While the sound was still in his ears, he remembered where he had heard it before--from Mrs. Brace when, toward the close of his interview with her, she had shrilly denounced Berne Webster.
Mrs. Brace, her daughter's funeral barely three hours old, had started to make her threats good.
While he was considering that, the door of the private office swung inward, Judge Wilton's hand on the k.n.o.b. It opened on the middle of a sentence spoken by Mrs. Brace:
”--tell you, you're a fool if you think you can put me off with that!”
Her gleaming eyes were so furtive and so quick that they traversed the whole of Wilton's countenance many times, a fiery probe of each separate feature. The inflections of her voice invested her words with ugliness; but she did not shriek.
”You bully everybody else, but not me! They don't call you 'Hard Tom Wilton' for nothing, do they? I know you! I know you, I tell you! I was down there in the courtroom when you sentenced that man! You had cruelty in your mind, cruelty on your face. Ugh! And you're cruel to me--and taking an unG.o.dly pleasure in it! Well, let me tell you, I won't be broken by it. I want fair dealing, and I'll have it!”
At that moment, facing full toward Hastings, she caught sight of him.
But his presence seemed a matter of no importance to her; it did not break the stream of her fierce invective. She did not even pause.
He saw at once that her anger of yesterday was as nothing to the storming rage which shook her now. Every line of her face revealed malignity. The eyebrows were drawn higher on her forehead, nearer to the wave of white hair that showed under her black hat. The nostrils dilated and contracted with indescribable rapidity. The lips, thickened and rolling back at intervals from her teeth, revealed more distinctly that animal, exaggerated wetness which had so repelled him.
”You were out there on that lawn!” she pursued, her glance flas.h.i.+ng back to the judge. ”You were out there when she was killed! If you try to tell me you----”
”Stop it! Stop it!” Wilton commanded, and, as he did so, turned his head to an angle that put Hastings within his field of vision.
The judge, with one hand on the doork.n.o.b, had been pressing with the other against the woman's shoulders, trying to thrust her out of the room--a move which she resisted by a hanging-back posture that threw her weight on his arm. He put more strength now into his effort and succeeded in forcing her clear of the threshold. His eyes were blazing under the shadow of his heavy, overhanging brows; but there was about him no suggestion of a loss of self-control.
”I'm glad to see you!” he told Hastings, speaking over Mrs. Brace's head, and smiling a deprecatory recognition of the hopelessness of contending with an infuriated woman.
She addressed them both.