Sibley heard a low, poisonous laugh of triumph rankle
through the hotel office. He turned round.
Bradley, the over-fed, over-confident, over-estimated
financier, laid a hand on the shoulder of his companion
as they moved towards the door.
“That’s another gate shut,” he said.
“I guess we can close ’em all with a little
care. It’s working all right. He’s
got no chance of raising the cash,” he added,
as the two passed the chair where Sibley sat—with
his hat over his eyes, chewing an unlighted cigar.
“I don’t know what it is, but it’s
dirt—and muck at that,” John Sibley
remarked as he rose from his chair and followed the
two into the street.
Bradley and his friends were trying steadily to close
up the avenues of credit to the man to whom the success
of his enterprise meant so much. To crowd him
out would mean an extra hundred and fifty thousand
dollars for themselves.
THE LOGAN TRIAL AND WHAT CAME OF IT
What the case was in which Shiel Crozier was to give
evidence is not important; what came from the giving
of his testimony is all that matters; and this story
would never have been written if he had not entered
the witness-box.
A court-room at any time seems a little warmer than
any other spot to all except the prisoner; but on
a July day it is likely to be a punishment for both
innocent and guilty. A man had been killed by
one of the group of toughs called locally the M’Mahon
Gang, and against the charge of murder that of manslaughter
had been set up in defence; and manslaughter might
mean jail for a year or two or no jail at all.
Any evidence which justified the charge of murder
would mean not jail, but the rope in due course; for
this was not Montana or Idaho, where the law’s
delays outlasted even the memory of the crime committed.
The court-room of Askatoon was crowded to suffocation,
for the M’Mahons were detested, and the murdered
man had a good reputation in the district. Besides,
a widow and three children mourned their loss, and
the widow was in court. Also Crozier’s
evidence was expected to be sensational, and to prove
the swivel on which the fate of the accused man would
hang. Among those on the inside it was also known
that the clever but dissipated Augustus Burlingame,
the counsel for the prisoner, had a grudge against
Crozier,—no one quite knew why except Kitty
Tynan and her mother, and that cross-examination would
be pressed mercilessly when Crozier entered the witness-box.
As Burlingame came into the court-room he said to
the Young Doctor—he was always spoken of
as the Young Doctor in Askatoon, though he had been
there a good many years and he was no longer as young
as he looked—who was also called as a witness,
“We’ll know more about Mr. J. G. Kerry
when this trial is over than will suit his book.”
It did not occur to Augustus Burlingame that in Crozier,
who knew why he had fled the house of the showy but
virtuous Mrs. Tynan, he might find a witness of a
mental and moral calibre with baffling qualities and
some gift of riposte.
