A master hand : $b The story of a crimeDallas, Richard
General
A master hand : $b The story of a crime
Dallas, Richard
Detective and mystery stories; Murder -- Fiction; New York (N.Y.) -- Fiction
After adjournment I stood with others an interested observer of a short
conversation the lawyer was holding with his client. Whatever the
substance of it might have been, it was such as to bring a smile to the
face of the prisoner as he turned away with his guards to go back to his
prison.
Littell looked after him thoughtfully for a moment before he gathered
together his papers and himself prepared to leave. As he did so I joined
him, anticipating that we should have an evening in each other's
society; but it was not to be, for I found him in a mood stern and
taciturn and disinclined to talk about the case, and so after several
ineffectual attempts at conversation I left him.
My evening--spent alone therefore--was a dull one and the night long,
and I was glad to find myself again at the trial table on the following
morning. Here, all about me, the surroundings were unchanged in any way
and it was hard to realize that there had been an interval of emptiness
and silence within those walls.
As soon as court opened the State called Benton to the stand, and then
the real battle of the trial began. He presented a different subject for
the handling of the defence, for he not only testified to important
matters, but he was the first witness to show any bias, and Littell gave
more marked attention to his testimony. Under lengthy examination the
witness told his story to the smallest particular, including the tales
he had brought to me about the visits of the defendant to White's house,
his demands upon him for money, and his assertions of his right to the
money left by his father, and he also threw out some hints of threats
and quarrels--all tending as much by insinuation as fact to cast
suspicion upon the prisoner.
After the State had extracted all it could from him, he was turned over
to Littell, and then the wisdom of that lawyer's previous course was
demonstrated, for when, instead of waiving the witness from the stand or
asking a few indifferent questions as he had done on other occasions, he
turned and faced him preparatory to full cross-examination, both Judge
and jury showed a newly awakened interest.
Littell allowed a few minutes to elapse while he scrutinized the
witness, before he put his first question, and it was apparent to me
that the delay was trying to Benton, who was already in a nervous state,
for he moved restlessly and directed his gaze anxiously to the lawyer.
At length Littell began his cross-examination, and after taking him
categorically over each item in his testimony, pinning him definitely in
each instance as to time and place and separating fact from conjecture,
he asked him pointedly if he had told the Coroner's jury as he had this
one that Winters was in the habit of visiting White; or that he demanded
money of him, or that he claimed White's money to have been by right
his.
The witness admitted that he had not told them any of these things.
"Why did you not?" Littell continued.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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