"And we, your Honour," came the uptake of Morgan Wallifarro so swiftly
as to leave no margin of pause between statement and retort, "insist
upon a trial and a full vindication. This prosecuting witness who would
now spread the benign mantle of charity over the conduct of his
assailant, fell face foremost while leading an armed raid on a
registration booth. I am prepared to prove that the wounded man who now
sits there, an exemplar of Christian forgiveness, was spirited away,
after his gang fled, and cared for in a private room at the City
Hospital under the tender auspices of certain officials. I am further
prepared to prove that the name which this municipal favourite now wears
is, for him, a new one and that until recently he was known as Kid
Repetto whose likeness and Bertillon measurements are preserved in the
local rogues' gallery. The profession which he ornamented until the city
hall cried out for his skilled aid was burglary and second-story work--"
The judicial gavel fell with an admonitory slam, and the magisterial
jaws came warningly together.
"Mr. Wallifarro," declared the judge, "the court sustains the
prosecution's motion of dismissal. Your unproven statements are highly
improper in their innuendo of collusion by an officer of this court. You
are seeking to try this case in the newspapers, sir," and Morgan,
closing his portfolio, smiled his mocking admission of the charge. He
had watched the busy pencils at the press table, and knew that some of
them would blossom in flaring headlines. He had seen the cartoonist who
had come to make a pencil sketch of Boone himself finish his task, and
he enjoyed the judge's resentment. Now he turned away with the
irritating jauntiness of one who has scored.
But that evening, at the Horse Show, Boone suffered the embarrassment of
that flare-up of publicity which he felt was purely adventitious. Chance
had made him a scrap in a pattern of ephemeral interest, and to him it
seemed that one man in three carried an afternoon paper in his pocket
with his own hasty albeit recognizable portrait starkly displayed to the
public gaze. On faces which he did not know he caught smiles of amused
recognition, and on one which he did know a glower of hate. That was
the face of the policeman who had arrested him.
Some of the women in the boxes had him dragged before them for
introduction, and he responded with a shyness that was cloaked under the
reserve of his half-barbaric dignity.
Anne smiled, and a proprietary pride lurked in her expression.
"Anne looks as docile and amiable as a sweet child," sighed Mrs. Masters
to Colonel Wallifarro, as he bade her good night that same evening, "but
she's got Larry's British stubbornness in every fibre."
"Added," suggested the Colonel with a truant twinkle, "to the admirable
resoluteness of our own family."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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