Last night at dinner, Cecil Warner had done some thinking out loud about Trooper San Giorgio, who would have in his own young mind no reasonable doubt. San Giorgio could not repeat Ann's words on the stand. And yet if he could, the Old Man said, it ought (if juries were logical) to make no essential difference. For there was no defense, he said, except a reasonable doubt as to criminal intent. "Reasonable doubt!" he said, and set down his glass because his fat hand was shaking. "You see it, Red? T.J. can say that criminal intent and premeditation are proved up to the hilt by the mere presence of the poison in Cal's apartment. He will. He'll rub their noses in it. Against that and a flock of other circumstantial facts, we've got just one fact, the fact of something that happened in Cal's mind. Is it a fact?" "You and I both know it, don't we? She had no intent to kill." But instead of answering directly, the Old Man had said: "Red, do you understand she's not certain of it herself?" Edith had not quite understood it, until then. "Did you give her a ticket, Trooper?" "No, sir. From the address on her driving license I knew she had only about a mile to go. I told her she'd better head straight for home, and I told her I'd follow along behind till she got there, which I did." The youth was reliving it, Edith saw, and perhaps painfully. A pretty girl, hot night and hazy moon--had he hoped to be invited into the house for a quick check on burglars and a little drink? Oh, probably not. Ann had carried an obvious flag of conventional virtue. San Giorgio would have recognized and respected it, and done no more than a bit of summer's-night dreaming. "You drove behind her car, as far as the house on Summer Avenue?" "I did, sir. I saw her turn in at the driveway, and since she made it all right, I drove on." "Did you note the time?" "Yes, sir: 8:43." "Mr. Warner?" "No questions." Later last night, up at her studio, watching the fire in the grate through the prism of his wineglass, the Old Man said: "Who started the legend that the law court is a place devoted to search for truth? Answer, lawyers of course. But not counsel for the defense, Red. We know our function is to persuade. The prosecution may fool itself now and then, and kick the word 'truth' around; we can't afford to." Edith had said flatly: "The system stinks." He wasn't startled; he only grumbled: "I agree. The adversary system stinks. But working inside of it, my own position has logic enough to satisfy me. I get it out of a hypothesis, Red--not abstract truth, but working hypothesis. I say a human being once born has a right to live, if the word 'right' is going to mean anything--or let's say, a right not to be murdered, judicially or any other way. In other words, I'd defend Cal if I thought she was guilty as hell."