Mystery fiction; Trials (Murder) -- Fiction; United States -- Fiction
The girl said something to Cecil Warner, quick and possibly sharp; Edith
caught the faint note of her voice under the dry dominating noise of Dr.
Devens, the words indistinguishable, blotted out by his: "Certainly,
sir, the patient could probably be saved. Stomach pump. Tannic acid I
imagine, to render the poison inert. You'd give heart stimulants, say
digitalis. A healthy patient would have a pretty good chance."
"Thank you, Dr. Devens. Cross examination, Mr. Warner?"
"No cross examination." But Warner was up, for once urgently
quick-spoken. "Your Honor, in view of my client's exhaustion, may we
have adjournment at this time?"
In the abrupt hush that followed Warner's question, Callista's voice,
not loud, not really a cry, was surely heard by everyone, even by Jim
Doherty. "Go away, my love!"
The Judge winced, speaking hastily: "The Court stands adjourned until
ten A.M. tomorrow."
Edith also observed the press tables, and the jolly excited scramble for
the telephones.
IV
The pavements throbbed with a golden, sometimes iridescent flame, which
could not deceive Cecil Warner, for he was not drunk. The time hadn't
come and never would when two bourbons on top of an average dinner could
make a fool of him. The dancing fire was nothing in the world but the
reflection of headlights on sidewalks wet with the return of winter
rain.
On his left a separate darkness kept pace with him, blotting out the
fire-ballet as he moved. _I cast a shadow. It is the nature of a man to
cast a shadow. This is done even by a few of the dead._
_No. 'Their works do follow after them'; but that's not shadow, except
by ill-advised figure of speech. That is what I shall term--(BAR AND
GRILL twenty paces ahead)--shall term the immortality of consequences,
of continuing events. Shadow's different. Shadow is the occlusion of
light rays by an impermeable mass, me for instance. Avoid all
ill-advised figures of speech. Go away, my love!_
He observed it was Hanlon's Bar and Grill, corner of Main and Willard,
damned if it wasn't--interesting, since he'd thought he was three blocks
further west. He advanced through the logical absurdity of a revolving
door. Quiet here tonight. He read the others at the bar in a practiced
glance: four nondescript males and a large platinum wench, all unknown.
He fumbled past his damp overcoat, drawing forth and consulting his thin
and ancient pocket watch of yellow gold. His inner vision recorded, as
always, the florid inscription he would see if his thumbnail opened the
hinged back of the case: _Ezra Allen Warner, 1880_. A gift from his
grandfather to his father, on the boy Ezra's graduation from college at
twenty-one. For the last thirty-odd years Cecil had not been able to
look on this delicate artifact without some dark stirring of the
thought: _I have no children._ The fantastically graceful hands declared
the present hour to be ten-thirty; they had been truth-tellers for
eighty years. "Evening, Tom. Bourbon and water."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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