LITMIR.BIZ

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the matter of a moment, to go from the fireplace to the cupboard. You stepped directly to the cupboard without going anywhere else in the room, or leaving the room?"

      "I did."

      "The bar was still in your hand and naturally, then, still straight when you reached the cupboard?"

      "Yes."

      "Very good," said Randall gently. "Now between the time you reached the cupboard and the time you say Doctor Merton leaped across the room upon you, did you leave your position in front of the cupboard?"

      "No."

      "And during that time you pried open the cupboard door with this bar?"

      "Yes."

      Randall whirled from the witness box and faced the jury. Gone now was his calm, easy manner, his quiet, conversational tones—passionate earnestness was in his face, and his voice rang strong and clear, carrying a thrill through the courtroom.

      "Gentlemen of the jury," he cried impressively, "this ​man is innocent! The court will tell you, the district attorney himself will tell you that there is not a shred of evidence on which to convict him aside from his own confession. Now a man who voluntarily and of his own free will gives himself up to the authorities and confesses to a crime has no reason to tell anything but a bona fide story; it would be absurd to imagine that he would do anything else—if, gentlemen, he really committed that crime. There is no evidence, I say against the prisoner except his own story. If you convict him, you must convict him on that—and yet I will prove to you beyond the shadow of a doubt that according to that story it is impossible for him to have committed this crime. What does it mean, gentlemen of the jury? You know the prisoner. Most of you have known him all your lives. You know him for his clean, upright life. You know him for a man who, through love and gratitude to his benefactors, has put self aside and stayed with them because they needed him—a sacrifice the greater because, ambitious, a man whose intellect would carry him to a high place in any sphere, he has curbed ambition, crushed it back while those two he loved and would not leave still lived. But during these years Varge has studied and neglected no single opportunity for self-improvement. He has studied medicine with Doctor Merton, and I have heard Doctor Merton say myself that if he could have afforded it he would have sent Varge to college—but Doctor Merton could not afford it, gentlemen—and no one knew that better than Varge himself. Look at him, gentlemen of the jury! He stands there for the man he is, a man as utterly incapable of this thing as you or ​I—but a man, a man, gentlemen, capable of taking this thing upon himself to shield another."

      A buzz stirred the courtroom, grew louder, swelled into a suppressed cheer—and stilled to an expectant hush at Judge Crosswaite's stern command for silence.

      Varge had not moved even by so much as a slight change of position, but at Randall's words a faint tinge had dyed his cheeks, and into his eyes had come a soft, almost tender light as they rested on his friend. He had no choice—once started, Randall must go on. And now, as Randall paused, Varge, with well-simulated nervousness, threw his weight from one foot to the other, faced a trifle to his left—and across the room to where Harold Merton was already beginning to huddle in his chair, the dark eyes flashed a swift, reassuring signal.

      Randall, quick in his movements now, had taken up the bent fender bar and was holding it out before the jury.

      "This bar, gentlemen," he said, in a low, earnest voice, "is the bar that struck down Doctor Merton; this bar is the bar that forced open the cupboard door. That is positive, certain. The prosecution has told you so, and it is a fact—the marks and indents on the door prove it. Varge tells us that it was straight when he stepped with it in front of the cupboard. The prosecution appears to have assumed that it was bent in prying open the door, and it looks as though that might be so. There is nothing remarkable about the bar—it looks as though that might be so. But examine it again carefully—note its size and weight. Gentlemen, I am casting no reflections on the prosecution that they ​overlooked the point I am going to bring out. Their position and mine was different. With them the confession had been voluntary and practically stood for guilt—with me, I knew in my soul that the prisoner was innocent. But he would not talk to me, gentlemen. I knew that, clever as he was, clever as was the story he had manufactured to save another, there was almost certain to be a little flaw somewhere that had escaped him. His life, gentlemen, was in my hands—I had to find that flaw. I thank God that I have been able to do it. Gentlemen, this bar was not bent in prying open the cupboard door; it was bent before it ever went near it—or, in other words, before the door could be pried open with this bar, as it was beyond question, the bar must have been bent. See here, gentlemen; see how simple is the proof of that statement."

      Randall stepped to the table, picked up the parcel that had been the subject of so much curiosity and speculation, removed the wrapping and exhibited a drawing, some five feet long by three feet wide.

      "I have here," he said, "a sketch, drawn to scale, of the cupboard and the end wall itself between the fire-place and the side wall of the room; and here"—he picked up a little pointer that had been enclosed with the package—"I have a piece of stick that is the exact length of the fender bar, if the fender bar were straightened out. See then, what we have. Here is the lock of the cupboard where the end of the bar was inserted. It is just one foot and six inches from the side wall. The bar is four feet long. We stick the thin end of the straight bar in by the lock to pry the door open. See, like this"—he set the drawing on end on the floor, and, ​holding it by one hand, dropped to his knees and placed one end of his stick at the indicated position. "The floor represents the side wall projecting at right angles, of course. What happens? Nothing. The bar is too long. There is absolutely no leverage, not enough even to take up the little slack in the crack of the door itself. The bar is too long—it must first be bent before it can be of any service. But wait! There must be no possibility of error here. You may say that while the door could only be opened from this side and that the bar had to be bent to do it, the bar might first have been inserted and levered the other way, or even upward or downward, where there is more space, and so bent. But that, waiving aside all consideration of the strength and thickness of the bar, which to begin with would make it improbable, is, with a moment's consideration, proved to be a fallacy. There was room only to insert the thin, flattened, spear-shaped ends of the bar, anywhere around the casing, between the door and the door casing, and these would have bent or broken long before the thicker part of the bar, the middle of the bar, yielded to the strain—and yet these ends are as straight to-day as the day they were forged."

      Randall rose to his feet, put aside the drawing, took up the fender bar again and walked directly to the jury box.

      "Gentlemen, the man who bent that bar is the man who murdered Doctor Merton—but it was not the prisoner at the bar. I have told you before that if you convict him, you must convict him on his own story. Take that story from his lips. He stood there before the cupboard holding the straight bar, he had nothing to bend it ​with except his bare hands, and yet he must have bent it before he could pry open the cupboard door with it. Take the bar"—he shoved it suddenly into the foreman's hands—"try to bend it against the floor, with your hands, across your knees, in any possible way that was possible to him—struggle with it, I beg you with all reverence in God's name, for a man's life is at stake."

      A breathless silence fell upon the room. From one to another of the twelve men's hands the bar passed, each in his own way exerting futilely all his strength upon it. The foreman returned it gravely to Randall.

      "You cannot bend it," said Randall passionately. "Of course you cannot bend it—it requires mechanical means to bend it. I believe that it was bent by some mechanical means outside and brought there before Varge ever entered that room; and I believe that when he entered that room Doctor Merton was already dead—murdered, gentlemen, at the hands of some one Varge is offering his own life to save—murdered at the hands of the man, who for some purpose that Varge is trying to conceal, had previously bent that bar. Yet wait! You are strong men and you cannot bend it, but let us put it to still further proof."

      Randall turned from the jury, walked rapidly across the room and halted before

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