Human blood.
It was after that that the District Attorney made his dramatic gesture.
“Gentlemen, I have done my duty.
Now must you do yours.”
I daresay none of us was greatly surprised at the outcome.
Certainly at least twenty-two out of the twenty-three men on the Grand Jury believed Jim guilty, and the indictment was signed, late on the second day.
Katherine received the news better than I had expected.
“An indictment is not a verdict,” she said, quoting Godfrey Lowell, no doubt.
Judy, however, took it very hard and as for Wallie, the effect on him seemed devastating.
Newspaper extras had announced the result, and he came in while Judy and I were at dinner.
Katherine had retired to her bed, and to tea and toast on a tray.
“The damned fools!” he said.
“The—damned fools!”
Judy looked at him out of eyes that were red and swollen.
“Since when have you changed your mind?
You were sure enough.”
“Well, I was a damned fool myself.
That’s all.
He didn’t do it.
And he’ll never suffer for it; I promise you that, Judy.
Nothing is going to happen to him.”
“Even if you have to tell all you know?
Why don’t you do that now and save time?
You might die or get run over, and then where is he?”
He said nothing.
I had had a good look at him by that time and I must confess that his appearance shocked me.
His clothes were unpressed; his eyes were congested, as from sleepless nights, and he had developed a curious tic; now and again, by some involuntary contraction of the muscles, his left shoulder lifted and his head jerked to the right.
I saw that he tried to control it by keeping his left hand in his coat pocket, but in spite of him up would go the shoulder.
It was pitiful.
I saw, too, that he had not wanted to come; that he had dreaded the visit, and that to reinforce his courage he had taken a drink or two before he started.
Not that he showed any effect, but that the room was full of it.
Judy eyed him.
“You look terrible,” she said. “And stop jerking.
You’ll have me doing it.
Stop jerking and tell us where Mary Martin is.”
He said he did not know, and sat in silence until we had finished.
It was not until Judy had gone up to her mother and we had moved into the library that he spoke again.
“Look here,” he said. “How soon are you going away for the summer?”
“How soon are they going to release Jim Blake?”
“That’s ridiculous,” he said sharply.
“He’s well enough where he is.
He’ll get some of the cocktails and food out of his system, that’s all.
They’ll never send him to the chair.
They can’t send him to the chair.
It’s absurd.”
But it seemed to me that he was listening to his own words, trying to believe them; and that when he looked at me his bloodshot eyes were pleading with me.
“You believe that too, don’t you?” they said.
“They’ll never send him to the chair.
They can’t send him to the chair.
It’s absurd.”