Lightnin'

Hammond hesitated. He had been in Thomas's office several times while Millie was employed there, and, though he had not met her, it was more than likely that she had seen him. The moment was dangerous.

"No, I don't think I had ever met them before," he said, slowly.

"All right," said Marvin, nodding his head complacently and going closer to the witness-stand.

"Mr. Hammond," he went on, "you have told the court that Mr. Jones was a lawbreaker."

Hammond fairly jumped to this question. "Yes," he flared. "You were a fugitive from justice and Jones was harboring you in his house."

Marvin smiled. "Didn't you just testify that Mrs. Jones was the sole owner of that house? That being so, how could Mr. Jones harbor a fugitive in his house, if he didn't own a house?"

Caught in his own net, Hammond twisted angrily in his chair, reddening as the spectators laughed and the sheriff pounded for order.

"Well, I don't suppose he could," he blurted.

"Then you will withdraw the statement that he broke the law?"

"Yes, I withdraw it," Hammond drawled.

Bill got up smiling from his chair and went over to Marvin, patting him proudly on the shoulder; but a look from the judge and a snarl from Blodgett sent him back again.

Marvin continued. "Now, up to the time you met Mr. Jones you did not know anything about him, did you?"

Hammond shrugged, drawing his mouth into an angry curve. "Of course not, but it didn't take me long to find out about him."

Marvin gave the arm of the witness-chair two angry thumps. "I agree with you there, Mr. Hammond," he said. "Eight hours after you first saw Mr. Jones he was driven from his house and you have never set eyes on him since. Yet you have testified that he is a drunkard, a loafer, a liar, and a lawbreaker!"

Hammond, startled at the swiftness with which Marvin had turned his testimony to profit, shrugged himself into a straight position. "Well, it didn't take me one hour to see what Jones was," he said.

Marvin nodded with half-closed eyes at Hammond and smiled reassuringly at Bill. "You also said he was cruel to his wife?"

Hammond nodded.

"In what way?"

Hammond hesitated, moving uneasily from side to side. "Well," he snarled, "his manner was insulting. He criticized the dress she was wearing before the other guests."

This amused the court-room, which in turn had to be quieted. "And do you think the claim of intolerable cruelty is substantiated by a husband's criticizing his wife's dress?" asked Marvin, smiling.

Thomas arose at once. "I object to that question," he said, his lips twitching and his face livid from disappointment and fear of what was coming next.

"I should think you would!" Marvin said, laughing.

The objection sustained, he went at his witness again. "You testified that Mr. Jones was a drunkard and that you had never seen him sober?"

"I never have," emphasized Hammond, insolently.

Going to the table, Marvin took Bill by the arm, assisted him to his feet and guided him into the middle of the court-room until he stood before the witness-stand. Then he asked of Hammond, motioning with his head toward Bill, "Is he drunk now?"

Bill stood quietly, a quizzical smile half closing his eyes, half opening his mouth.

Hammond, infuriated, swallowed in order to control himself, and then blurted with a disgusted shrug of his shoulders, "I don't know."

Having fulfilled Marvin's intention, Bill took his seat again and the cross-examination was resumed.

"If you don't know whether he is drunk or not now, how did you know the other time when you saw him?"

Hammond gazed fiercely into space, replying, finally, "Oh, it was plain enough then!"

Seeing that Hammond was ruffled and that he was also confused, Marvin felt that the time was now right to bring forth by a few swift, well-put questions the full purpose of Hammond and Thomas in bringing about the divorce between Bill and Mrs. Jones.

"It was not possible for you to get a good title to the property unless Mr. Jones signed the deed?" he asked.

At once Thomas was on his feet, objecting.

On Marvin's explanation that the complaint charged intoxication and that his question had a direct bearing on that point, the judge overruled the objection and Thomas took his seat again.

Not discerning the trap that Marvin had set for him, Hammond turned to the judge and said, in more even tones: "I don't mind answering in the least. The property belonged entirely to Mrs. Jones, but the husband's signature was wanted on the deed."

"And he refused to sign it?" Marvin's question came back.

"Yes," Hammond sneered, "after you told him not to."

Marvin once more challenged Hammond's soul with the searchlight of his own straightforward eye. "Was he drunk then?" he asked.

Hammond paused, then shrugged his shoulders. "Yes, I think he was."

"I am not asking you what you think," Marvin remarked. "You said under oath that you never saw him sober. Was he drunk when he refused to sign that deed?"

"Yes, he was!" Hammond reiterated, quickly.

"And you tried to induce him to sign such an important document as that when he was drunk?" Marvin asked the question in a slow, concise tone and looked up at the judge to gather the impression made by Hammond's evident duplicity.

The deep water into which Hammond had walked was making itself felt and he tried to wade toward shore.

"I never tried to get him to sign! He didn't sign it!" he snapped.

"No, he wasn't drunk enough for that! He wasn't drunk at all. He was as sober as he is at this moment!"

"You mean to call me a liar?" Hammond, his red neck swelling over the top of his collar, and his small, close-together black eyes flashing angrily, got up and made a threatening move toward his questioner.

Marvin, although much smaller, did not flinch. "No, I mean to prove it," he answered.

Judge Townsend made a quieting gesture to Hammond, who sat down in the witness-chair again as Marvin went on with his rapid-fire.

"Now you called Mr. Jones a liar, didn't you?"

"Yes," was Hammond's gruff reply. "And everybody who knows him says the same thing!"

"Oh," said Marvin, with a shake of his head. "So you testified that he was a liar because you heard others say so?"

"No," jerked Hammond, "he lied to me."

"What did he tell you that was untrue?"

"Everything," said Hammond.

"Can you repeat one lie that Mr. Jones told you?"

"Oh, he told me so many," was the impatient reply, "I can't recall them. Oh yes," after a pause, "he said he drove a swarm of bees across the plains in the dead of winter."

Bill, who was facing him, and who had not taken his eyes from him, burst into a loud laugh, the whole court-room, even to the judge, following suit, while Marvin raised his voice above the uproar to ask, "Now, how do you know that is a lie?"

"Why, I know the thing is impossible!" Hammond said, contemptuously.

"Why?"

"It's all nonsense," sneered Hammond, with an angry gesture.

"That is precisely what it is, Mr. Hammond, and that is just what Mr. Jones meant it to be! What else did he say?"

"What's the difference?" asked Hammond. "You admit it's all nonsense."

"Not all, Mr. Hammond." Marvin raised his voice and he looked searchingly at the judge. "He said at least one thing that was not nonsense. He said to his wife, 'Mother, these two men are trying to rob you.' Do you remember that, Mr. Hammond? You were all there. Do you remember that he said you and Mr. Thomas were trying to rob Mrs. Jones?"

In order to make his question more impressive, Marvin nodded at Hammond and pointed to Mr. Thomas, and then directed a glance toward Mrs. Jones. Her hands were still folded in her lap and her head bent toward them.

Everett Hammond, his face purple with rage, shouted at Marvin, "I don't propose to sit here and be insulted by a criminal like you!"

Thomas, too, had risen and come forward. Standing on the other side of Marvin and looking down upon him, he exclaimed, with quivering, blue lips: "This is insufferable, your Honor! This gentleman has come here to give disinterested testimony, as a favor, and he is subjected to the insults – "

Judge Townsend interrupted him calmly: "I think the defense has brought out quite clearly that this witness's testimony is not disinterested. This divorce has got to be obtained to give him a deed to the Jones property, hasn't it?"

Thomas grew conciliatory, endeavoring to impress upon the judge that the property sale had nothing to do, at all, with the testimony of Hammond.

"Well, I wouldn't call him exactly disinterested," responded Townsend, with a wise glance.

"Nevertheless, your Honor, I protest against this man's insulting manner," Thomas shouted. "How it is possible for such a person, a person who even now ought to be serving a jail sentence, to be admitted to the bar, I can't see!" He backed to his chair and sat down, taking up a book and slamming it back on the table.

Until now Marvin had been complete master of the situation, but Thomas's last words drove the blood from his face and he grew troubled as he looked up at the judge and then away and out through the window into space. There had been something on his mind, but he had been able to keep it in the background because of Bill's predicament. And now it came to the surface again.

Townsend studied Marvin intently for several moments and then he asked, quietly, "You are an attorney in good standing, are you not?"

At the judge's question, Thomas got up and looked down upon Marvin, in insolent inquiry.

Marvin did not answer at once; then he walked over to the judge's bench and with his head bowed said, "No, your Honor, I am not."

"Do you mean to say that you are not a member of the bar?" There was surprise and injured dignity and at the same time a strong savor of pity in Lem Townsend's voice.

Thomas and Hammond exchanged smiles of triumph, the former advancing to a place by Marvin's side in front of the judge.

The horror in Millie's face told Marvin that her last shred of consideration for him had been torn away.

Bill alone held faith, smiling encouragement at the lad who had been his only friend when his hour was at its worst.

With eyes on the ground, slowly, and in low voice, Marvin explained, "No, I have never been admitted to the bar, your Honor. But Mr. Jones had taken a long journey from the Soldiers' Home, on his own account and at his own expense, to testify in my case. When, without warning, this action for divorce was called, I knew it was a conspiracy." The injustice accorded Bill drew Marvin from himself again. Pointing at Hammond and Thomas, he raised his voice. "I knew that these two conspirators – "

Thomas interrupted him by jumping from his seat and making a menace with his right arm.

"Sit down, Mr. Thomas," Townsend commanded. "I will attend to this. You are making a very serious charge, Mr. Marvin, and if you believe you can substantiate it you will find the courts open to you. In the mean time you must be aware that you had no right whatever to undertake the trial of this case under the guise of being an attorney. You are guilty of a reprehensible act, and if I did not believe there were mitigating circumstances I would punish you most severely for contempt of court." He ordered the stenographer to strike out all of the cross-examination.

"Mr. Thomas," he asked, "have you finished with your witness?"

"If the cross-examination is to be stricken out, I will not take up the court's time with any redirect testimony. We have had enough," Thomas said.

Hammond got up and shook himself as if he were rid of a heavy burden; but as he walked from the stand Marvin made one more plea. "One moment, please, your Honor," he asked. "Before the witness is excused – "

Townsend interrupted him. "You have no standing in this court, young man. If you wish to remain, you may take a seat on the visitors' bench," and he pointed to a vacant seat just outside of the railing.

If there was one person in the court-room who was pleased at that moment, it was Blodgett. He arose, caressing his mustache, and opened the gate.

"This way," he called out, giving an overbearing wave of his hand.

As he came to the gate, Marvin stopped. He was thinking hard. It did not seem right that Bill should be left alone to fight his way with those two keen schemers. He knew that Lem Townsend would look after Lightnin' in so far as he could justifiably do so, but the figure of the lonely old man, smiling complacently in the midst of his trouble, touched Marvin deeply, and he delved into his mind in an effort to find a way to help him.

Then, unexpectedly, Lightnin' solved the problem. Getting to his feet, he stood quietly before the bench, looking up at Townsend with an odd excitement in his eyes.

"Your Honor," he asked, in his usual drawl, "a defendant has the right to plead his own case, ain't he?"

"Yes, he has," Townsend replied, with a nod.

"Well," said Bill, "I guess I'll plead this case myself!"

Marvin hesitated. He had thought of this himself, of course, but had dismissed the idea, not feeling quite sure as to the advisability of it. Now, however, the deed was done. Quickly he put an arm over Bill's shoulder and led him beside the witness-stand, where Hammond still sat. Bill looked up at Townsend and smiled.

"It's all right, Judge," he remarked, with his humorous twinkle. "I was a lawyer once!"