THE CHAINS OF BONDAGE

Auckland Star, Volume XLI, Issue 204, 29 August 1910, Page 8

THE CHAINS OF BONDAGE

BY EMILY B. HETHERINGTON, author cf -<H5 3 Colleen Cbntm." "Worthington's Pledge." "A Bepenteut Foe,"

GHAPTEE XLVIII. THE TRIAL. There was only o. topic of vital im gortance in the paper, the next day. Everyone was talking of the well known woman, said to be the richest wo siiin iv Kngi-and, who had been .arrestei for the murder of Gilbert Hardress; am to add to the effect of this s-tartling new tile dUeovery had been made that tni ■woiniLii, who had moved in exclusive cil ties, whose engagement to bo marriet to Sir Wilfred Kllstree had recently beei anrrounced, uhoufjh passing under he auaideu name, had rea-ily be.en the wifi ef the nmriered racecourse tipsier. Hud they but known it, the paper; Efligut have added -a further startlin: piece of news —that fchis beautiful wo man, now under arrect, who in due coursi would be tried for iier life, had not beei the lawful heiress -to George Craven': millions, after all, and that, on the verj day of her arrest, she had voluntarily Eirrrenderp-d the vast fortune to whid she had discovered she 'had no right. The woman he loved, accused of mm der, waiting in a prison cell to stand 'he] trial, with her life or deat-h hanging or the issue! The horror of -the thing seem ed to stun John Trevena. Judith's life or death in the faalanet and a terrfble web og circumstantial cvi denee against her! Could he save her' During the weeks that dragged by before lier 'trial, t&it was the one dominating quesxioa that filled the horizon of his life. Trevena worked tirelessly in her be half. The best counsel were secured foi the defence; no thread connected with this mystery tha.t enshrouded the last hours of Gilbert Hardress' life was too insignificant to be followed "up, though too often it led nowhere. He was wearing himself to a shadow in his efforts 4o save the woman he loved, but he seemed not to know the meaning of fatigue. Judith 'had told him of her belief, though she had no shred of proof, that .Vernham was her husband's murderer — b statement that, utterly unsupported by any evidence, would do little to help her. And the apparent impossibility of tracing the man's movements on the night of the crime after this lapse of time seemed iopeless. Still John Trevena refused to lose heart. On the night before the opening of 'the trial of Judith Hardress, Vernham was Bitting in the bar of the obscure publichouse that of late he had frequented. The dissipated face of this man who long ago had been a gentleman, before -an ingrrained tendency to crooked ways had dragged him down to this life of shady expedients and chicanery, looked haggard and worn by the shadow of constant anxiety; the past few weeks between Judith's arrest and the now imminent trial ihad told upon 'him. He had become a bundle of nerves, wifch an 'habitual unrasy trick of looting behind him with a start at the mere sound of a footstep. "But they can prove nothing against mc: it is impossible that they can prove \ anything!" he had said to himself a hundred times. Vernham said it again to-night in the bar. with the sound of noisy voices and laughter going on about him. while he sat ■with deep care written on his face, preoccupied in thought. But for all that would-be reassuTJng assertion, be looked forward to the morrow wit* dread, and wisned himself well out of the country. Once, shortly after Judith's arrest, he lad made an elTort to leave England. At Southampton, within an hour of the time when he meant to slip on board, a pk'.inly-dressed man, whom hu had no-tk-ed several times without any suspicion in his mind, had -come up to .him and said something in his ear: and llr Vernham had turned away from that outgoing liner, with that hope of flight nipped in the bud. He had known then that he was under -constant police surveillance; that any attempt to leave the country would bo followed by his arrest. He thought -of that now. as he sat in the bar. Why was he being shadowed? The police could -have- no, proof against him. Was it because they suspected that he might fail to turn up, one of the witnesses, subpoenaed to appea-r at the trial? That he would have to appear as a witness was certain, and he shrank in •terror from the prospect of the witness box. His apprehensions and this constant shadowing had broken the man's nerve, Ve-mham cursed himself for having appeared in the matter at all. What a" fool ie had been to act on that imnulse of anger and resentment, and go* to the police to inform them of Judith's whereabouts—what a fool! He could have taken his revenge on her quite as easily. <jui:e as surely, by sending an anonymous letter 'to the police. The result "would taw. been the same, and he would not iave been implicated. And what a fool. too. to have said ■what he did to the police, when that impirlse had led him to denounce the woman—to have told them that, shortly before the murder, Hardress, after a bitter quarrel with his wife, had said to him:— "She has the devil's temper, Dick. Before to-day she has taken up a knife- to me—gone for mc like a cat; one of these days, in her temper, she'll let daylight ' into me.'" J ~ B The words were a sheer fabrication on Yernham's part; he had told the lie on an unconsidered impulse to make ;h-e case appear blacker against the woman he hated. What a fool he had been to ' open his mouth. , Xow the prosecution I were calling him as a witness, and would take care he should appear. There was a good deal of laughter going on about him in the bar; it was a bar where he had taken to coming of late, because his identity was unknown there. He had been avoiding his old acquaintances. The laughter jarred upon his nervous, gloomy mood. Some young ass of a dude at the bur was amusin" the barmaid and two or three men about him with what he called "die latest thing . out, don't you know!" ° '■ It was a book for the collecting of thumb-impreseions of one's friends. °You moistened your thumb on a special pad • and pressed it on a page in the book: the ! ■ impression, wi:h the countless tiny lines, came oui clearly reproduced. it was j ■ curious bow, though superficially alike, ' ■ every thumb-print differed essentially i i from the others. * j , '■They do cay that there aren't two i i thumb-prints exactly alike in the world?" giggled the barmaid, as she con- < tributed ihe first ''ihuinb-print'' to the album. _ '"That may be so, my dear. Anyway, there won't be many prettier thumbs in . all my collection than yours!" said the , ' dude, with that fatuous' laugh that irri- '<] tated Vernhain. sitting apart from the ' noisy group. "If you had some more thumb-prints we could compare the lince on them," went oa the barmaid. "I'm going to ask every gentleman in the bar to "put his »" thumb-print in the Book. May I?" '

" 'Prienda, Eomans, countrymen, lend mc tout ears'—l mean, thumbs!" quoted the wit of the party humorously. The proposal was agreed to -with accla- _ mati-on. One after another of the group . at the bar imprinted his "thumb-surna-j ture," as sue called it. Then, with a I giggle, the barmaid walked across to 3 Vernham. 3 At first it was on his lips to tell hex . roughly that he was in no mood foT such 1 tomfoolpj-y. But he thought better of ! the impulse. He 'had no wish to make t himself conspicuous by a refusal. With j a sullen ill grace, he complied with the request; his thumb-print was duly added i to the collection of the dude, who shortly j I afterward departed. Vernham little knew that he had prac- > treally signed his own death warrant. Inside the Central Criminal Court the • drama was opening. i "Gentlemen of the jury, the prisoner at the ; bar stands indicted on the cha;tje - that she did wilfully murder one Gilbert ■ llardress. To that Eihe has pleaded that i she is not guilty. Now you are to try • the issue, and to say whether she is guilty or not." I And there in the dock, between two female wardens, stood the strikingly beau- ' tiful woman, with wide, hopeless eyes, ! clouded with pain and horror, yet with ; a certain quality of courage suggested in i the proud poise of the head, as the attorney for the prosecution opened diis ' speech. The court was crowded. Seldom had a murder trial drawn larger numbers of well-known people in every rank of life. Sybil Ellstree-—who of late had been playing bridge more recklessly than ever —was there. Her friends whiskered - that she wa-s trying to find distraction from her disappointment. It was known that Jim RaLston's engagement to Miss Hood had been no light -blow to Sybil. Lucky Jim Ralston, the gossips added, was to marry a charmingly pretty girl, and the real li°iress to the great Craven fortune. But perhaps it was something more than her disappointment in failing to win the only man she had ever cared for, heavy as riat disappointment had been, that brought the weary, dissatisfied look ■to Sybil's face. In her jealous attempt to part Jim and Elsie —that poor, ineffectual scheme that had failed so lamenta-bly, that had never had a chance of success—i'he had told an ugly lie to Jim; and Jim knew that it had been a deliberate, spiteful lie. The feeling of mortification, fhe sensi; of shame that Jim should know her capable of such a lie that had been the ' deathblow to even further friendship on his part, added gallingly to her bitter sense of failure. She had tried veno- ' mously enough, yet feebly enough, to 3art them; and her weapons had gained ; her nothing—'had only recoiled on her own head. And now Sybil Ellstree was ' suffering her punishment, not in remorse # for her intention, but in humiliated mortification. In the court, too, by her side, was Wilfred. Scarcely once during the proceedings did he take his eye-s off the woman lost to him, whom he would never cease to love, waiting in an agony of suspense. His friend Trevena had won what he had lost, and, if he bore Trevena no grudge, there remained hidden in his heart a deep, aching sorrow. Not far away Paul Ralston .sat, looking grim as ever, yet with, his face indefinably changed from that of the Paul Kalston of months ago. A good deal of comment had been caused lately .by the abrupt closing of a big concern in the city that, under the title of "The Legitimate investments Company," ha-d been a gigantic swindiing concern. The closing of that prosperous company had been 'Paul RaLston's surrender, to make peace ■with his son. He had come to find, obstinate man though he was, that his son was more to him than the money he had made so easily—at the cost of so many broken homes and ruined lives. Perha-ps in the lonely days that had followed 'his quarrel with his son a new comprehension had opened his eyes, even if had, perhaps, still much to learn. Suddenly- he had closed the despicable avenues of moneygetting that had made Jim. definitely break with his father; a-n-d almost inim•bly old Pa-ul had sought out his son. It was a different man- from the Paul Ralston of the old days who had taken Jim's hand in token that the estrangement was at an end. The prosecuting attorney made his speech. He pointed out to the jury the suspicious circumstances that seemed to connect che prisoner with her husband's death; the quarrel, her flight shortiv after the time when the crime must have been committed, if she were innocent, and had come upon him lying dead, why had she raised no alarm —why had she fled? There were few witnesses-to be called —witnesses to prove the bad terms on . which the Haruresses lived, the constant bitter quarrels between husband and wife; the evidence of the charwoman, who had knocked unavaiiingly at a time when the prisoner must have boen in the fiat with the dead man, and who had seen the prisoner flying in terror from the flat immediately aftei*wardsj the evidence of Vernham, very white and ill at eaie, who had been compelled to repent the lie lie had already told. When at last the counsel for the defence rose to make his speech, there was no doubt that a strong effect had been produced on the minds of the jury against the prisoner. "'They'll find her guilty," one man in the court whispered to a friend, "but that she did it because of an unpremeditated impulse in a fit of temper. They'll find her guilty, with a recommendation :o mercy.'' The counsel for the defence did not nc-ke a long speech. He announced that ie was going to put the prisoner herself on the stand to tell the story of that fatal night so far as her movements ivere concerned. Quite a brief address :o the jui-y, but there was something in it, as well as in the quiet confidence •vith which he spoke, that made more -han one person in court wonder if he iad something up his sleeve, a surprise hat would nut a new complexion on he case. Then Judith Hardress, pale and ha"fard, tooic the stand. A deep hu-sh foil upon the court. {To be concluded.)