13. A Bit Of Steel
"When are you going to Judge Ostrander's?"
"To-morrow. This is my last free day. So if there is anything for me to do, do tell me, Mr. Black, and let me get to work at once."
"There is nothing you can do. The matter is hopeless."
"You think so?"
There was misery in the tone, but the seasoned old lawyer, who had conducted her husband's defence, did not allow his sympathies to run away with his judgment.
"I certainly do, madam. I told you so the other night, and now, after a couple of days of thought on the subject, I am obliged to repeat my assertion. Your own convictions in the matter, and your story of the shadow and the peaked cap may appeal to the public and assure you some sympathy, but for an entire reversal of its opinion you will need substantial and incontrovertible evidence. You must remember--you will pardon my frankness--that your husband's character failed to stand the test of inquiry. His principles were slack, his temper violent. You have suffered from both and must know. A poor foundation I found it for his defence; and a poor one you will find it for that reversal of public opinion upon which you count, without very strong proof that the crime for which he was punished was committed by another man. You think you have such proof, but it is meagre, very meagre. Find me something definite to go upon and we will talk." "Discouragement; discouragement everywhere," she complained. "Yet I know John to have been innocent of this crime."
The lawyer raised his brows, and toyed impatiently with his watch- chain. If her convictions found any echo in his own mind, he gave no evidence of it. Doubtfully she eyed him.
"What you want," she observed at length, with a sigh, "is the name of the man who sauntered down the ravine ahead of my husband. I cannot give it to you now, but I do not despair of learning it."
"Twelve years ago, madam; twelve years ago."
"I know; but I have too much confidence in my cause to be daunted even by so serious an obstacle as that. I shall yet put my finger on this man. But I do not say that it will be immediately. I have got to renew old acquaintances; revive old gossip; possibly, recall to life almost obliterated memories."
Mr. Black, dropping his hand from his vest, gave her his first look of unqualified admiration.
"You ring true," said he. "I have met men qualified to lead a Forlorn Hope; but never before a woman. Allow me to express my regret that it is such a forlorn one." Then, with a twinkle in his eye which bespoke a lighter mood, he remarked in a curiously casual tone.
"Talking of gossip, there is but one person in town who is a complete repository of all that is said or known this side of Colchester." (The next town.) "I never knew her to forget anything; and I never knew her to be very far from the truth. She lives near Judge Ostrander--a quaint little body, not uninteresting to talk to; a regular character, in fact. Do you know what they say about her house? That everything on God's earth can be found in it. That you've but to name an object, and she will produce it. She's had strange opportunities for collecting odds and ends, and she's never neglected one of them. Yet her house is but a box. Miss Weeks is her name."
"I will remember it."
Mrs. Scoville rose. Then she sat down again, with the remark:
"I have a strange notion. It's a hard thing to explain and you may not understand me, but I should like to see, if it still exists, the stick--my husband's stick--with which this crime was committed. Do the police retain such things? Is there any possibility of my finding it laid away in some drawer at Headquarters or on some dusty shelf?"
Mr. Black was again astonished. Was this callousness or a very deep and determined purpose.
"I don't know. I never go pottering about at Headquarters. What do you want to see that for? What help can you get out of that?"
"None probably; but in the presence of defeat you grasp at every hope. I dreamt of that stick last night. I was in an awful wilderness, all rocks, terrific gorges and cloud-covered, unassailable peaks. A light--one ray and one only--shone on me through the darkness. Towards this ray I was driven through great gaps in the yawning rocks and along narrow galleries sloping above an unfathomable abyss. Hope lay beyond, rescue, light. But a wall reared its black length between. I came upon it suddenly; a barrier mighty and impenetrable with its ends lost in obscurity. And the ray! the one long beam! It was still there. It shone directly upon me from an opening in this wall. It marked a gate,-- a gate for which I only lacked the key. Where should I find one to fit a lock so gigantic! Nowhere! unless the something which I held--which had been in my hands from the first--would be found to move its stubborn wards. I tried it and it did! it did! I hear the squeak of those tremendous hinges now, and--Mr. Black, you must have guessed what that something was. My husband's stick! the bludgeon with whose shape I was so<