VIII

sandbagging the witness with one hand, had another free for the prosecution. He was gluttonish, giving as good as was sent, very often better.

The Recorder, dismayed at the slugging, protested. “A human being is on trial for his life. I cannot try a case where only counsel are heard.”

Immediately Orr supplied him with a diversion. One after another witness for the defense scaled the stand, sleuths from overseas, experts and servants.

In his corner before them Orr prowled. At the witnesses for the prosecution he had roared, sometimes he had bounded at the Bar, sometimes when a move of his succeeded he raised his right hand and looked at it as though surprised that it was not blood red. But now with his own witnesses he was serene, entirely calm, refreshingly civil.

That civility awoke in Peacock the hyena. The first witness Orr produced, a man who, as it afterward appeared, had had a rough and tumble with Harris that morning in the corridor, he partly devoured. What was left of him he sent to the Tombs. As fast as witnesses could be produced he ate them up. It was terrific. You could not help feeling that there are safer places than the witness stand in a murder trial, that you ran the risk of being killed yourself, talked to death if nothing worse.

“Don’t go at him like a common scold,” Orr engagingly pleaded at one stage of the game. “Why browbeat and bully a witness as you do?” he expostulated at another. “That’s all, my friend,” he said to one witness, “and let me apologize for the District Attorney’s remarks.” From his tone and manner never in the world would you have thought him the man who, but a little before, had so thoroughly sandbagged Harris.

Meanwhile questions coarse as oaths, answers frank as sword thrusts, clashed and resounded. One and all Orr’s charges were substantiated.