then, preceding the judge by half a minute only, his entrance timed histrionically to the second, he came, like Eudoxia, like a flame out of the east. In swept Caput Magnus with all the dignity and grace of an Irving playing Cardinal Wolsey. Haggard, yes; pale, yes; tremulous, perhaps; but nevertheless glorious in a new cutaway coat, patent-leather shoes, green tie, a rosebud blushing from his lapel, his hair newly cut and laid down in beautiful little wavelets with pomatum, his figure erect, his chin in air, a book beneath his arm, his right hand waving in a delicate gesture of greeting; for Caput had taken O'Leary's suggestion seriously, and had purchased that widely known and authoritative work to which so many eminent barristers owe their entire success—"How to Try a Case"—and in it he had learned that in order to win the hearts of the jury one should make oneself beautiful.
"What in hell's he done to himself?" gasped O'Leary to O'Brien.
"He'll make a wonderful corpse!" whispered the latter in response.
"Order in the court! His Honor the Judge of General Sessions!" bellowed an officer at this moment, and the judge came in.
Everybody got up. He bowed. Everybody bowed. Everybody sat down again. A few, deeply affected, blew their noses. Then His Honor smiled genially and asked what business there was before the court, and the clerk told him that they were all there to try a man named Higgleby for bigamy, and the judge, nodding at Caput, said to go ahead and try him.
In the bottom of his peritoneum Mr. Magnus felt that he carried a cold stone the size of a grapefruit. His hands were ice, his lips bloodless. And there was a Niagara where his hearing should have been. But he rose, just as the book told him to do, in all his beauty, and enunciated in the crystal tones he had learned during the last few weeks at Madam Winterbottom's school of acting and elocution—in syllables chiseled from the stone of eloquence by the lapidary of culture:
"If Your Honor please, I move the cause of the People of the state of New York against Theophilus Higgleby, indicted for bigamy."
Peckham and the rest couldn't believe their ears. It wasn't possible! That perfect specimen of tonsorial and sartorial art, warbling like a legal Caruso, conducting himself so naturally, easily and casually, couldn't be old Caput Magnus! They pinched themselves.
"Say!" ejaculated Peckham. "What's happened to him? When did Sir Henry sign up with us?"
Mr. Tutt across the inclosure in front of the jury box raised his bushy eyebrows and looked whimsically at the D. A. over his spectacles.
"Are you ready, Mr. Tutt?" inquired the judge.
"Entirely so, Your Honor," responded the lawyer.
"Then impanel a jury."
The jury was impaneled, Mr. Caput Magnus passing through that trying ordeal with great éclat.
"You may proceed to open your case," directed the judge.
The staff saw a very white Caput Magnus rise and bow in the direction of the bench. Then he stepped to the jury box and cleared his throat. His official associates held their breath expectantly. Would he—or wouldn't he? There was a pause.
Then: "Mister Foreman and gentlemen of the jury," declaimed Caput in flutelike tones: "The defendant is indicted for the crime of bigamy, an offense alike repugnant to religion, civilization and to the law."
The words flowed from him like a rippling sunlit stream; encircled him like a necklace of verbal jewels, a rosary, each word a pearl or a bead or whatever it is. With perfect articulation, enunciation and gesticulation Mr. Caput Magnus went on to inform his hearers that Mr. Higgleby was a bigamist of the deepest dye, that he had feloniously, wilfully and knowingly married two several females, and by every standard of conduct was utterly and entirely detestable.
Mr. Higgleby, flanked by Tutt and Mr. Tutt, listened calmly. Caput warmed to his task.
The said Higgleby, said he, had as aforesaid in the indictment committed the act of bigamy, to wit, of marriage when he had one legal wife already, in New York City on the seventeenth of last December, by marrying in Grace Church Chantry the lady whom they saw sitting by the other lady—he meant the one with the red feather in her bonnet—that is to say, her hat, whereas the other lady, as he had said aforesaid, had been lawfully and properly married to the defendant the preceding May, to wit, in Chicago as aforesaid—
"Pardon me!" interrupted the foreman petulantly. "Which is the lady you mean was married to the defendant in New York? You said she was sitting by the other lady and that you meant the one with the red feather, but you didn't say whether the one with the red feather was the other lady or the one you were talking about."
Caput gagged and turned pink.
"I—I—" he stammered. "The lady in the red bonnet is—the—New York lady."
"You mean she isn't his wife although the defendant went through the form of marriage with her, because he was already married to another," suggested His Honor. "You might, I think, put things a little more simply. However, do it your own way."
"Ye-es, Your Honor."
"Go on."
But Caput was lost—hopelessly. Every vestige of the composure so laboriously acquired at Madam Winterbottom's salon had evaporated. He felt as if he were swinging in midair hitched to a scudding aeroplane by a rope about his middle. The mucous membranes of his throat were as dry and as full of dust as the entrails of a carpet sweeper. His vision was blurred and he had no control over his muscles. Weakly he leaned against the table in front of the jury, the room swaying about him. The pains of hell gat hold upon him. He was dying. Even the staff felt compunction—all but the Honorable Peckham.
Judge Russell quickly sensed the situation. He was a kindly man, who had pulled many an ass out of the mire of confusion. So with a glance at Mr. Tutt he came to Caput's rescue.
"Let us see, Mr. Magnus," he remarked pleasantly; "suppose you prove the Illinois marriage first. Is Mrs. Higgleby in court?"
Both ladies started from their seats.
"Mrs. Tomascene Higgleby," corrected His Honor. "Step this way, please, madam!"
The former Miss Startup made her way diffidently to the witness chair and in a faint voice answered the questions relative to her marriage of the preceding spring as put to her by the judge. Mr. Tutt waved her aside and Caput Magnus felt returning strength. He had expected and prepared for a highly technical assault upon the legality of the ceremony performed in Cook County. He had anticipated every variety and form of question. But Mr. Tutt put none. He merely smiled benignly upon Caput in an avuncular fashion.
"Have you no questions, Mr. Tutt?" inquired His Honor.
"None," answered the lawyer.
"Then prove the bigamous marriage," directed Judge Russell.
Then rose at the call of justice, militantly and with a curious air of proprietorship in the overmarried defendant, the wife or maiden who in earlier days had answered to the name of Alvina Woodcock. Though she was the injured party and though the blame for her unfortunate state rested entirely upon Higgleby, her resentment seemed less directed toward the offending male than toward the Chicago lady who was his lawful wife. There was no question as to the circumstances to which she so definitely and aggressively testified. No one could gainsay the deplorable fact that she had, as she supposed, been linked in lawful wedlock to Mr. Tutt's isosceles client. But there was that in her
