Ridgway's answer to the latest move of Simon Harley was to put him on trial for his life to answer the charge of having plotted and instigated the death of Vance Edwards.Not without reason, the defense had asked for a change of venue, alleging the impossibility of securing a fair trial at Mesa.The courts had granted the request and removed the case to Avalanche.
On the second day of the trial Aline sat beside her husband, a dainty little figure of fear, shrinking from the observation focused upon her from all sides.The sight of her forlorn sensitiveness so touched Ridgway's heart that he telegraphed Virginia Balfour to come and help support her through the ordeal.
Virginia came, and henceforth two women, both of them young and unusually attractive, gave countenance to the man being tried for his life.Not that he needed their support for himself, but for the effect they might have on the jury.Harley had shrewdly guessed that the white-faced child he had married, whose pathetic beauty was of so haunting a type, and whose big eyes were so quick to reflect emotions, would be a valuable asset to set against the black-clad widow of Vance Edwards.
For its effect upon himself, so far as the trial was concerned, Simon Harley cared not a whit.He needed no bolstering.The old wrecker carried an iron face to the ordeal.His leathern heart was as foreign to fear as to pity.The trial was an unpleasant bore to him, but nothing worse.He had, of course, cast an anchor of caution to windward by taking care to have the jury fixed.For even though his array of lawyers was a formidably famous one, he was no such child as to trust his case to a Western jury on its merits while the undercurrent of popular opinion was setting so strongly against him.Nor had he neglected to see that the court-room was packed with detectives to safeguard him in the event that the sympathy of the attending miners should at any time become demonstrative against him.
The most irritating feature of the trial to the defendant was the presence of the little woman in black, whose burning eyes never left for long his face.He feigned to be unconscious of her regard, but nobody in the court-room was more sure of that look of enduring, passionate hatred than its victim.He had made her a widow, and her heart cried for revenge.That was the story the eyes told dumbly.
From first to last the case was bitterly contested, and always with the realization among those present--except for that somber figure in black, whose beady eyes gimleted the defendant--that it was another move in the fight between the rival copper kings.The district attorney had worked up his case very carefully, not with much hope of securing a conviction, but to mass a total of evidence that would condemn the Consolidated leader- before the world.
To this end, the foreman, Donleavy, had been driven by a process of sweating to turn State's evidence against his master.His testimony made things look black for Harley, but when Hobart took the stand, a palpably unwilling witness, and supported his evidence, the Ridgway adherents were openly jubilant.The lawyers for the defense made much of the fact that Hobart had just left the Consolidated service after a disagreement with the defendant and had been elected to the senate by his enemies, but the impression made by his moderation and the fine restraint of his manner, combined with his reputation for scrupulous honesty, was not to be shaken by the subtle innuendos and blunt aspersions of the legal array he faced.
Nor did the young district attorney content himself with Hobart's testimony.He put his successor, Mott, on the stand, and gave him a bad hour while he tried to wring the admission out of him that Harley had personally ordered the attack on the miners of the Taurus.But for the almost constant objections of the opposing counsel, which gave him time to recover himself, the prosecuting attorney would have succeeded.
Ridgway, meeting him by chance after luncheon at the foot of the hotel elevator--for in a town the size of Avalanche, Waring had found it necessary to put up at the same hotel as the enemy or take second best, an alternative not to his fastidious taste--rallied him upon the predicament in which he had found himself.
"It's pretty hard to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, without ****** indiscreet admissions about one's friends, isn't it?" he asked, with his genial smile.
"Did I make any indiscreet admissions?"
"I don't say you did, though you didn't look as if you were enjoying yourself.I picked up an impression that you had your back to the wall; seemed to me the jury rather sized it up that way, Mott.""We'll know what the jury thinks in a few days.""Shall we?" the other laughed aloud."Now, I'm wondering whether we shall know what they really think.""If you mean that the jury has been tampered with it is your duty to place your evidence before the court, Mr.Ridgway.""When I hear the verdict I'll tell you what I think about the jury," returned the president of the Ore-producing Company, with easy impudence as he passed into the elevator.
At the second floor Waring left it and turned toward the ladies' parlor.It had seemed to him that Aline had looked very tired and frail at the morning session, and he wanted to see Virginia about arranging to have them take a long drive into the country that afternoon.He had sent his card up with a penciled note to the effect that he would wait for her in the parlor.
