lp
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.
The testimony was damning to Harris, infecting everything he had said.
From behind the rail Peacock volleyed and thundered. But truth when
you get at it is a stubborn thing. So far as Harris was concerned
there it stood and there too, during the production of it, Orr stood,
quite like an Angora lapping milk. You could hear him purr. The eyes
of Sylvia glistened like mica. Now and again Annandale laughed
outright.

It is always insufficient to be innocent of a given charge. You must
appear so. Annandale did not. Alternately he was bored and buoyant.
But not dejected, never depressed. He did not seem to feel that his
life was at stake. That is the attitude of the habitual ruffian. But
sentiment was veering. Public opinion is a wave that thinks, thinks
again, changes its mind, volatile as a woman. At the opening everybody
knew that Annandale was guilty. Now nobody was quite so sure.

The Recorder caressed his beard. "I think," he announced, "that I will
give the jury a recess."

CHAPTER IX

THE TWELFTH JUROR

Tumultuously the session was resumed. At the door was a riot. There a
squad of police fought back surging nondescripts clamoring for
admission, fighting for entrance to the continuous show. A woman
fainted. Another had her gown torn off. One man retired with a
blackened eye.

During the recess Orr got for a moment with Sylvia and Mrs. Waldron.
"Aren't you hungry?" he asked.

Sylvia took his hand and pressed it. In her eyes was victory, in her
face delight. "I never knew before how Protean you are. You have won."

Orr tossed his head. "Not by a long shot. Besides, there is the jury.
Eleven look imbecile and the twelfth looks ill. There is no telling at
all what they will do or will not. But aren