The Sleuth of St. James Street [33]
face. There was no doubt anywhere in the trial. Learned surgeons showed that the two wounds in the dead man's back from the big-calibered weapon were deadly, fatal wounds that no man could have survived. "There was nothing incomplete in that trial. "Everything was so certain that the assassin did not even undertake to contradict; not one statement, not one word of the evidence against him did he deny. It was a plain case of willful, deliberate and premeditated murder. The judge presiding at the trial instructed the jury that a man is presumed to intend that which he does; that whoever kills a human being with malice aforethought is guilty of murder; that murder which is perpetrated by any kind of willful, deliberate and premeditated killing is murder in the first degree. The jury found the assassin guilty and the judge sentenced him to be hanged." The Count paused and looked at his companions about him on the terrace. "Messieurs," he said, "do you think that conviction was just?" There was a common assent. Some one said: "It was a cruel murder if ever there was one." And another: "It was wholly just; the creature deserved to hang." The old Count bowed, putting out his hands. "And so I hoped he would." "What happened?" said the American. The Count regarded him with a queer, ironical smile. "Unlike the great British people, monsieur," he replied, "your courts have never given the pig, or the pasture on which he gathers his acorns, a consideration above the human family. The case was taken to your Court of Appeals of that province." He stopped and lighted his cigarette deliberately, with a match scratched slowly on the table. "Monsieur," he said, "I do not criticize your elevated court. It is composed of learned men - wise and patriotic, I have no doubt. They cannot make the laws, monsieur; they cannot coin a conception of justice for your people. They must enforce the precise rules of law that the conception of justice in your country has established. "Nevertheless, monsieur" - and his thin yellow lips curled - "for the sake of my depleted revenues I could have wished that the decision of this court had been other than it was." "And what did it decide?" asked the American. "It decided, monsieur," replied the Count, "that my estates in Salerno must continue to be charged with the gratuity to the indigent relative. "That is to say, monsieur, it decided, because the great pagan did not wait to die in agony, did not wait for the mortal wounds inflicted by the would-be assassin to kill him, that interesting person - the man in the green hat - was not guilty of murder in the first degree and could not be hanged!"
Note - See State versus Angelina; 80 Southeastern Reporter, 141: "The intervening responsible agent who wrongfully accelerates death is guilty of the murder, and not the one who inflicted the first injury, though in itself mortal."
VI. The Wrong Sign
It was an ancient diary in a faded leather cover. The writing was fine and delicate, and the ink yellow with age. Sir Henry Marquis turned the pages slowly and with care for the paper was fragile. We had dined early at the Ritz and come in later to his great home in St. James's Square. He wished to show me this old diary that had come to him from a branch of his mother's family in Virginia - a branch that had gone out with a King's grant when Virginia was a crown colony. The collateral ancestor, Pendleton, had been a justice of the peace in Virginia, and a spinster daughter had written down some of the strange cases with which her father had been concerned. Sir Henry Marquis believed that these cases in their tragic details, and their inspirational, deductive handling, equaled any of our modern time. The great library overlooking St. James' Square, was curtained off from London. Sir Henry read by the fire; and I listened, returned, as by some recession of time to the Virginia of a vanished decade. The narrative of the diary follows:
My father used to say that the Justice of God was sometimes swift and terrible. He said we thought of it usually
Note - See State versus Angelina; 80 Southeastern Reporter, 141: "The intervening responsible agent who wrongfully accelerates death is guilty of the murder, and not the one who inflicted the first injury, though in itself mortal."
VI. The Wrong Sign
It was an ancient diary in a faded leather cover. The writing was fine and delicate, and the ink yellow with age. Sir Henry Marquis turned the pages slowly and with care for the paper was fragile. We had dined early at the Ritz and come in later to his great home in St. James's Square. He wished to show me this old diary that had come to him from a branch of his mother's family in Virginia - a branch that had gone out with a King's grant when Virginia was a crown colony. The collateral ancestor, Pendleton, had been a justice of the peace in Virginia, and a spinster daughter had written down some of the strange cases with which her father had been concerned. Sir Henry Marquis believed that these cases in their tragic details, and their inspirational, deductive handling, equaled any of our modern time. The great library overlooking St. James' Square, was curtained off from London. Sir Henry read by the fire; and I listened, returned, as by some recession of time to the Virginia of a vanished decade. The narrative of the diary follows:
My father used to say that the Justice of God was sometimes swift and terrible. He said we thought of it usually