The Tragedy of Z by Ellery Queen

Author:Ellery Queen
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media

11. THE TRIAL

In the weeks that passed I found myself sinking more deeply into the slough of despond. I could not see clearly ahead except through one rift above the morass, and the light which came through that was dull and morbid. Aaron Dow was doomed, and the phrase became a refrain to all my thoughts. I slunk about the Clay house like a ghost, wishing heartily that I were dead; and I fear that Jeremy found me a depressing companion. I took little interest in the activity about me; father was constantly with Mr. Lane, and the two of them held conference after conference with Mark Currier.

With the date set for the trial of Aaron Dow, I gathered that the old gentleman was girding his loins for an epic battle. On the few occasions when I did see him he was grim-lipped and taciturn. He had, it appeared, placed his inexhaustible resources at the command of Currier. He dashed about Leeds conferring with a corps of local physicians who were to assist in conducting courtroom tests of the defendant; strove with little success to pierce the veil of silence which shrouded the district attorney’s office; and finally wired to New York for his own physician, Dr. Martini, to come upstate for the trial.

All this activity gave him and father something to do; but for me, who had to sit idly by waiting, it was a severe ordeal. On several occasions I tried to see Aaron Dow in his cell, but the bar had been clamped down, and I found myself unable to get beyond the waiting room of the county jail. I might have visited Dow in the company of Currier, who of course had open seasame with his client; but here again something held me back. I had formed an unreasoned dislike of the Leeds lawyer and the thought of confronting the convict in his cell with Currier as a companion was faintly repellent to me.

And so the days dragged by until der Tag itself came, and the trial began in a carnival fanfare of special newspaper correspondents, thronged streets, hawkers, crowded hotels, and an aroused public sentiment. From the outset it was dramatic in tone, developing as it proceeded an unexpected bitterness between counsel and prosecutor that hindered rather than helped the man at the bar. Animated, I suppose, by some feeble stirring of conscience or indecision, young Hume took the easy path and permitted one of his assistant district attorneys, Sweet, to prosecute the case. Sweet and Currier had no sooner taken their places before the judge’s dais when they were at each other’s throats like wolves. I gathered that they were mortal enemies, at least insofar as their manner toward each other in the courtroom indicated. They heckled each other in the most vicious tones, and on numerous occasions were sharply censured by the Court for their unseemly conduct.

And, too, from the outset I saw how hopeless it all was. Through the dreary business of

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