Rensselaer Republican, Volume 26, Number 9, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 26 October 1893 — HIS CLIENT’S LIFE. [ARTICLE]

HIS CLIENT’S LIFE.

TJt Bits. For twenty years Hamilton Duke was my client. In fact, it was to him that I owed not only a competent; fortune, but my position in society. But for this I should never have undertaken his defense in this last case, my best feelings were so against him —not that I was an ingrate, but because I believed that he had murdered his wife. It was claimed by their closest friends that he loved her the first few years of their united life, though I never believed this —it seemed such a manifest impossibility. Being entirely in his confidence, he often came to my office, pallid and trembling, to tell me of some new vulgar violence of hers, which had driven him to the last extremity of desperation. And sb, one morning, when Mrs. Duke was found dead with an ugly stab through her heart, her husband standing over her with a reeking knife in hand. I naturally believed that he had killed her. He was in a state of wild excitement when I entered the sheriff’s office, in answer to his summons. Until that moment, no one had succeeded in getting a word out of him about the murder. ‘‘What doerit all mean?” I asked,when we were alone. “I don’t know,” he gasped. “I don’t know whether it was I who killed her or not. But I don’t want to die. I mustn’t be allowed to die. You must defend me —you must save me.” An unusual noise in Mrs. Duke’s room had attracted the butler’s attention on the morning of the murder. On entering he saw Mr. Duke rising up, knife in hand, from the prostrate body of his wife, as if he had just stabbed her. Mr. Duke was found guilty and sentenced to death. He was to be hanged in forty-five days. Reopening a case at that time was not the easy thing it is fyow, and I found it impossible tb get him a new trial. On and on those grace days swept, seeminly with lightning swiftness, until the time set for the execution was but fifty hours off. I was desperate, Duke was frantic. “You must go to the governor,” he cried, at length. “You must get a pardon for me? “Impossible!” I answered. “There isn’t enough time.” “Yes, there is. This is Wednesday morning and I’m not to hang until Friday noon. The train goes in an hour. If you leave here at once you can make the trip and get back here in time.” “But on what pretext? Simply seeing the governor will do no good. “ You must think of a pretext on the way. Don’t stay here and talk. You are wasting time and my life must be saved. Do go at once.” Dejected and reckless, scarcely knowing what I was about, I clambered on board the train at the last moment, and went whirling away toward the governor’s, bent on a wild, mad purpose, which I knew could only prove entirely fruitless. When the station next to my destination was reached a woman came on board who instantly pounced on me and kissed me. It was my niece.” “What under the sun is the matter with you?” she demanded. When I told her of pool’ Duka's predicament her face became very grave, but the moment she discovered my business with the governor it brightened. “How very fortunate!” she exclaimed, clapping her hands gleefully. “What!” I demanded, nearly stupefied with amazement. “Leave it all to me," she said, “and I will save your friend. No— I’m not crazy. Listen! Last night the governor proposed to me. Of course I love him dearly, and so I refused to give him an answer. I’ll promise to marry him on condition that he pardons poor old Duke."

She was as good as her word, and iix hours later T was on board another train homeward bound, and in my pocket was a reprieve for Duke, the case against him being so strong that the Governor deemed a full pardon impolitic then. The reprieve granted him another three months, though, and by that time popular sentiment was likely to cool down sufficiently to make a pa’don feasible. Nothing disturbed- m.f slumbers until the conductor called out the name of the railway junction where I had to change cars for the branch road which ran through my town. And there, to my consternation, I found myself unable to move. Mentally I was awake; physically I was asleep. I was fully conscious of the stir and bustle made by those who were getting on and off the train; but I could not move a muscle. With all my might I endeavored to throw off the trance-like spell which held me, but all to no purpose. The train moved on and took ihe with it. It was more than an hour before I regained possession of my senses. By that time it was impossible to get back to the junction in time to ■atch the home-bound train on the branch line. Springing up the moment I was conscious, 1 explained things to the conductor, offering him an j price he chose to demand if he would run his train back to the junction and take me home. That was out of the .question. All I could do, tben, was to remain on the train seven hours more,

when by tramping twelve or fifteen j miles over a craggy, roadless mountain I could probably get home by noon. Day was just breaking when we reached the station where I was to leave the train and begin my foot journey over the mountains. Soon the sun was up. Altogether too soon it had accomplished half its journey from the horizon to zenith. It was then that I reached the moun-tain-top, with a good seven miles of rough walking still before me. Duke was to be hanged at noon, unless I was there in time. At 10 o’clock I was but two miles away from him; and with all the horrors of my journey presumably behind-me,. I smiled self-gratulative-ly at the thought of how easy the rest would be, and of how I would disappoint those who were even then gathering to see my client hanged. Suddenly a vine caught my foot and threw me. Falling, I sprained my ankle, and the pain was so intense that I had to exert every atom of my will to keep from going into a dead faint. Breaking a forked stick from a sapling, presently, I extemporized it info a crutch, and hobbled as best I could. At the end of an hour I had made but half a mile, and was so exhausted that I knew another fifteen minutes would bring my locomotive powers to a full stop. Poor old Duke must .soondie. after all. There-was -no help for it, and with an outcry of utter despair, I settled on the ground in a heap. Watch in hand, I counted the fleeting seconds. In twenty-five minutes more my client would hang for want of the reprieve in my pocket. And then, joyful sound, I heard approaching feet!” A moment later a negro appeared. He was old, dirty, and stupid—entirely unable to understand me until I mentioned money. When I said. “I will give you SIOO if you get this paper in the hands of the sheriff before 12 o’clock,” with a yell like a fiend he snatched the reprieve out of my hand and darted away. Again I sought my watch. My messenger had twenty-two minutes in which to cover a mile and a half, a portion of his route being through thick underbrush. The hour which passed before he returned with help seemed a hundred years to me. “I done got dar,” he gasped, near, ly out of breath, “an’ de gemman am all safe ” Probably .it was unmanly, but I wept for joy. They tried to make a hero of me for that exploit, but I am too commonplace and stolid for that.. I had saved my client. That was ad. However, I was rewarded more gloriously yet. Before Duke’s reprieve expired his butler was taken seriopsly ill. Just before he died he. made a startling confession. It was he who killed Mrs. Duke. She caught him in the act of stealing her jewels, and he killed her to escape punishment.