Richmond Palladium (Daily), Volume 32, Number 242, 6 October 1907 — Page 7

I suppose you turn ;uu are ail exceedingly clever lawyer?" Considering the fact that James Hobson, junior members of the law firm of Hobson, Jones &, Hobson, had just heard the jury bring in a verdict of acquittal as the final word in an intensely desperate case, and that the person now twitting him was his client for whom he had won the verdict, it was but natural that the young lawyer turned a rather surprised face on his questioner. "It doesn't seem to nie," said young Hobson, "that it matters much what I think of my legal abilities. The great object has been attained. There was an ugly circumstantial case of murder against you and you have been freed." "Yes: freed because you convinced the jury that I was innocent." "Yes. because I was convinced that you were." "Exactly. And I end as I began, by saying, 'I suppose you think you are an exceedingly clever lawyer?" James Hobson looked at his client again with surprise. It was not the first time that his client had surprised him. On casual acquaintance Alice Greer seemed to take only the most phlegmatic interest in anything that went on beyond her pretty nose and to entertain only the most languid ideas back of her still prettier eyes. But if one watched closely and persistently, one might see the light leap into and out of those same serene eyes that was startling it was like a sudden flash of an electric light In a room that one had thought empty and that was was revealed as being full of strange and unsuspected things. Ordinarily her mouth was up-curved and placid; then suddenly it would line out straight

EHIP

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and narrow as the closed lid of a box. Miss Greer had been charged with a murder and on his first interview with her as his client, James Hobson had despaired of receiving any assistance from her as to the conduct of her case, but it was she who had really outlined the defense which he had brilliantly carried out and which had resulted in the triumphant phrase, "Not guilty." He had received his fee: he had received the fervid compliments of the court and the prosecuting attorney on his clever fight and had felt as beaming and buoyant as a school boy over his victory. And now his client was marring the whole thing with this ugly whip-lash, sneering riddle of hers. He began to entertain a nasty, depressing feeling concerning his ability, to doubt his legal insight, to question his intuition, to think little of his worldly wisdom. He thought still less of himself when in later years he learned the strange, true story, which is this: When Mrs. Arthur Parsons told her sister, Alice Greer, that Sterling .Tenner would arrive with the rest of the townsfolk for the week-end, Miss Greer turned a page in the book she was reading and remarked that it meant at least one decent bridge player. "You take the news that he is coming very lackadaisically," said Mrs. Parsoii3. "There was a time when you would have jumped two foot in the air if you knew you were going to meet Sterling Jenner." "Yes, but that was a year ago. Time changes our feelings as well as our looks, you know, Isabel. And by-the-by, there are certain times of which one does not care to be reminded." " beg your pardon, my dear," said Mrs. Parsons, with a fine assumption of contrition. "If Jenner's coming is going to be disagreeable to you I wil? By This "CzsakHitg Test 99 a little Sodium Phosphate and Egg Albumen, both not only harmless but of real food value. This phosphatic material is a most necessary food element the system demands it. The residue left in biscuit or pastry by Alum or Cream of Tartar baking powders is indigestible and positively harmful. It sets up constant irritation in one's delicate digestive organs. If you took it in a large quantity it would be better, for then it would' be thrown off. You know an overdose of poison is better than a sviall dose. It doesn't pay to trifle with nature. If you take ever so small an amount of poison in the system, you must pay the penalty in injured health. UseEggBakingPowder composed of pure and healthful ingredients an aid to digestion, not a hindrance. Insist on being supplied with it. There's nothing "just as good." Your Grocer Has It Guaranteed Free From A turn Or Cream of Tartar

THE RICHMOND PAIJLADIU3I AJTD

telegraph Hubby to shelve him until you are gone." "Not for the world, my dear," replied Alice. "To the contrary, I look forward to seeing Sterling Jenner again with unaffected interest. And anyway, I wouldn't think for a moment of dislocating your plans." Mrs. Parsons glanced sharply at her sister, but the girl's face was as bland and vacant as that of a sheep. Mrs. Parsons w-as absolutely correct when she said that the time had been when Alice would have leaped with heart and body, too, at the sound of Sterling Jenner's coming, because at that time Jenner not only told her that Galileo. Copernicious and all the rest of the astronomers were wrong and that she, Alice, was the true center of the universal system, but she knew that at the time, at least, he thought something of the sort. She was the center, the great attracting power around which he revolved. She not only took certain stock in the protestations but she trusted him to the extent of her womanhood. There had been months of agony and hiding on her part of deferment and excuses on his, and then when under the mantle of her lies she had ventured home again it was to find that the man she had suffered to loosen the girdle of her honor had found someone else as the subject for his love experiments and the new center to his universal, but shifting system of attraction. In her retirement Alice Greer had learned many bitter things, but none so bitter as was her discovery that Jenner's new lodestone was her own sister. Alice doubted at first if Isabel was traitorous both to her sister and to her husband, but as time went on with opportunities for watching the double bitterness was borne in on her that there was not only faithlessness, but that with it absolutely cruelty went hand in hand. Mrs. Parsons drove over with her sister to meet the guests at the railroad depot and with affectionate emphasis kept Alice by her side when greeting the arrivals. So it was that she saw Jenner flush as he took Alice's hand. "Believe, me," said the man, "I should not have come had I known you were here unless I had secured your permission." Jenner spoke very quietly, but Mrs. Parsons overheard him and she determined to watch closely to see if any effort were made to put new life into dead ashes. But she might as well have watched the Sphinx, kodak in hand in an attempt to snap-shot a smile, as to surprise any tell-tale act or word on her sister's pavt. In her quest for signs Mrs. Parsons even went so far as to risk comment by her pronounced attentions to Jenner, but there came no sign from Alice. So one night, it being then just half past eleven, she went into Alice's room for a sisterly good-night chat and in the course of it said casually but desperately: ' Why are you so markedly cold to Mr. Jenner? People will notice the difference between your attitude now and that of last year. Don't you really care for him any more?" Alice Greer turned from the dressing table where she was brushing her hair and half turning so that she looked at her sister through the veil of it, said: "One has to be careful about attitudes, you know, in these days of the Pharisee abroad and sisterly watchfulness at home." Mrs. Parsons pricked up her ears. "Do you mean that Mr. Jenner shares in your caution?" she asked. "Oh, Isabel," replied Alice, throwing back her hair, "really I could not

SUN-TELEGRAM, SUNDAY,

betray Mr. Jenner's confidence even if I had it." Two bright red spots glowed in Mrs. Parsons' cheeks. "Even though he betrayed " "That will do, Isabel," said Alice. Don't use the muck-rake and don't try to tangle me up in confessions. Just take it for granted that my brain may be shallow, but my heart is as deep as the old well outside. And even if you got to the bottom of the heart, you would only find just what there is at the bottom of the well." "Why, that's water," said Mrs. Parsons. "That's what there is at the bottom of my heart," said Alice, water tears, and the past is drowned in them." "Then there is nothing more between you?" asked Mrs. Parsons insidiously. "Oh, yes, Isabel," said Alice, looking intently at her sister, "there is much between us. Don't be alarmed sister, it is dead and there is one poor dead thing between us, one poor little dead thing that lies an impassable barrier." "Why, my dear," said Mrs. Parsons, "you talk like a dime novel. You will be saying next that you hate Mr. Jenner." "I do." "Heavens!" gasped Mrs. Parsons, "you'll be terrifying me soon by saying you could kill him." "I could," replied Alice. Then added with that incomprehensible smile of hers, "that is, with a fair opportunity and no risk of discovery." "Heaven preserve us," cried Mrs. Parsons, "I shall have to warn him." It would not have taken very much action on Mrs. Parson's part to have warned Jenner for the room allotted him in the queer old Dutch farm-house on the Hudson which Gilbert Parsons had bought for a country home, was but a little way down the corridor on which Alice Greer's room opened and was next to that suite occupied by Mr. and Mrs. Parsons. The new owners had changed the name of the place from Ruyter's Farm to Quiet Corner, but they had had the good sense not to change any of the physical characteristics cf" the old place. So they left the open hearths with their hobs, the trel'ised stoops, the bottle-room glass in the windows, the oven cupboards, the heavy door latches which took the place of modern locks and keys and the sweep well in the yard. This well lay just below Alice's window and in the white light of the moon which was then at her full, every detail of the antique contrivance. bucket, chain, rope and retaining notch could be seen as plainly as though it were day. The water brought up in "the old oaken bucket" was the coolest, sweetest water in the whole country side. Imperturbable though Alice had appeared, their sisterly . yet unsisterly talk had much upset her and there was just as much reality as acting in the iittle stagger which she made and the feeling of faintness which overcame her. "I must get a drink of water," she said, with a hesitating step toward the door. "I don't feel very well." The sisterly came to the fore in Mrs. Parsons. "I'll get you a glass," she said. "Not that faucet water," pleaded Alice, "it seems to me that nothing but tat ice cold well water would satisfy me." "All right," said Mrs. Parsons, "I'll get Hubby to fetch you a glass of it." "No, don't trouble him," objected Alice. "He's gone to bed. I certainly am foolishly overcome. I guess I'm not thoroughly strong yet." "Why of course I'll get you a glass of

OCTOBER 6, 1907.

the well water." said Mrs. Parsons, who was now all sisterly. "And I will sit here in the windowseat where I can see you and where vou can see me all the time, so that you need not be afraid." So Alice sat in the window-seat beside the open window' while Mrs. Parsons ran down stairs and into the wellyard. There was no need of a lantern because oi the bright moonlight, the white radiance being so clear and strong that Alice saw every feature of her sister's face, and Isabel could also distinguish, though not so clearly, the figure of Alice at the window. "You're sure you're not afraid?" asked Alice, speaking from the windowseat. "Why, how can I be?" replied Mrs. Parsons, unhitching the sweep from the restraining notch, "when I can see and talk with you like this." Mrs. Parsons drew the water, filled tue pitcher with the sweet Ruyter well water, glanced up and saw that her sister was still there and then hastily returned to the house. Alice, in her room, heard Mrs. Parsons come quickly but quietly up the creaky stair-case; heard her hesitate in her progress along the passage and then tip-toe on. so that she might not disturb her sleeping husband or Jenner. When Mrs. Parsons entered her sister's room the hand that held the heavy pitcher of water was shaking with the nervousness that came from her quick little night excursion and the strained walk upstairs; while Alice had evidently not assumed a sudden faintness in order to close an embarrassing conversation, because her face was white and there was quite a drop to her chin, ordinarily rather too firm a feature of her strong oval face. She begged Isabel to remain with her for a time and Mrs. Tarsons lay down beside Alice on the bed. There she dozed until she heard the cuckoo-clock strike 4, and then, seeing that Alice was sleeping, crept to her own room. Next morning at 7 o'clock Sterling Jenner was found dead in his bed. He had been murdered: stabbed in the heart as he lay asleep. Death had evidently come instantaneously. Jenner lay partly on his right side; partly on his back and the knife with which he had been stabbed, and which still stood in the wound, had done its work so swiftly that the sleeper's left hand lay open just below the knife up toward which it had spasmodically moved in the shock of the fatal blow. The doctor, called post haste, declared that Jenner had been dead about eight hours. The weapon was a pruning knife which at the inquest, the gardener said he had left in the conservatory two days before the tragtrtly. Such other facts were brought out at the investiga tion that the verdict of the jury was that Sterling Jenner had been murdered and that the evidence tended to implicate Alice Greer. Alice Greer was arrested and at first her lawyer, James Hobson, junior member of the law firm of Hobson, Jones & Hobson, was inclined to use the plea of emotional insanity. The most damaging testimony against her adducted at the inquest was that furnished by her sister who under compulsion admitted . that there was grave cause for Miss Greer's hating the dead man, and that Alice had actually threatened to kill the murdered man. Yet when Mr. Hobson asked his client if there was any way In which her sister's testimony could bo nullified at the trial, Miss Greer only smiled mysteriously and said, "Let her tell her story. My only prayer is that she shall bo my accuser: my onlj sat

isfaction will be that she shall be my accuser." So Mrs. Parsons on the witness stand, the strong witness for the prosecution furnished the State with that essential tha motive for the crime. Her direct testimony lasted up to the noon recess, counsel for the accused announcing that he would begin his cross-examination when the court reassembled. It was during the recess that Miss Greer gave her attorney his second shock. "Isabel has done her l"st to convict me. Now Mr. Hobson, she shall set me free." Then she told him certain facts concerning which she had. kept studiously quiet, though they wore vital to her exculpation. So when court reassembled and Mrs. Parsons was again on the stand she had to tell of the visit to the well, of leaving her sick sister in the room, of her hurried trip to and from the yard, of the bright moonlight, of seeing her sister at the window, of speaking with her from well to, window, of finding her In the same position and in the same place on her return to the rrom, and of remaining with her until 4 o'clock in the morning. Mrs. Parsons was made to prove that the duration of the time when she did not see her sister was that covered by her trip to and from the yard, and that the duration of that interval would not allow even the most agile of executioners to have done the deed, to say nothing of an agitated and undoubtedly sick girl. Then Mrs. Parsons was asked if as a matter of fact she had not stopied on her return trip in the corridor near the room of the murdered man, and if again as a matter of fact that return trip had not taken her through the conservatory in which the gardener had left the weapon. "Of course," said Mr. Hobson, "I only ask these questions to emphasize the figmentary character of the alleged testimony against my client. There is no other ulterior purpose In this line of enquiry." Then Mrs. Parsons was assisted pallid and trembling from the witness stand and in less than two hours afterward the jury brought in a verdict of "Not guilty."

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But Alice Greer -was guilty. Bh. M kill Sterling Jenner. She had planned the deed from tha moment she heard of his intended it to her Bisters. She had watched the gardener at work In the consent atory pruning the vines and had secreted the knife. She had thought out the little comedy of sickness and her sister's moonlight trip to the -welL She had only made a dummy figure of her clothes, had seated that dummy in the window and had inspected the cheat from the yard and had found that the mannikin was sufficiently deceiving in appearance. She had learned the exact hour of the various parties' retiring and she knew, ot course, that entrance to any of the rooms was unobstructed. She had greased the latch to Jen ner's door and had the knife ready In the top bureau drawer. When Mrs. Parsons went down stairs Alice whipped the dummy from the conceal" ing closet and laid it on the floor beneath the window-seat. Then she sat fcliere and talked with her sister. Then quick as a flash seated the dummy figure in her place, gripped the knife, scudded down the passage-way in her stocking feet, stabbed Jenner with one strong blow; had fled back to her room, whisked the dummy back into the closet and dropped panting Into the window-seat. But in that time she had killed Sterling Jenner and it was the quickest killing on record. Vide 97, Johnson (N. Y.) pp. 347 et seq. Not many women of eighty-six years can sing, and it is remarkable, Indeed, for one of that age to sing In a religious meeting for the benefit of prisoners, but last Sunday Mrs. Lacy Perkins, of New York, led the singing in the meeting In the Bangor Jail, and sang a solo sweetly and feelingly, and with visible effect on the prisoners, most of whom are not all bad merely unfortunate. Kennebec Journal. The native women of Ecuador are so used to strong heat and light that they even do their spinning out of doors in the blazing sun. Your Gain. Paper Store H. L. DICKINSON. sale strictly cash.