Chapter XIV: The End of a Trial

Juries are not inclined to convict a beautiful woman unless the evidence offered against her is entirely convincing; and, even then, it is done with reluctance, and usually with a strong recommendation to the judge for mercy and leniency.

The testimony against her must be of the best, and it must be direct, for the germ of chivalry dwells in the soul of every man, and there is always present in his conscience that instinctive reluctance to condemn any woman, whatever her crimes may have been, to the utmost penalty of the law. Circumstantial evidence has sent many a man to the death penalty, but where will you find that it has done so in the case of a woman--and particularly a beautiful woman who still possesses that greatest of all attractions--youth?

It was so in the Babbington case--in that great case which attracted such world-wide notice at the time of the trial--the prosecution of Madge Hurd-Babbington for murder in the first degree, in that she was charged--so the indictment read--with having instigated, aided, and abetted one Thomas Lynne, who posed for the time under the name of his cousin, J. Cephas Lynne, in committing the deliberate and premeditated murder of Edythe Lynne, only daughter and heiress of the said J. Cephas Lynne.

The jury had been out barely half an hour when it returned to ask a question of the presiding judge. The foreman asked:

“Your honor, we wish to know if this defendant could be convicted of any crime less than that which is charged in the indictment?”

The judge replied instantly:

“No. This is an extraordinary case, gentlemen. The indictment charges explicitly that the defendant ‘instigated, aided, and abetted’ another in the commission of a crime; it does not charge that she had any hand in the actual commission of that crime. If you find that she ‘instigated, aided, and abetted’ the man who actually committed the crime, and who has already been convicted in this court for that offense, she is as guilty as he; but, unless you do so find, she is not guilty. You may retire now for further deliberation.”

“That, your honor,” replied the foreman, “is now unnecessary. We find the defendant not guilty!”

After that the usual formalities of the court in discharging a prisoner were quickly disposed of, and the beautiful Madge Babbington turned a derisively smiling face for one instant upon Nick Carter, as she passed, unattended, from the courtroom to the street.

The district attorney, who had personally conducted the case, remarked, in a low tone, to the detective:

“It is no more than I expected, Carter.”

“It is precisely what I did expect,” replied Nick, with a shrug of his shoulders.

“If it had been proved that she actually administered the poison to Edythe Lynne, she might have been convicted,” said the lawyer, with a dubious smile; “but anything short of that----” He paused, with the sentence unfinished; then added, somewhat irrelevantly: “She is an astonishingly beautiful woman, Nick.”

“I think you have made use of the precise adverbial adjective,” replied the detective dryly. “Her beauty is exactly of the type that is astonishing.”

“Or overwhelming; possibly that would be a better word, Nick.”

“No; you were correct in the first instance. She took those twelve men by storm, from the foreman to number twelve. They never had a chance to do anything but what they did do. She fascinated them, and so compelled them.”

“Hypnotized them, you mean.”

“Not at all. There was no hypnotism about it.”

“Then what?”

“What I have already called it--fascination. The compelling force of a style and type of beauty which no man among them has ever seen before; the----”

“Nor any other man,” interpolated the lawyer.

“The grace, strength, and the ferocity of a tigress molded into the form of a woman,” the detective continued, as if he had not been interrupted.

The lawyer slapped his thigh with emphasis.

“You struck the keynote there, Nick!” he exclaimed. “The grace, strength, and ferocity of a tigress. I often wondered, during the trial, what her eyes reminded me of. I know now, for I have seen the same sort of eyes through the bars of cages at the Bronx Zoo; great, sleepy, tawny eyes, that peer out at one so mildly and half drowsily, and almost unseeingly, but into which a veritable living flame may leap at any instant, burning, consuming, destroying. She doesn’t like you, Nick.”

“No; evidently not.”

“I saw that glance she gave you as she passed out. I am rather glad it wasn’t directed at me.”

“Why?”

“I should confess myself afraid.”

“Afraid of her?”

“Afraid of her eyes, rather.”

The detective shrugged again, but made no reply in words. The lawyer continued:

“Her vengeance against you, if she ever seeks one, will be unusual.”

“I fancy that she has something else to think about, than vengeance, just now,” replied the detective, with a smile.

“Tigers have long memories for an injury done to them, Nick. The superintendent up at the Zoo told me that only the other day. He said----”

“You seem to be fond of visiting the Zoo,” the detective interrupted, smiling again.

“I am. The place fascinates me, especially the cages which confine the tigers and the lions. Did you ever notice, Nick, how the lions will look straight out over your head, and never once into your eyes, and how they look as if they could see the wilderness where they were born?”

“Yes, often.”

“But the tigers--ah! they will look into one’s eyes at times; mildly at first, but if one returns that gaze their eyes will flame. I have dodged more than once, Nick, before the white-hot fire of hate I have seen in the eyes of a tiger, and I have walked away, afraid to remain.”

“You should keep away from the Zoo, old chap; it isn’t good for you,” said the detective, laughing aloud.

“Perhaps not. I feel, just now, as if I had been gazing through the bars of an iron cage into the eyes of an enraged tigress.”

Nick Carter laughed again.

“Well, at all events,” he said, “this tigress is now at liberty, and with the opportunity to do whatsoever she wills. Come, let’s get out of here. There is better air to breathe outside.”

Passing through the corridor toward the elevator, the district attorney continued the subject.

“Have you any idea what she will do, Nick?” he asked.

“No. At the present moment the subject does not interest me.”

“She will do something.”

“Naturally.”

“To get square with you, I mean.”

“I doubt that. She has too much else to think about.”

“What, for example?”

“Well, she is practically penniless, from her point of view--for her requirements are of the extravagant order. She still has an income sufficient to keep an ordinarily large family in comfort, but it is totally inadequate for her wants.”

“And she blames you for that, Nick.”

“Possibly, although, as a matter of fact, it is no fault of mine, save that she would by now have been the possessor of the Lynne millions if I had not found those tracks in the snow out at Pleasantglades.”

“So, of course, she attributes all her present misfortunes to you.”

“Likely enough.”

“She has also lost her social position, Nick--which was rather an enviable one. She will be ostracized now by all the people who were overjoyed to receive her before this happened. She will lay that at your door, too.”

“I suppose so.”

“In a way, that is a greater loss to her than the failure to obtain possession of the fortune. She loses the opportunity for----”

“For everything.”

“Yes, for everything in the social world--her world; the one to which she was born.”

“You mistake. She was not born to it.”

“No; but she has always lived in it. You have deprived her of the two things which she has striven all her life to attain--wealth and social prominence.”

“On the contrary, she deprived herself of them.”

“That is begging the question. I asked you a little bit ago if you had any idea what she would do now. You replied that the subject did not interest you. It interests me.”

The detective turned a smiling face toward his friend.

“Well,” he said, “have you formed an opinion about it?”

“A very decided one, Nick.”

“Good. Let’s hear what it is.”

“She will go straight to--’hem!--to the devil, by the shortest route. I don’t mean in the sense in which that expression is generally used. I speak in the criminal sense. She is outside the law now. Society has turned against her, and she will take it out of society, if I am any judge of character. She was born with criminal instincts, dormant until now, but brought to the surface and made prominent by this episode in her life. She has become an Ishmaelite, with the hand of every man and woman against her, and her hand against all the world. If she had any morals of honesty, integrity, and uprightness before this thing happened, they have been burned to white ashes since the beginning of this trial. The place where she kept them is a cavity, a vacuum, now. From having been a beautiful ornament to the society which she adorned she has become a man-eating tigress to prey upon it; a parasite to cling to it, to grow and fatten upon it, and ultimately to smother and destroy the creatures who will afford her sustenance. The woman has gone out of her, Nick; the tigress has got inside. Beware of her, Nick. She hates you, and she will find a way--an unusual one, too, I think--to do you harm.”

“I declare, old chap, you are weaving quite a romance.”

“I am speaking earnestly, Nick.”

“Oh, I believe you; but I think you are trying to make a mountain out of a molehill.”

“Do you? Perhaps I am. But, all the same, I am mighty glad that she did not look at me in the manner she glanced toward you as she passed out of that courtroom. Beware of her, Nick, lest when she is next called upon to face a jury, charged with murder, you are not the victim of the crime.”