"T' Law and t' lawyers can do wi' me what they like," answered Perris. "I've spokken. I've telled t' truth, and I'll tak' t' consequences. I thowt it all out when I were travillin' down i' t' train that day I come to see you, sir. I tell you I've spokken. An' nowt 'll alter what I've said."
Wroxdale shook his head.
"You've still a duty to yourself, Perris," he said. "You see, if you could only show me that there were extenuating circumstances—"
"I don't know what them words means, sir," replied Perris, with more signs of testiness. "I've telled what t' circumstances were, an'—"
"Wait a moment," said Wroxdale, "and try to remember that I'm doing my best for you. I don't want to see you go to the scaffold if I can save you. By extenuating circumstances I mean that perhaps you lost your temper—"
Perris made a gesture of impatient dissent.
"I lost nowt o' t' sort, then!" he exclaimed. "I werrn't likely to lose mi temper wi' t' like o' that theer. I killed him same as I'd ha' killed a weasel or a rat-ten. An' I've telled ye once for all, Mestur Wroxdale, I've said my say and I shall say no more. Ye mean well, sir, but it's no use comin' to this place agen on that business. What I've said, I'll stand to."
Then Wroxdale played his last card.
"There's somebody besides yourself to think of, Perris," he said. "There's your wife. You don't want her to go through the rest of her life branded as a murderer's widow?"
The look of sullen obstinacy which Wroxdale had begun to know so well came over Perris's face, and settled there as if it would never move.
"I've said my say, Mestur Wroxdale," he answered. "I've nowt no more to remark, sir."
And Wroxdale left him and troubled him no more. But he contrived, with the co-operation of the authorities, to have Perris examined, unknown to himself, by mental specialists, for he had doubts as to the man's sanity. And the mental specialists gave it as their convinced opinion that Perris was sane enough on all points, and then Wroxdale knew that things would have to take their course.
That course was short and sharp enough, once the weeks of weary waiting were over. In a crowded court, in which he himself seemed to be the most unconcerned person present, Perris, called upon to plead, reiterated his guilt as calmly and firmly as he had confessed it before the magistrates. Advised by the presiding judge to withdraw his plea and to take his trial, he answered that he should do no such thing.
He had already told the police and the magistrates all the circumstances of the crime he was charged with and in the telling he had spoken the truth. He was not going to take back what he had said to please anybody. And just as he had been deaf to all that Wroxdale had urged, so he was deaf to all that grave judicial advice could put before him. Forms of law were naught to him, and he shook his head impatiently at the mention of them and the advantage to himself and the public of a fair trial.
"I've answered that theer question you axed me," he said. "An' I'll answer it agen—Guilty!"
So there was no more to be done or said, the prisoner having been proved to be a perfectly sane man, and presently Perris heard himself sentenced to death. He stood for a moment after the last words had fallen on his ears, and he looked round the court, in which we many faces that he must have known, but if he was searching for any particular face he showed no sign. And with every eye fixed on him, he presently turned and walked steadily down the stairs behind him, and so disappeared.
There were many in the court who believed that Perris's last look round had been for his wife. But Rhoda had not been in court, though she was close at hand. At the time of Perris's sudden reappearance she had broken down, and it had been necessary to remove her from Wroxdale's house to an adjacent nursing home where she had ever since remained. Only the best medical skill and the closest attention had restored her sufficiently to be in a condition to face the prospect of entering the witness-box, and the doctor who had accompanied her to the Assizes was thankful for his patient's sake when he heard that there would be no call upon her.
"All the same," he said to Wroxdale, who with Taffendale had come across from the courts to the hotel in which Rhoda and a nurse were waiting in a private room, "somebody's got to break the news to her. She'll be better when she hears it."
Wroxdale looked at Taffendale.
"That's your duty, Mark," he said quietly.
Taffendale's face showed signs of agitation, and he turned away from the other two. But they suddenly saw him draw himself up and square his shoulders and he turned to them with a firmly-set jaw.
"If you think so, and the doctor thinks so," he said.
The doctor nodded.
"Yes, I think so," he said. "Tell her quietly and briefly. I'll call the nurse out and we'll stay near the door in case we're wanted. Come away as soon as you've told her, and then we'll get her away again. Come at once—the sooner she knows the better."
When Taffendale walked through the door which the doctor held open for him he felt that he was dealing with the most critical episode in his life. He knew what would result from the carrying out of the sentence which had just been passed on Abel Perris. Rhoda would be free, and she was already cleared of the suspicions which had gathered about her. And yet he felt a strange certainty that at this moment she was further away from him than ever; that there was a vast gulf between them which nothing could bridge. And as he crossed the room all thoughts of himself and of her went out of his mind and he only saw her as a trembling and agitated woman waiting to know the worst.
She sat in an easy-chair in which the nurse had placed her, facing the fire, and she was staring at the flames with abstracted eyes when Taffendale went up and touched her shoulder. She looked up at him with a start and her hands clasped themselves nervously.
"You won't be wanted, Rhoda," he said gently. For a moment she searched his face with a long look.
"Then—it's over?" she whispered.
"It's over."
"He—he wouldn't say—more?"
"Nothing more."
"And so—"
Her voice sank to a whisper and her eyes finished the question. And Taffendale inclined his head and turned away without speaking. But he quickly turned to her again and laid his hand on her arm.
"There's hope yet," he said. "Wroxdale says there'll be a petition, and all that. Now, Rhoda, you must go back with the nurse and the doctor. Be brave."
She rose obediently and stood for a while looking through the window at the gloomy facade of the great hall which Taffendale had just left. Then she turned to him.
"If—if naught's any good," she said quietly," will they let me speak to him before—the end? There's things—I want to say. You'll see to that, Mark?"
"I'll see to that," replied Taffendale. "Now, Rhoda, you must go."
He picked up her cloak from the table close by and put it round her shoulders, remembering as he did so how, not so many months before, he had rendered her the same service when she had come to his house at the Limepits, little dreaming of what lay before herself and him. And with this thought in his mind, and without another word, he called in the nurse and the-doctor and left her with them.
Taffendale and Wroxdale travelled from the Assize town in company, and for a time neither spoke of the event of the morning. But at last Taffendale started out of a long reverie, which his companion had taken care not to break in upon.
"What chance will this petition have?" he asked abruptly.
Wroxdale looked out of the window of the compartment which they had secured to themselves, and stared at the grey landscape for some time before he answered.
"Well, Mark," he said at last, "if you want to know the truth, I'm afraid very little. Remember the summing-up