Then he said: “We do not propose to proceed with the case, my lord.”
The foreman of the jury rose quickly and said: “And the Jury doesn’t want to hear anything more, my lord. We’re quite satisfied that the prisoner isn’t guilty.”
Garbould hesitated. For two pins he would have directed the case to proceed. Then his eye fell on Hazeldean, who was watching him; I fancied that he decided not to give him a chance of saying more disagreeable things.
Looking black enough, he put the question formally to the Jury, who returned a verdict of “Not Guilty,” and then he discharged Willoughton.
I came out of the Court with Ruth, and we waited for Willoughton.
Presently he came out of the door and stopped and shook himself. Then he saw Ruth and came to her. They did not greet one another. She just slipped her hand through his arm; and they walked out of the New Bailey together.
We made a good deal of noise, cheering them.
* * *
DON’T MISS THE CLASSIC AMY BREWSTER MYSTERIES
By Sam Merwin, Jr.
Gallopining out of the 1940s!
A Knife in My Back
A Matter of Policy
Message from a Corpse
La Brewster as described by her autho, in Knife in My Back:
“Quit kidding!” said Weddinton. “Why did you kill her, Joe?” The already high tension in the room rose another notch with his question. None of them heard the elevator door open or footsteps in the hall outside. The deep, almost rasping voice sounded, therefore, like a sudden clap of thunder.
“Of course he didn’t do it, you quibbling corporation jacknapes!” were the first words it uttered. “If he had, he wouldn’t have had the colossal nerve to call me in for help. Where do I put this?”
This most remarkable figure, in Boston if not in the entire world, stood in the doorway, filling it from side to side. A woman of indeterminate years, of vast corpulence and even greater ugliness. She wore no hat, and wispy gray-black hair, cut in the old Dutch style of the suffragettes of 1916 hung about the full moon of her face.
Twinkling brown eyes, almost buried in balloons of fat, were set on either side of a shapeless blob of a nose. This in turn hovered over an odd round rosebud of a mouth that expressed a constant cipher of astonishment and three demi-lunar chins that might have belonged to the Michelin man of the old automobile tire advertisements.
The short, fat body beneath this remarkable head also had a Michelin look which was in no way disguised by the shapeless old stained tweed topcoat and sacklike russet jersey dress that adorned it. The “this” of which she spoke was the cellophane wrapping of a thick Havana cigar which, without further direction, she hurled accurately into the fireplace.
Following it across the room in a graceless waddle, she bit off the end of the smoke, spat it out and busied herself applying a light. Exhaling a cloud of heavy smoke, she turned slowly to look at the stunned occupants of the room.
“Amy Brewster!” said Chris in an explosive whisper. Lawyer Weddington just stared. It was Joe who grinned, walked over to the human monstrosity. Deftly removing her cigar from her lips before she could protest, he planted a kiss full on the round little mouth. Then he stuck the Havana back in place.
“You don’t have to think your Casanova technique will get you anywhere with me,” she announced, scowling at the young man fiercely.
“That,” said Joe, amiably insulting, “would be a fate worse than death. But, baby, am I glad to see you!”
That “baby” was too much for Chris. He sat there and stared, too startled even to rise out of politeness. He knew all about Amy Brewster-who didn’t? But he had never expected to see her in this house after the feud which had begun when Amy had publicly labeled his father as the type of pale carbon copy, fifth generation Yankee that had caused the current dry rot in the one-time Athens of America by retirement into complete stuffed-shirt intellectual and business sterility.
Amelia Winslow Brewster’s ancestry went all the way back to Plymouth Rock, and her people had been hell-raising and brilliant all the way down the line. They had never conformed to the pattern of their times, yet had been unassailable through their very strength of character and knack for achievement. They had long been thorns “ in the side of a society made up of less gifted and irreverent fellow citizens.
Take Amy, for instance-though no one had succeeded despite many attempts. She had been graduated from Radcliff at sixteen with a Phi Beta Kappa key, been admitted to the Massachusetts bar before she was twenty. Two years later, she had been admitted in New York.
Possessed of a great fortune and ready to try something else, she had dabbled in finance, run “Brewster’s millions” up into eight figures. Then she had given most of it away-and acquired a well-earned reputation as a radical.
She had gambled prodigiously all over the world and so shrewdly that, unless the game was fixed, she invariably won. And any gambler who tried to fleece Amy didn’t enjoy his freedom long thereafter. A confirmed advocate of redistribution of wealth, she had done her best to live up to it-but couldn’t seem to unload as fast as she made it.
Her boldly announced theory was that two kinds of people had money-one, those who were able enough to make it again if they lost it and two, those who had acquired it by luck or inheritance. Only the latter she claimed were afraid of poverty, and they didn’t deserve the comforts of money anyway, since they lacked the ability to make it.
Many storms of criticism had broken around her, but her attackers had worn themselves to bits against her restless, unconquerable vitality. She had put the finances of at least two Central American republics on a solid basis and had her hand in scores of other pies. In “Who’s Who,” she had more foreign decorations listed after her name than any other woman.
Occasionally, when a friend had turned up in trouble, she had sailed in to clear him with the law she had mastered so early. As such, she had proved a brilliant and tireless investigator. Her honesty and ability had endeared her to the police commissioner although her utter disregard for “sacred cows’ had more than once scared him out of his somewhat duller wits.
OTHER DEERSTALKER MYSTERIES
THE NICK BANCROFT MYSTERIES
August is Murder
Death Sting
Murder by the Book
A Point of Murder
THE AMY BREWSTER MYSTERIES
A Knife in My Back – Sam Merwin Jr.
A Matter of Policy – Sam Merwin Jr.
Message to a Corpse – Sam Merwin Jr.
THE GILLIAN HAZELTINE COURTROOM MYSTERIES
The Diamond Bullet Murder Case – George F. Worts
The Hospital Homicides Murder Case – George F. Worts
The Gold Coffin Murder Case – George F. Worts
The Crime Circus Murder Case – George F. Worts
The High Seas Murder Case – George F. Worts
THE SEMI-DUAL ASTROLOGICAL MYSTERIES
The Ledger of Life Mystery – Giesy and Smith
The House of Invisible Bondage Mystery – Giesy and Smith
OTHER CLASSIC MYSTERIES
The Four Just men – Edgar Wallace
The Lone Wolf – Louis Joseph Vance
Doctor Syn, Alias the Scarecrow of Romney Marsh
Grey Shapes – Jack Mann
The Legendary Detectives: classic tales of the world’s greatest sleuths – edited by Jean Marie Stine
The Legendary Detectives II – edited by Jean Marie Stine
The Scarlet Pimpernel – Baroness Orczy
The Elusive Pimpernel – Baroness Orczy
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Legendary Women Detectives Page 14
