Argosy All-Story Weekly, April 4, 1925 — page 126: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

916 Farnsworths arose and advanced toward the bar. Across the street in Portsmouth Square the loungers were beginning to leave their benches for warmer lodging houses. Time was, more than half a cen- tury before, when the square had been the Plaza where civic functions of San Fran- cisco’s uncouth youth were summarily transacted. There the Vigilantes conducted their hangings and justice was vindicated at the end of a hempen rope. They were more expedient about such matters then. The Professor began his little address quietly, courteously, as though he were about to ask the judge for the wherewithal to purchase a libation. “Your honor,” he said, ‘I feel the Stygian blackness round about me. Already I stand at the sacra ostia of the Plutonian realm, with Charon waiting at the ferry to take me over. If it please the court, my offense is rank; it smells to Heaven, and yet who can blame me? He had such a lean and hunery look, this man I slew.”’ The old vagabond paused and glanced mildly about the court room. His gray eyes, so worn and bloodshot, suddenly filled with tears. ‘“Your honor, I am a gentleman. as you may have discerned. I was educated for the profession you yourself adorn. Many a lingering taper have I burned at the shrine of Sir Edward Coke and Mr. Jus- tice Blackstone. But, alas, I was destined for other fates. There is. it is said, a divinity that shapes our ends, rough-hew them how we will. I do not complain.” Raising his right hand, so lean and wasted, he acvanced a faltering step. “ Ave, Cesar! Morituri te selutamus!” he said solemnly in the language of the Roman gladiators hailing Caesar before bat- tling to their death. Then, bowing to the judge. the last of the Farnsworths took his seat. For several seconds the court room was as silent as a murderer's grave. The spec- tators seemed to stop breathing. The re- porters had dropped their pencils. The dis- trict attorney stood motionless. biting his lip. Up on the bench the judge sat as one transfixed. His eyes were moist. One hand gripped his chair. ARGOSY-ALLSTORY WEEKLY. The silence ended with a sob—a long, convulsive sob, as though a heart was breaking of its sorrow. The court room sprang to life again. Reporters jumped to their feet. The district attorney whirled about. The spectators suddenly straightened on their benches. Then a girl darted from her seat in the rear of the room and rushed down the aisle. She halted beside the Professor’s chair. With a single gesture she threw back her heavy veil. ‘““ Daddie!’’ she called, and the next in- stant her arms were around the old fel- low's neck and she was sobbing on his shoulder. ‘My little Tullia!” murmured the last of the Farnsworths. Then, as the meaning of it all came to him, his voice quavered. ‘You must flee at once,” he whispered. “Quick, my dear, before it is too late.’’ But now the bailiff had recovered from his amazement and was rapping for order. A deputy sprang forward to drag Two Step Lou away from the defendant. Her eyes flashed angrily as he seized her. She hissed an oath—a hot, ugly oath, pungent of Barbary’s fetid gutters—and two white hands shot out like clawed paws of the jungle. The deputy fell away. dismayed, under the nerceness of Two Step Lou’s cat- like attack. ‘Stand back voz!” she spat menacingly, and into that pronoun she put all the con- temptuous meaning of half a dozen burn- ing epithets. Then she turned those fas- cinating, wild black eyes upon the court. ‘“ Judge,” she cried, ignoring the impatient pounding of his gavel, ‘‘ it’s all a bunch of hes. Everybody’s lied to you. Even daddie lied: and that damned skunk over there ’—indicating Con Milroy with a darting finger—“ he lied worst of all.” For a second it seemed that Two Step might leap across the rcom and throttle Milroy, so flerce was the hatred that darkened her face. But it was only a dramatic pause—an instant of ominous quiet before that crashing climax when she threw back her head and, pointing a Strangely delicate hand at the judge, shouted her defiant confession of guilt: “7 killed Terry Watts! / killed him, I An CO GIOok