Argosy All-Story Weekly, Vol. 123, No. 3 — page 162: what you’re looking at

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

~~ 444 was a thing of the code; love was instinc- tive, life itself. Honor was arbitrary; love was absolute. Love was fundamental; honor was superficial. Was this reasoning defiance or defense? Brent hardly knew whether he held these things because he believed them to be true, or because, if they were not true, he had hopelessly com- promised himself. Brent had persuaded Peggy of the folly of engaging counsel for Madden. As it turned out, the prisoner provided himself with a lawyer. Madden had a mother somewheré in Ohio, and it was from the mother’s money that a retainer was paid Washington Balbridge, a perennial candi- date for the State Senate, a connoisseur of brown derby hats, and a criminal lawyer whose chief distinction was a native shrewdness and ready wit. As counsel for. the defense, Balbridge had been instru- mental in not a few acquittals and some electrocutions. Indeed, the picturesque Mr. Balbridge even overshadowed Madden as an object of interest itt the court-room. Madden had exchanged his rags for an ill-shaped suit of coarse, dark gray cloth. There was no necktie to conceal the white button at the ’ throat of. his gray flannel shirt, and al- kG though he was scrubbed and shaved, his hair was still somewhat tousled. He sat beside Balbridge, a dull, dazed look in his eyes. A word concerning Pendleton’s attitude toward Madden is not amiss. In the first place, he .had more than half convinced himself that Madden was guilty. In the second, place, some one had to be gujity: the public demanded a victim. Madden had put his head in the noose. It was Pendieton’s duty as prosecutor to spring the drop. Pendleton’s opening to the jury was, in brief, as follows: “The State will prove that there came to this city, on the day and date aforesaid, one Joseph L. Madden, of that breed of criminal parasite known as a yeggman. By witrtesses, 4s well as the man’s own admis- sions, it will be shown that he was in the neighborhood in which the crime was com- mitted. # ¢ 'y Google | ARGOSY-ALLSTORY WEEKLY. id “We will follow him by successive steps from the home of two women whe ‘ fed him when he was hungry,’ past the dwelling of a citizen at the corner of Crescent Ave- nue and Maple Street, who, watchful of the public welfare, gave a warning that unfor- tunately came too late. along the pathway through a fragrant garden grown by the gentle little old la@y who was his victim—a pathway that ends at the door of the kitchen in which her body was found. “The State will prove that this lonely woman came to her death by a blew from a blunt instrument; that this blow was delivered when the victim interrupted the yeggman in the act of removing money mic valuables from a ace. “We will show further that the mur- derer, with the craft of his kind, endeav- ored to conceal the manner in which the victim met her death by staining the cor- ner of the kitchen table with blood and causing three gray hairs to adhere to it. This we will show by evidence of the finger- prints of a man found on the table to which not even delivery boys were known to have come. “ Further, we will produce a parrot, a bird, but for which the cunning of the murderer might have been of avail. Wit- nesses will be called to show that never before that Thursday night was the parrot known to utter such cries as the bird itself will produce before the jury: The accusa- tion: ‘ Police! Robbers! Help!’ ~ _, “ The prosecution will show by the state- ments of the accused that his only explan- - ation of how he spent the evening of the murder includes a reference to having ‘walked in his sleep’: This from a man who would have been prevented from forming any such habit by the bars be- hind which he has spent most of his nights. ‘‘ The State will prove that at the time of his arrest he had in his possession the sum of twenty dollars which he claimed he had found. ‘““It will be shown that from first to last. this dreg from the sediment of society has ~ “ And, moreover, that when he was ac: We will follow him , . ¢ MATE UR OUL . CBooks.c ©