THE PANIC ROOM: 30+ Ghost Tales by Sheridan Le Fanu. Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

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СКАЧАТЬ he not, as a lawyer, know, that to bring a man from his shop to the dock, the chances must be at least ninety-nine out of a hundred that he is guilty?

      A weak man like his learned brother Withershins was not a judge to keep the high-roads safe, and make crime tremble. Old Judge Harbottle was the man to make the evil-disposed quiver, and to refresh the world with showers of wicked blood, and thus save the innocent, to the refrain of the ancient saw he loved to quote:

      Foolish pity Ruins a city.

      In hanging that fellow he could not be wrong. The eye of a man accustomed to look upon the dock could not fail to read “villain” written sharp and clear in his plotting face. Of course he would try him, and no one else should.

      A saucy-looking woman, still handsome, in a mob-cap gay with blue ribbons, in a saque of flowered silk, with lace and rings on, much too fine for the Judge’s housekeeper, which nevertheless she was, peeped into his study next morning, and, seeing the Judge alone, stepped in.

      “Here’s another letter from him, come by the post this morning. Can’t you do nothing for him?” she said wheedlingly, with her arm over his neck, and her delicate finger and thumb fiddling with the lobe of his purple ear.

      “I’ll try,” said Judge Harbottle, not raising his eyes from the paper he was reading.

      “I knew you’d do what I asked you,” she said.

      The Judge clapt his gouty claw over his heart, and made her an ironical bow.

      “What,” she asked, “will you do?”

      “Hang him,” said the Judge with a chuckle.

      “You don’t mean to; no, you don’t, my little man,” said she, surveying herself in a mirror on the wall.

      “I’m d —— d but I think you’re falling in love with your husband at last!” said Judge Harbottle.

      “I’m blest but I think you’re growing jealous of him,” replied the lady with a laugh. “But no; he was always a bad one to me; I’ve done with him long ago.”

      “And he with you, by George! When he took your fortune, and your spoons, and your ear-rings, he had all he wanted of you. He drove you from his house; and when he discovered you had made yourself comfortable, and found a good situation, he’d have taken your guineas, and your silver, and your ear-rings over again, and then allowed you half-a-dozen years more to make a new harvest for his mill. You don’t wish him good; if you say you do, you lie.”

      She laughed a wicked, saucy laugh, and gave the terrible Rhadamanthus a playful tap on the chops.

      “He wants me to send him money to fee a counsellor,” she said, while her eyes wandered over the pictures on the wall, and back again to the looking-glass; and certainly she did not look as if his jeopardy troubled her very much.

      “Confound his impudence, the scoundrel!” thundered the old Judge, throwing himself back in his chair, as he used to do in furore on the bench, and the lines of his mouth looked brutal, and his eyes ready to leap from their sockets. “If you answer his letter from my house to please yourself, you’ll write your next from somebody else’s to please me. You understand, my pretty witch, I’ll not be pestered. Come, no pouting; whimpering won’t do. You don’t care a brass farthing for the villain, body or soul. You came here but to make a row. You are one of Mother Carey’s chickens; and where you come, the storm is up. Get you gone, baggage! get you gone!” he repeated, with a stamp; for a knock at the hall-door made her instantaneous disappearance indispensable.

      I need hardly say that the venerable Hugh Peters did not appear again. The Judge never mentioned him. But oddly enough, considering how he laughed to scorn the weak invention which he had blown into dust at the very first puff, his white-wigged visitor and the conference in the dark front parlour were often in his memory.

      His shrewd eye told him that allowing for change of tints and such disguises as the playhouse affords every night, the features of this false old man, who had turned out too hard for his tall footman, were identical with those of Lewis Pyneweck.

      Judge Harbottle made his registrar call upon the crown solicitor, and tell him that there was a man in town who bore a wonderful resemblance to a prisoner in Shrewsbury jail named Lewis Pyneweck, and to make inquiry through the post forthwith whether any one was personating Pyneweck in prison and whether he had thus or otherwise made his escape.

      The prisoner was safe, however, and no question as to his identity.

      Chapter IV.

      Interruption in Court

       Table of Contents

      In due time Judge Harbottle went circuit; and in due time the judges were in Shrewsbury. News travelled slowly in those days, and newspapers, like the wagons and stage coaches, took matters easily. Mrs. Pyneweck, in the Judge’s house, with a diminished household — the greater part of the Judge’s servants having gone with him, for he had given up riding circuit, and travelled in his coach in state — kept house rather solitarily at home.

      In spite of quarrels, in spite of mutual injuries — some of them, inflicted by herself, enormous — in spite of a married life of spited bickerings — a life in which there seemed no love or liking or forbearance, for years — now that Pyneweck stood in near danger of death, something like remorse came suddenly upon her. She knew that in Shrewsbury were transacting the scenes which were to determine his fate. She knew she did not love him; but she could not have supposed, even a fortnight before, that the hour of suspense could have affected her so powerfully.

      She knew the day on which the trial was expected to take place. She could not get it out of her head for a minute; she felt faint as it drew towards evening.

      Two or three days passed; and then she knew that the trial must be over by this time. There were floods between London and Shrewsbury, and news was long delayed. She wished the floods would last forever. It was dreadful waiting to hear; dreadful to know that the event was over, and that she could not hear till self-willed rivers subsided; dreadful to know that they must subside and the news come at last.

      She had some vague trust in the Judge’s good nature, and much in the resources of chance and accident. She had contrived to send the money he wanted. He would not be without legal advice and energetic and skilled support.

      At last the news did come — a long arrear all in a gush: a letter from a female friend in Shrewsbury; a return of the sentences, sent up for the Judge; and most important, because most easily got at, being told with great aplomb and brevity, the long-deferred intelligence of the Shrewsbury Assizes in the Morning Advertiser. Like an impatient reader of a novel, who reads the last page first, she read with dizzy eyes the list of the executions.

      Two were respited, seven were hanged; and in that capital catalogue was this line:

      “Lewis Pyneweck — forgery.”

      She had to read it a half-a-dozen times over before she was sure she understood it. Here was the paragraph:

       Sentence, Death — 7.

      Executed accordingly, on Friday the 13th instant, to wit:

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