Changeling, and Other Stories

To outward appearance the whole of the courtroom scene was drab, ordinary. There was the stuffy rectangle of a room, half dark in the January dusk, for all that the electric lights glowed with meager incandescence. There was the judge, in his robe, at the desk of the court. There were the jurymen, solemn as in church. There the court stenographers, bald, active as ants. There the men of the daily journals, more aloof, more judicial than the judge. There the press of morbid spectators, leaning forward like runners on the mark. There the policemen, court attendants, whatnot, relaxed of body, concentrated of eye, jealous of the dignity of the court as a house-dog of its master's home. Through the windows of the court could be seen the bulk of the Tombs, heavy, hopeless, horrible as the things whence it takes its chilly name.

The case of the people _versus_ Anna Janssen for the murder of Alastair de Vries droned on.

The district attorney, youngish, slim, lithe, a little sinister--the impression of a hunting-dog all over him--was examining a witness, a rat-faced man who had something of the old-time bartender or private detective about him.

"It was your business, as attendant at the Oriental Garden, to see that order was kept?"

"There was no semblance of disorder at all until you heard the shot fired?"

"You saw the woman Janssen back of the hall with a revolver?"