“How I do, Pappy Lessee?” the Fuzzy, whose name was not Diamond, was asking. “I do like you say?”
“Who is Pappy for you?” the clerk asked.
The Fuzzy thought briefly, said, “Pappy Jack,” and got a red light, and then another when he corrected himself and said, “Pappy Vic.”
“You do very good; you good Fuzzy,” Leslie Coombes said. “Now, say for is-so what your name.”
The Fuzzy said, “Toshi-Sosso. Mean Wise One in Big One talk.”
Those damn forest-fire Fuzzies; he was one of them. The veridicator was blue. Rose Evins was saying, “Well. It looks as though you didn’t do it, Mister Ingermann.”
The next Fuzzy, called under the name of Allan Pinkerton, made an equally spectacular redlighting, and then admitted to being called something that meant Stabber. That was good; and just call me Stabbed, Ingermann thought.
“Well, Mr. Ingermann; do I hear any more objections to the veridicated testimony of the Fuzzies, or are you willing to be convinced by this demonstration?” Janiver asked. “If so, we will have the real defendants in for arraignment now.”
“Well, naturally, Your Honor.” What in Nifflheim else could he say? “I must confess myself much deceived. By all means, let the real defendants be arraigned, and after that may I pray the court to recess until 0900 Monday?” That would give him all Saturday, and Sunday… “I must confer with my clients and replan the entire defense…”
“What he means, Your Honor, is that now it seems these Fuzzies are going to be allowed to tell the truth, and he doesn’t know what to do about it,” Brannhard said.
“What the hell are you trying to do, ditch us?” Thaxter wanted to know. “You better not…”
“No, no! Don’t worry, Leo; this whole thing’s a big fake. I don’t know how they did it, but it’d stink on Nifflheim, and by Monday I’ll be able to prove it. Just sit tight; everything will be all right if you keep your mouths shut in the meantime.”
He looked at his watch. He shouldn’t have done that. He shouldn’t have given any indication of how vital time was now.
“Well, it’s now 1500,” Janiver was saying, “and tomorrow’s Saturday. There’ll be no court, in any case. Yes, Mr. Ingermann; I see no reason for not granting that request.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
YVES JANIVER WATCHED the people in front of him sit down, and wondered how many of them knew. The press hadn’t been allowed to get hold of it, but rumor had a million roots and it was probably all over the place. Everybody inside the dividing-rail except the six Fuzzies probably knew, and half the crowd in the spectator’s seats. Over to his right, Victor Grego and Leslie Coombes and Jack Holloway and the others were getting the Fuzzies quieted. They all knew. So did Gus Brannhard, with his assistants at the prosecution table; he was almost audibly purring. At the table on the left, Leo Thaxter, Conrad and Rose Evins and Phil Novaes were whispering. Every few seconds, one of them would glance to the rear of the room. Surely they knew. The way rumors circulated in that jail, they probably knew better than anybody else, and maybe up to a quarter of it would be true.
The crier had finished calling the case, naming, one after another, all the people, human and otherwise, who had the Colony of Zarathustra against them. He counted ten seconds, then tapped with the gavel.
“Are we ready?” he asked.
Gus Brannhard rose. “The prosecution is ready, Your Honor.”
Leslie Coombes popped up as he sat down. “The defense, for Diamond, Allan Pinkerton, Arsene Lupin, Sherlock Holmes, Irene Adler and Mata Hari is ready.”
The names that came before Native Cases Court! Some day, he was sure, he would be trying Mohandas Gandhi and Albert Schweitzer for murder.
The four defendants on his left argued heatedly for a moment. Then Conrad Evins, impelled by his wife, rose and cleared his throat.
“Please the court,” he said. “Our attorney seems to have been delayed. If the court will be so good as to wait, I’m sure Mr. Ingermann will be here in a few minutes.”
Good Heavens, they didn’t know! He wondered what was wrong with the jail-house grapevine. Gus Brannhard was rising again.
“Your Honor, I’m afraid we’ll have to wait a trifle more than a few minutes,” he said. “I was informed last evening that when the Terra-Baldur-Marduk liner City of Konkrook spaced out from Darius at 1430 yesterday, Mr. Hugo Ingermann was aboard as a passenger, with a ticket for Kapstaad Spaceport on Terra. The first port of call en route is New Birmingham, on Volund. She is now hyperspace; relative to this space-time continuum, these defendants’ counsel is literally nowhere.”
There was a sound — the odd, familiar sound that follows a surprise in a courtroom, not unlike an airlock being opened onto lower pressure. More of this crowd than he’d thought hadn’t heard about it. There were chuckles, and not all from the Fuzzy defense table.
There was no sound at all from Evins and his co-defendants. Then Evins started. Janiver had seen a man shot once in a duel on Ishtar; his whole body had jerked like that when he had been hit. Rose Evins, who had not risen, merely closed her eyes and relaxed in her chair, her hands loose on the table in front of her. Phil Novaes was gibbering, “I don’t believe it! It’s a lie! He couldn’t do that!” Then Leo Thaxter was on his feet, bellowing obscenities.
“You mean we don’t have any lawyer?” Evins was demanding.
“Is this absolutely certain, Mr. Brannhard?” the judge asked, for the record.
Brannhard nodded gravely, the gravity a trifle forced.
“Absolutely, Your Honor. I had it from Mr. Grego here, who had it from Terra-Baldur-Marduk on Darius. I saw a photoprint of the passenger list with Mr. Ingermann’s name, special luxury-cabin accommodations.”
“Yes, that’s how the son of a bitch would be traveling,” Thaxter shouted. “On our money. You know what he took with him? Two hundred and fifty thousand sols in sunstones!”
There was another whoosh of surprise from in front. It even extended to the Fuzzy defense table. Grego snapped his fingers and said audibly, “By God, that’s it! That’s where they went!” The judge graveled briskly and called for order; the crier repeated the call, and the uproar died away.
“You will have to repeat that statement under veridication, Mr. Thaxter,” he said.
“Don’t worry, I will,” Thaxter told him. “What we’ll tell about that crook…”
“What we want to know,” Evins said, “is what about us? We have a legal right to a lawyer…”
“You had a lawyer. You should have chosen a better one. Now sit down, you people, and be quiet. The court is quite aware of your legal rights, and will appoint a counsel for you.”
Who the devil would that be? This crowd had no money to hire a lawyer; the Colony would have to pay the fee. It would have to be a good one, with a solid reputation. Janiver was, himself, convinced of the guilt of all four of them; that meant he’d have to lean over backward to give them a scrupulously fair trial before sentencing them to be shot.
“Your Honor.” Leslie Coombes was on his feet. “I move for dismissal of the charges against my clients.” He named them. “They are here charged on complaints brought by Hugo Ingermann, who has since absconded from the planet, merely as a maneuver to discredit the charges against his own clients.”
“Motion granted; these six Fuzzies should not have been charged in the first place.” He said that over, in the proper phraseology, and discharged the six Fuzzies from the custody of the court.
“Since these remaining defendants are entitled to the legal aid and advice of which the defection of their attorney has deprived them, I will continue this case on Monday of next week, by which time the court will have appointed a new counsel for them, and he will have had opportunity to familiarize himself with the case and consult with them. Marshal Fane, will you return the defendants to the jail? We will now take up the next ready case on the docket.”