"Morning, Mumchance!" cried the Doctor cheerily, "come to share this excellent-looking pigeon-pie?"
For a second or two the Captain surveyed him rather ghoulishly. It must be remembered that not only had the Captain identified himself with the Law to such a degree that he looked upon any breach of it as a personal insult, but that also he had been deeply wounded in his professional pride in that he had not immediately recognised a murderer by his smell.
Captain Mumchance was not exactly an imaginative man, but as he stood there contemplating the Doctor he could almost have believed that his features and expression had suffered a subtle and most unbecoming change since he had last seen them. It was as if he was sitting in a ghastly green light - the most disfiguring and sinister of all the effects of light with which the Law cunningly plays with appearances -the light that emanates from the word murder.
"No, thank you," he said gruffly, "I don't sit down to table with the likes of you."
The Doctor gave him a very sharp look, and then he raised his eyebrows and said drily, "It seems to me that recently you have more than once honoured my humble board."
The Captain snorted, and then in a stentorian and unnatural voice, he shouted, "Endymion Leer! I arrest you in the name of the country of Dorimare, and to the end that the dead, the living, and those not yet born, may rest quietly in their graves, their bed, and the womb."
"Gammon and spinnage!" cried the Doctor, testily, "what's your little game, Mumchance?"
"Is murder, game?" said the Captain; and at that word the Doctor blanched, and then Mumchance added, "You're accused of the murder of the late Farmer Gibberty."
The words acted like a spell. It was as if Endymion Leer's previous sly, ironical, bird-like personality slipped from him like a mask, revealing another soul, at once more formidable and more tragic. For a few seconds he stood white and silent, and then he cried out in a terrible voice: "Treachery! Treachery! The Silent People have betrayed me! It is ill serving a perfidious master!"
The news of the arrest of Endymion Leer on a charge of murder flew like wildfire through Lud.
At all the street corners, little groups of tradesmen, 'prentices, sailors, were to be seen engaged in excited conversation, and from one to the other group flitted the deaf-mute harlot, Bawdy Bess, inciting them in her strange uncontrolled speech, while dogging her footsteps with her dance-like tread went old Mother Tibbs, alternately laughing in crazy glee and weeping and wringing her hands and crying out that she had not yet brought back the Doctor's last washing, and it was a sad thing that he should go for his last ride in foul linen. "For he'll mount Duke Aubrey's wooden horse - the Gentlemen have told me so," she added with mysterious nods.
In the meantime, Luke Hempen had reported to Mumchance what he had learned from the little herdsmen about the "fish" caught by the widow and the Doctor. The Yeomanry stationed on the border were instantly notified and ordered to drag the Dapple near the spot where it bubbled out after its subterranean passage through the Debatable Hills. They did so, and discovered wicker frails of fairy fruit, so cunningly weighted that they were able to float under the surface of the water.
This discovery considerably altered Master Polydore's attitude to Endymion Leer.
Chapter XXVI
"Neither Trees Nor Men"
In view of the disturbance caused among the populace by the arrest of Endymion Leer, the Senate deemed it advisable that his trial, and that of the widow Gibberty, should take precedence of all other legal business; so as soon as the two important witnesses, Peter Pease and Marjory Beach, reached Lud-in-the-Mist, it was fixed for an early date.
Never, in all the annals of Dorimare, had a trial been looked forward to with such eager curiosity. It was to begin at nine o'clock in the morning, and by seven o'clock the hall of justice was already packed, while a seething crowd thronged the courtyard and overflowed into the High Street beyond.
On the front seats sat Dame Marigold, Dame Jessamine, Dame Dreamsweet and the other wives of magistrates; the main body of the hall was occupied by tradesmen and their wives, and other quiet, well-to-do members of the community, and behind them seethed the noisy, impudent, hawking, cat-calling riff-raff - 'prentices, sailors, pedlars, strumpets; showing clearly on what side were their sympathies by such ribald remarks as, "My old granny's pet cockatoo is terrible fond of cherries, I think we should tell the Town Yeomanry, and have it locked up as a smuggler," or, "Where's Mumchance! Send for Mumchance and the Mayor! Two hundred years ago an old gaffer ate a gallon of crab soup and died the same night - arrest Dr. Leer and hang him for it."
But as the clocks struck nine and Master Polydore Vigil, in his priestly-looking purple robes of office embroidered in gold with the sun and the moon and the stars, and the other ten judges clad in scarlet and ermine filed slowly in and, bowing gravely to the assembly, took their seats on the dais, silence descended on the hall; for the fear of the Law was inbred in every Dorimarite, even the most disreputable.
Nevertheless, there was a low hum of excitement when Mumchance in his green uniform, carrying an axe, and two or three others of the Town Yeomanry, marched in with the two prisoners, who took their places in the dock.
Though Endymion Leer had for long been one of the most familiar figures in Lud, all eyes were turned on him with as eager a curiosity as if he had been some savage from the Amber Desert, the first of his kind to be seen in Dorimare; and such curious tricks can the limelight of the Law play on reality that many there thought that they could see his evil sinister life writ in clear characters on his familiar features.
To the less impressionable of the spectators, however, he looked very much as usual, though perhaps a little pale and flabby about the gills. And he swept the hall with his usual impudent appraising glance, as if to say, "Linsey-woolsey, linsey-woolsey! But one must make the best of a poor material."
"He's going to give the judges a run for their money!"
"If he's got to die, he'll die game!" gleefully whispered various of his partisans.
As for the widow, her handsome passionate face was deadly pale and emptied of all expression; this gave her a sort of tragic sinister beauty, reminiscent of the faces of the funereal statues in the Fields of Grammary.
"Not the sort of woman I'd like to meet in a lonely lane at night," was the general comment she aroused.
Then the Clerk of Arraigns called out "Silence!" and in a solemn voice, Master Polydore said, "Endymion Leer and Clementina Gibberty, hold up your hands." They did so. Whereupon, Master Polydore read the indictment, as follows: "Endymion Leer, and Clementina Gibberty, you are accused of having poisoned the late Jeremiah Gibberty, farmer, and law-man of the district of Swan-on-the-Dapple, thirty-six years ago, with a fruit known as the berries of merciful death."
Then the plaintiff, a fresh-faced young girl (none other, of course, than our old friend, Hazel) knelt at the foot of the dais and was given the great seal to kiss; upon which the Clerk of Arraigns led her up into a sort of carved pulpit, whence in a voice, low, but so clear as to penetrate to the furthest corners of the hall she told, with admirable lucidity, the story of the murder of her grandfather.
Next, Mistress Ivy, flustered and timid, told the Judges, in somewhat rambling fashion, what she had already told Master Nathaniel.