The judge had to pound with his gavel to quiet the court. As soon as the room was quiet, he called an adjournment until ten the following morning.
When Bill Maloney was brought out of his cell into court the next morning, the jurors gave each other wise looks. It was obvious that the young man had spent a bad night. There were puffy areas under his eyes. He scuffed his heels as he walked, sat down heavily and buried his face in his hands. They wondered why his shoulders seemed to shake.
Justin Marks looked just as bad. Or worse.
Bill was sunk in a dull lethargy, in an apathy so deep that he didn’t know where he was, and cared less.
Justin Marks stood up and said, “Your Honor, we request an adjournment of the case for twenty-four hours.”
“For what reason?”
“Your Honor, I intended to call the woman known as Keena to the stand this morning. She was in a room at the Hotel Hollyfield. Last night she went up to her room at eleven after I talked with her in the lounge. She hasn’t been seen since. Her room is empty. All her possessions are there, but she is gone. I would like time to locate her, your Honor.”
The judge looked extremely disappointed.
He pursed his lips and said, in a sweet tone, “You are sure that such a woman actually exists, counsellor?”
Justin Marks turned pale and Amery Heater chuckled.
“Of course, your Honor! Why, only last night...”
“Her people came and got her,” Bill Maloney said heavily. He didn’t look up. The jury shifted restlessly. They had expected to be entertained by a gorgeous redhead. Without her testimony, the story related by Maloney seemed even more absurd than it had seemed when they had heard it. Of course, it would be a shame to electrocute a nice clean young man like that, but really you can’t have people going about killing their neighbors and then concocting such a fantasy about it...
“What’s that?” the judge asked suddenly.
It began as a hum, so low as to be more of a vibration than a sound. A throb that seemed to come from the bowels of the earth. Slowly it increased in pitch and in violence, and if the judge had any more to say on the subject, no one heard him. He appeared to be trying to beat the top of his desk in with the gavel. But the noise couldn’t be heard.
Slowly climbing up the audible range, it filled the court. As it passed the index of vibration of the windows, they shattered, but the falling glass couldn’t be heard. A man who had been wearing glasses stared through empty frames.
The sound passed beyond the upper limits of the human ear, became hypersonic, and every person in the courtroom was suddenly afflicted with a blinding headache.
It stopped as abruptly as a scream in the night.
For a moment there was a misty arch in the solid wall. Beyond it was the startling vagueness of a line of blue hills. Hills that didn’t belong there.
She came quickly through the arch. It faded. She was not tall, but gave the impression of tallness. Her hair was the startling red of port wine, her skin so translucent as to seem faintly bluish. Her eyes were halfway between sherry and honey. Tiny crimson beads were on the tip of each eyelash. Her warm full lips were parted, and they could all see the little green enameled triangles on her white teeth. Her single garment was like the silver metallic garment they had touched. But it was golden. Without any apparent means of support, it clung to her lovely body, following each line and curve.
She looked around the court Maloney’s eyes were warm blue fire. “Keena!” he gasped. She ran to him, threw herself on him, her arms around his neck, her face hidden in the line of jaw, throat and shoulder. He murmured things to her that the jury strained to hear.
Amery Heater, feeling his case fade away, was the first to recover.
“Hypnotism!” he roared.
It took the judge a full minute of steady pounding to silence the spectators. “One more disturbance like this, and I’ll clear the court,” he said.
Maloney had come to life. She sat on his lap and they could hear her say, “What are they trying to do to you?”
He smiled peacefully. “They want to kill me, honey. They say I killed Jim Finch.”
She turned and her eyes shriveled the jury and the judge.
“Stupid!” she hissed.
There was a little difficulty swearing her in. Justin Marks, his confidence regained, thoroughly astonished at finding that Bill Maloney had been telling the truth all along, questioned Keena masterfully. She backed up Maloney’s story in every particular. Maloney couldn’t keep his eyes off her. Her accent was odd, and her voice had a peculiar husky and yet liquid quality.
Justin Marks knuckled his mustache proudly, bowed to Amery Heater and said, “Do you wish to cross-examine?”
Heater nodded, stood up, and walked slowly over. He gave Keena a long and careful look. “Young woman, I congratulate you on your acting ability. Where did you get your training? Surely you’ve been on the stage.”
“Stage?”
“Oh, come now! All this has been very interesting, but now we must discard this dream world and get down to facts. What is your real name?”
“Rejapachalandakeena.”
Heater sighed heavily. “I see that you are determined to maintain your silly little fiction. That entrance of yours was somehow engineered by the defendant, I am sure.” He turned and smiled at the jury — the smile of a fellow conspirator.
“Miss So-and-so, the defense has all been based on the idea that you come from some other world, or some hidden corner of time, or out of the woodwork. I think that what you had better do is just prove to us that you do come from some other world.” His voice dripped with sarcasm. “Just do one or two things for us that we common mortals can’t do, please.”
Keena frowned, propped her chin on her fist. After a few moments she said, “I do not know completely what you are able to do. Many primitive peoples have learned through a sort of intuition. Am I right in thinking that those people behind that little fence are the ones who decide whether my Billy is to be killed?”
“Correct.”
She turned and stared at the jury for a long time. Her eyes passed from face to face, slowly. The jurors were oddly uncomfortable.
She said, “It is very odd. That woman in the second row. The second one from the left. It is odd that she should be there. Not very long ago she gave a poison, some sort of vegetable base poison, to her husband. He was sick for a long time and he died. Is that not against your silly laws?”
The woman in question turned pale green, put her hands to her throat, rolled her eyes up and slid quietly off the chair. No one made a move to help her. All eyes were on Keena.
Some woman back in the courtroom said shrilly, “I knew there was something funny about the way Dave died! I knew it! Arrest Mrs. Watson immediately!”
Keena’s eyes turned toward the woman who had spoken. The woman sat down suddenly.
Keena said, “This man you call Dave. His wife killed him because of you. I can read that in your eyes.”
Amery Heater chuckled. “A very good trick, but pure imagination. I rather guess you have been prepared for this situation, and my opponent has briefed you on what to do should I call on you in this way.”
Keena’s eyes flashed. She said, “You are a most offensive person.”
She stared steadily at Amery Heater. He began to sweat. Suddenly he screamed and began to dance about. Smoke poured from his pockets. Blistering his fingers, he threw pocketknife, change, moneyclip on the floor. They glowed dull red, and the smell of scorching wood filled the air.
A wisp of smoke rose from his tie clip, and he tore that off, sucking his blistered fingers. The belt buckle was next. By then the silver coins had melted against the wooden floor. But there was one last thing he had to remove. His shoes. The eyelets were metal. They began to burn the leather.