As the Earth Turns Silver Read Online Free PDF

lost everything! He’d only been back in Wellington a few weeks. Why hadn’t he gone home? When he’d had the chance . . .
    Shun rubbed his gammy leg. He told his brother not to go out after dusk. Not to go out at all, not unless absolutely necessary.
    But the murder had barely passed three hundred pairs of lips when stranger, even more compelling news broke. A man had turned himself in. The murderer was in custody.

The Tríal
    A crowd began to gather early on the morning of the trial, eager to see Lionel Terry brought down from the Terrace Gaol. Donald half-ran down Lambton Quay, and by the time he arrived at the Supreme Court his armpits felt uncomfortably wet and his shirt stuck to his back in a film of sweat.
    â€˜Damned hot for November,’ he said as he joined a group of reporters.
    â€˜We get this in Auckland all the time,’ one of them laughed. ‘But not the blinking wind!’
    Thompson, whom Donald used to work with at the Evening Post, offered a cigarette. ‘I hear you’ve met Terry.’
    â€˜Yeah. Good bloke, Terry.’
    Thompson struck a match and held it up, sheltering it from the breeze. ‘Did you have any inkling he was going to do this?’
    Donald drew on his cigarette, blew out. ‘Hell no,’ he said. ‘Didn’t like Chinks, that’s for sure. A scourge, he called them. Wanted them sent back. Who doesn’t? But . . .’ Donald shook his head sadly, drew on his cigarette and blew a long plume of smoke. ‘Sure knows how to make a point . . .’
    They stood on the steps of the courthouse, shifting their weight from foot to foot, discussing the case as the crowd grew and became more boisterous and spilled across the road, threatening to close Stout Street.
    When the doors finally opened and Terry still hadn’t appeared, Donald and the press and a mass of spectators charged for the main courtroom doors; yet more snaked up to the public gallery by the steep staircases on either side. Donald found a place in the press area. There was not enough room and some reporters ended up sitting with Chinamen and other spectators. The doors closed with hundreds still amassed outside.
    Perhaps it was the sheer number of chattering, excitable people, the sour taste of stale sweat, everywhere the darkness of stained wood. Donald gazed upwards where the walls were paler, off-white, where faint light filtered through second-floor windows. This was not some inexplicable error, some minor indiscretion. His friend was on trial. For murder.
    The crier called out and the crowd fell silent and rose. The Chief Justice, Sir Robert Stout, entered and sat at the bench.
    Donald took a pencil and pad from his pocket.
    Even as Terry came up from the cells, as he stood tall between his guards, a white handkerchief neatly folded in his suit pocket, Donald noted that he had a dignity uncommon in those who frequented the dock. He caught his eye and Terry smiled, nodded slightly.
    He had declined counsel. If anyone could defend himself with honour, then surely that was Terry, yet a vague uneasiness stirred in Donald’s stomach. He watched as the registrar read the charge and asked how Terry pleaded.
    Terry lifted his chin and peered down at the man. He objected to the word guilty. He had nothing to say except that his action was right and justifiable.
    â€˜That means not guilty,’ said His Honour.
    Not guilty . The words reverberated in Donald’s mind. As the jury was empanelled, he listened to the names, good British names, examined each face, speculating on each man’s views. How could they not agree on the Asiatic problem?
    He listened as the Crown opened with Charles William Harris, who was in Taranaki Street on 24 September at 7.35 p.m. Harris had heard a report from the direction of Haining Street and seen a man standing on the footpath. He saw a flash and heard a second report, then saw the man come towards him. The man