The Black Angel Read Online Free PDF Page B

than they had a right to, more than they did with others. Benedict said no, and the calendar said no, but it couldn’t be that this was the last of it, that there was nothing more after this. Why, it was only yesterday that he was still sitting there across the table from me, grumbling: “Gee, what d’ye do to this coffee? You could plant geraniums in it!” Why, it was only last night, wasn’t it, that they’d taken him away from me, and I’d come running to the door a minute too late, and a pair of his rolled-up pajamas had fallen to the floor and remained there at my feet?
    And now it was over already. It had been since that hideous day last week. This, today, was just anticlimax, the finishing touch. That was why Benedict had been able to persuade me to wait here in his office instead of going down there and being present in the chambers. He’d wanted me to stay home altogether, but I couldn’t have endured that. At least here, at this halfway stop, I could hear it a little sooner—what I knew already.
    Benedict’s office girl was a sympathetic young thing. She sat there beside me on a hard little wall bench in his reception room with her arm around me, offering me a drink of water from time to time. I guess she didn’t know what else to do for me. She kept talking away a blue streak, trying to be encouraging.
    â€œIt’s just a technicality. I know it frightens people so, but it isn’t final; it isn’t irrevocable. It’s just a legal phrase that’s automatically spoken in all these cases. Honey, I’ve seen Mr. Benedict get more people off on appeals and reversals. Haven’t you , Mort? How about it, Mort?”
    Mort was a young law clerk who worked in the office. He was sympathetic too. He’d go away and then come back again at intervals. He wasn’t talking quite so much and so sanguinely, I noticed. Maybe he knew more law than she.
    â€œHe wouldn’t even let me take the stand. Don’t you think maybe that would have helped?”
    â€œBut, honey, what could you have done? What could you have said? Don’t you suppose he would have been the first to call you if it would have helped any? He never overlooks a witness that he thinks will help a case. And he never uses one that he thinks will weaken it. Does he, Mort? Mort, does he? Nobody saw you come or go there that day; that was the unfortunate part of it. The jury wouldn’t have believed you any more than the arresting detectives did. They would have thought you were just making it up to try to shield your husband, and the sympathy that you aroused for yourself would have worked in reverse; it would have alienated them against him even more than they were already. That’s why he tried to keep you away from the proceedings as much as possible and made you wear a veil and sit far back in the courtroom where you wouldn’t be noticed. You see, you’re too appealing, too attractive, honey; and you have to admit he was mixed up with this other woman, was going away with her, even if it was only for a spell. You were a bad risk; you would have hurt our side more than you helped it, just by being who you are, looking like you do. You were the injured party, but the—forgive me for saying this, honey—the injury was done you by the very man my boss was trying to defend.”
    â€œLet him injure me some more,” I thought dismally; “I only want him back. Let him injure me to his heart’s content.”
    â€œAnd then even if Mr. Benedict hadn’t felt that way about it himself,” she went on, “Mr. Murray particularly asked him not to call you unless he had to; that was his wish. He didn’t want you to get all smeared up in it if it could be avoided.”
    That was true. Kirk had told me the same thing himself.
    I kept watching the door, watching the door, waiting for it to open. “Shouldn’t he be back by now? Does it