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CHAPTER XXVII - THE TRIAL.
Edith Hudson spent a restless night, and early in the morning, as early as she
thought she could reach him, she called the office of Jimmy's attorney. She told
the lawyer that some new evidence was to have been brought in to him and asked
if he had received it. Receiving a negative reply she asked that she be called the
moment it was brought in.
All that day and the next she waited, scarcely leaving her room for fear that the
call might come while she was away. The days ran into weeks and still there was
no word from the Lizard.
Jimmy was brought to trial, and she saw him daily in the courtroom and as often
as they would let her she would visit him in jail. On several occasions she met
Harriet Holden, also visiting him, and she saw that the other young woman was
as constant an attendant at court as she.
The State had established as unassailable a case as might be built on
circumstantial evidence. Krovac had testified that Torrance had made threats
against Compton in his presence, and there was no way in which Jimmy's
attorneys could refute the perjured statement. Jimmy himself had come to realize
that his attorney was fighting now for his life, that the verdict of the jury was
already a foregone conclusion and that the only thing left to fight for now was the
question of the penalty.
Daily he saw in the court-room the faces of the three girls who had entered so
strangely into his life. He noticed, with not a little sorrow and regret, that
Elizabeth Compton and Harriet Holden always sat apart and that they no longer
spoke. He saw the effect of the strain of the long trial on Edith Hudson. She
looked wan and worried, and then finally she was not in court one day, and later,
through Harriet Holden, he learned that she was confined to her room with a bad
cold.
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