“In those trials,” said the Judge, “the judges were laymen, the Attorney General was a merchant. Not a single person trained in the law was involved with the court or the trial proceedings in any way whatsoever. The witch court, under the highsounding name of Special Court of Oyer and Terminer, allowed its prosecutor to present what they called ‘spectral evidence’ and to put on the stand a parade of confessed or reformed ‘witches’ to testify against the accused. Anybody from the crowd who clamored to be heard, irrespective of the relevance or legal propriety of his testimony, was allowed to do so. Result: twenty persons smeared by hearsay, superstition and hysteria, found guilty, most of them hanged — one, an octogenarian, was actually pressed to death. The same kind of thing is going on today before the so-called Supreme People’s Courts in Communist China. And for that matter in Washington, where men’s reputations are destroyed and their capacity to earn a living is paralyzed without a single safeguard of due process.
“And let’s not shunt the blame onto the Congressional committees,” said the Judge. “The blame is ours, not theirs. The demagogue in Congress couldn’t operate for one day in an atmosphere of common horse sense. It’s public hysteria that keeps him going strong.
“Proving, Johnny,” said Judge Shinn, “that people
“Hear, hear,” said Johnny.
Judge Shinn stopped pacing. He bent over his desk to finger the yellow pad, throwing a sidelong look at Johnny.
“Sorry,” said Johnny. “But I’m so damned fed up with words.”
The Judge nodded. “Don’t blame you,” he said briskly. “Let’s get down to cases. Suppose I tell you, Johnny, my real reason for wanting you on that jury.”
Johnny stared.
The Judge studied him speculatively, pinching his lip.
“Yes?” said Johnny.
“No,” the Judge said. “I’ll let you tell me. Let’s go across the road and pay a visit to Josef Kowalczyk.”
Eddie Pangman was on late afternoon guard duty before the church. He no longer looked unhappy. He whistled as he marched, and he executed his sentry turns with a military gusto, in an excited solemnity that enlivened his long face and made it curiously little-boyish.
He passed the Judge and Johnny along gravely.
Drakeley Scott, patroling the rear, was another story. Drakeley Scott was not a boy exuberantly playing games. He was like a man who, under severe strain to escape the pressures of manhood, has gone back to the child. His pimpled face was pinchy, with a ghastly overcast; he held his narrow shoulders in tense readiness; there was something furtively eager in his excitement.
When he saw the two men he looked uncomfortable, and something of the hurt Johnny had seen in his eyes in Peter Berry’s store Friday morning came back into them; but only for a moment.
He said defiantly, “I don’t know if I’m s’posed to let you through, Judge. Hube Hemus said—”
“I’ll tell you what, Drakeley,” said Judge Shinn with tremendous earnestness. “At the first move Johnny Shinn or I makes to let the prisoner escape, you shoot to kill. Fair enough?”
The Scott boy flushed scarlet.
“Who has the key to the bin?”
“There’s a guard down there,” mumbled the boy.
They went past him down the crumbling stone steps to the church cellar. Johnny blinked after the sunshine. As he accommodated to the gloom he made out rough rafters overhead bearing irregular axmarks. They had been hewn out of whole oak trees; some of the original bark clung, looking petrified. There was a storage bin, an oldfashioned coal furnace, and the coalbin.
The coalbin was large and entirely enclosed. The door was slightly ajar, a lock hanging open from a new-looking hasp. Light came through chinks in the walls.
On a chair facing the bin door, a shotgun across his knees, sat Merton Isbel. The chair was part of an old broken pew, which seemed to Johnny fitting. The craggy features bunched at sight of him.
“Someone in there with him, Mert?” asked the Judge.
“Mr. Sheare.” Isbel’s bass voice had an unused sound.
Judge Shinn touched Johnny’s arm. “Before we go in,” he said in a low voice.
“Yes?”
“I want you to pretend you’re interested in him.”
“In Kowalczyk? But I am.”
“Question him, Johnny.”
Johnny nodded.
The minister’s voice answered the Judge’s knock, and they entered the bin.
The only coal Johnny saw was a small heap in a corner, apparently the leftovers of the previous winter’s supply. But coal dust was everywhere. An attempt had been made — by the Sheares, he felt sure — to sweep it up, but the prisoner’s movements had scattered it again; and nothing could be done about the soot on the walls, which looked as if they had been sprayed with lampblack.
