When Marcus and his counsel, accompanied by the faithful lieutenant of police, arrived in a close carriage at the scene of the inquest, at the hour of adjournment next morning, they saw a convincing illustration of the power of paper, types, and ink.
The morning journals, with whole leaded pages of evidence, and new diagrams of the house and fatal room; and the enterprising illustrated weekly, with portraits of the deceased, the prisoner, his counsel, Tiffles, Patching (great hat and all), Patty Minford, the coroner, the foreman of the jury, a full-page design of the murder, as it was supposed to have taken place, representing the infuriate Wilkeson, club in hand, standing over the prostrate body of the inventor, from whose forehead the gore was pouring in torrents--all these delightful, provocatives of sensation had done their full and perfect work.
At that moment, Marcus Wilkeson was known to the world of readers in New York and the whole country round about, as the murderer of Eliphalet Minford.
On the second morning of the inquest an immense crowd of people were assembled in front of the house. They had been collecting since five A.M., when a party of six Jerseymen, having sold off their stock of nocturnal cabbages at Washington Market, had taken position of vantage before the house, from which they and their wagons were afterward dislodged with great effort by a squad of police. Some butcher boys, also returning from their night's work at market, were next on the ground, and selected adjacent awning posts and trees, as good points of observation. Mechanics and shop girls, going to their labor, recklessly postponed the duties of the day, and stopped to stare, awestricken, at the house.
A knot of people in a street, is like a drift of wood in a river. It chokes up the stream, and catches all the other wood that is floating down.
The police had in vain tried to clear out this human throng. They had waged the following contests with their fellow citizens, since six o'clock A.M.:--first, they had driven the Jersey market wagons to the street corner below; second, they had tumbled the butcher boys out of the trees, where they hung like a strange species of fruit; third, they had cleared a space of ten feet square in front of the house. Having done thus much, the police paused from exhaustion, and endured the jokes of the populace with philosophic disdain.
Three policemen guarded the door, within which no one was admitted but the coroner, the jury, witnesses, a few political friends of the coroner, who exhibited passes from him, and about twenty-five reporters, fifteen of whom really belonged to newspapers, and the remainder had a general connection with the press, which could never be clearly defined and established. To the magic word "reporter," accompanied by the flourish of a pencil and a roll of paper, the three policemen smiled obsequiously, and unbarred the way. Seeing how well this plan worked, two gentlemen of inelegant leisure, and at least one pickpocket, provided themselves with rolls of paper and pencils, and, giving the password, were admitted.
As the carriage rolled round the corner of the street, bringing Marcus in full view of these acres of men, women, and children--all waiting for him--the little courage which he had plucked up failed him, as plucked-up courage generally does. The sound of mingled laughter, jokes, oaths, and exclamations of impatience reached his ears.
"Great heavens!" he cried; "and I am to face all these people!" If his features could have been seen, at that instant, by some person who thought himself skilled in physiognomy, he would have been unhesitatingly pronounced guilty of several murders. Marcus sat in the rear part of the coach, and he leaned back to avoid observation.
As the carriage entered the outskirts of the throng, they became aware that it contained the man of their desires. Five small boys, who had run all the way from the station house, had brought the exciting intelligence. The vehicle was at once surrounded by clamorous people.
"Say, Mister, wich is the murderer, hey?" asked a red-shirted fellow of Matthew Maltboy, whose corpulent figure squeezed the thin form of Fayette Overtop into a corner of the front seat.
Maltboy was not quick at thinking; but, on this occasion, a brave thought came into his head before he could turn to the speaker. "I am the prisoner," said he.
"I knowed you wos," was the red-shirted reply, "by your--ugly face."
"Thank you," said Matthew, meekly.
"That's the chap that killed the old man--him with the big chops," said the red-shirted individual to his numerous red and other shirted friends about.
"What! that fat cuss with the pig eyes?"
"Zackly!"
"He's the puffick image of his portrait in the--Weekly, isn't he?"
"Like as two peas."
There was truth in this; for the artist who sketched the portraits, had inadvertently placed Marcus's name under Matthew's portrait, and vice versa.
"Well," said another man, an expert in human nature, "I'd convict that fellow of murder any time, on the strength of his looks. Never were the worst passions of our nature more prominently shown than in that bad face." Having said which, the speaker looked about for somebody to contradict him, and was disappointed in finding no one.
Marcus Wilkeson said: "Here, Matt, none of that generous nonsense, if you please. I am the prisoner, my good people." As Marcus spoke, he stretched forward, and exhibited his face to the gaze of the red-shirted querist and his companions.
"No, you don't!" said that fiery leader. "This blubbery chap is the one. We knows him by his picter."
"No use disputing them, Mark," said Maltboy, with his indomitable smile.
The friendly struggle was soon terminated by their arrival at the house. Here the human jam was tremendous; but the police, under the direction of the lieutenant, succeeded in getting their convoy safe within the entry. The door was then closed, and five sturdy policemen stood outside to guard it.
On entering the room, everybody and everything were found just as they had been the day before--a day that seemed to Marcus a month ago. The jury were idling over the newspapers, or lazily turning their quids. The coroner, who looked a little the worse for his dinner of the day before, was bandying jokes with the facetious reporters. The other reporters were sharpening their pencils and laying out their note books. Some--the younger ones--were listening with a species of reverence, which they would soon outgrow, to the official jesting of the coroner. Others were squabbling over the right and title to certain chairs which possessed the extraordinary advantage of being a foot or two nearer the coroner than the other chairs. This is a grave cause of dispute among the reporters, and has been known to give rise to a great many hard words, and threats of subsequent chastisements, which are always indefinitely postponed.
The coroner nodded, and said "good morning" to the comers, and assumed a temporary official dignity, by taking down his right leg from the arm of the chair over which it gracefully depended. He also fortified himself, by thrusting a sizable chew into a corner of his mouth, as if he were carefully loading a pistol.
But neither the coroner, nor the jury, nor the reporters, nor the few private citizens who had obtained entrance by special dispensation, and sat gaping about the room, attracted the attention of the prisoner. Before him was one in whose presence all other persons faded into nothingness--the fair disturber of his peaceful life--the arbitress of his fate--Patty Minford.