How could they say Jim could not write?
Frank and his attorney had told the prosecution of the existence of a note from Jim asking for reemployment and they had searched the office, the files, but could find no such note.
Even in its absence, how could the prosecution found its case upon a negative proposition: “No one has seen Jim write, so he cannot write”? But Frank had seen him write, as had his assistants in the office. One by one they were deposed; and one by one denied the existence of Jim’s application; not “I do not recall ever seeing such a note,” but, “No. It never existed.”
It never existed? How, then, did Frank communicate with Jim, when Jim requested reemployment? They’d all testified he had not come into the office. How did they communicate? He wrote and Jim wrote back.
This was the point Frank tried to make in his conference with his attorney. “Ask them that,” he said, and, always, the man looked down and away, indicating, “Please do not tell me how to run my affairs. I do not wish to embarrass you by pointing out your ignorance of my field.”
But the man was a fool.
Frank saw, now, that that which he had taken for courage was foolhardiness. The attorney had no desire to see Frank acquitted. An acquittal would subject him to the rage of the city. No. He wished to be seen to have made a valiant effort. He wished to have upheld, at great personal cost, a principle—the right to a fair trial.
“What a fool. What a fool I was,” Frank thought. “Why did I enter into this charade? What could the man have possibly gained from my release? The fees were poor and had he ‘won,’ they might have been his last.
“The swine,” he thought, “I can see him now, in his clubs, in his haunts.
“Smug. Sure.
“‘That was a fine thing you did …’ And the man deprecating it. With a sad shake of the head, to indicate ‘a sad business.’
“A vile business, but for the principle involved. And the interlocutor reiterating, ‘No. A fine thing you did.’”
He could see both men. In some club. On some veranda. Bursting with self-congratulation. Calling the evil good. How like the Christian. How like the Christian, he thought.