CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Mr. Jellipot played a bold card. He briefed Rossiter to apply in Chambers for bail for Francis Hammerton (convicted in the name of Harold Vaughan) pending the hearing of his appeal.

Mr. Justice Fordyce heard the application with the patient immobility of expression due to an eminent counsel who was making the best of an impossible plea.

Even when he heard that Sir Reginald Crowe was prepared to provide bail to any amount which he might require, he did not allow any trace of the surprise he felt to appear.

He asked laconically: “Any amount, Mr. Rossiter?”

“Yes, my lord. Those are the instructions I have received. Sir Reginald will stand surety for any amount which you may require.”

He conferred for a moment with Mr. Jellipot, and said again that there was no limit to the amount of bail which would be forthcoming.

For the first time a momentary doubt passed through the Judge’s mind as to what his decision was going to be. He remembered that the bank inspector of whose murder the convict had been accused had been in the employment of the London & Northern Bank, of which Sir Reginald was chairman, and he saw that there might be more here than the surface showed. “You say, Mr. Rossiter,” he asked, and his tone revealed the doubt that had come into his mind, “that your client’s liberty is essential to the preparation of his appeal?”

“It is of the utmost importance.”

Mr. Justice Fordyce was silent for one pregnant moment, during which even Mr. Jellipot’s cautious temperament felt that the battle was won, but after that he shook his head slightly.

“I am sorry,” he said, “but I see no sufficient reason for granting the application which has been so ably and eloquently made. You can renew it on Friday, if you think it worth while to do so. Yes, Friday. Eleven-thirty.”

Mr. Rossiter and Mr. Jellipot withdrew without further words, and the legal gentlemen whose application was next on the list entered the room.

“You may congratulate your client,” Mr. Rossiter said, “on the fact that he will be able to spend the week-end in his own home.”

“You mean that he will grant bail on Friday?”

“You may expect that with some confidence.”

As Mr. Rossiter foretold, so it proved to be.

On Friday morning the application was formally renewed, and Mr. Justice Fordyce asked no questions at all. He said, in his toneless manner: “Bail will be granted on Hammerton’s own recognisances, and one surety for two thousand pounds, whose name must be approved by the court. Sir Reginald Crowe? Yes, certainly. You can have the order drawn up at once.”

Mr. Rossiter, who had heard no more than he had had good reason to expect, he having busied himself during those two intervening days in ways which are not recognized by the law, but by which the cause of justice is often served, said: “Thank you, my lord”; and Mr. Jellipot had cause, for a second time, to feel that he had won success in the unfamiliar branch of litigation in which he moved. But he knew that the most difficult fence—the appeal itself—lay ahead.

Still, he had won a battle, if not a campaign, and it had been one which many more experienced criminal lawyers might have hesitated to try; and by so doing he had gained the ground for future strategic movements which it was essential to have.

Having won this success, he did not fail to take the full advantage which it allowed. He knew that time was the vital factor of the position, and he acted with such promptitude that, with Sir Reginald’s equal diligence, it became possible, while the afternoon was still young, to open the prison doors, and Francis found himself leaning back in the comfort of Sir Reginald’s private car, as it bore him smoothly, and at the best pace that the London traffic allowed, in the direction of Mr. Jellipot’s office.

His sense of recovered freedom during this journey might have been more absolute had not Inspector Combridge been his sole companion. He was too ignorant of such procedures to do more than make a mistaken guess as to why the Inspector should be still at his side, or of what limited amount of freedom would now be his. At the best, he supposed that the Inspector was now beside him as one who would make formal delivery of his body at the lawyer’s office. He wondered what would happen if he should ask the chauffeur to pull up, saying that he had decided to get out and go to his home by a different way.

Inspector Combridge, unaware of these thoughts, was making some honest efforts toward a friendly understanding. He commenced upon several indifferent topics of conversation, without gaining more than monosyllabic answers. The fact was that he still doubted the degree of that innocence about which Mr. Jellipot protested so strongly, and this uncertainty, of which Francis had an instinctive perception, was a bar to any real cordiality, even had he not embodied, to his companion’s mind, the hated shadow of hostile law.

Yet it is bare justice to the Inspector to observe that he was not unwilling to be convinced, and he was as sincerely anxious to know the truth as he was genuinely endeavouring to establish friendly relations with his silent companion; for the point might be of vital importance to the soundness of the plan of campaign which was now to be discussed in Mr. Jellipot’s office.