The Swoop of the Vulture.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 10710, 14 September 1912, Page 2

The Swoop of the Vulture.

BY OWEN MASTERS. Author of "His Heart's Desire," "One Impassioned Hour," "Captain Emlyn's Bride," "Tho Dovereil Heritage," "The Ironmaster's Daughter," etc.

'ODf SERIAL.)

CHA PTEJI. XI. (Continued.) , "Fortunately, perhaps, lot' the prisoner, ho is not. being cried upon .such a charge ns this in franco. Iho principal allegation against him is that iio nmdotuso o£ certain hypnotic, mesmeric or othor occult powers, of which In*, is supposed to be possessed, to induce tho la to Sir Godfrey Enstone to take, and continue taking, certain noxious drugs; and, furtner, thai ho periodically kept him under the influence. of tneso drugs, increasing or aoi-reasiug the severity oi the treatment as circumstance:-} demanded, until in the end the unfortunate gentleman, driven into mental tormenti and insanity, t)he fatal act which ended his life.

'•'Now, gentlemen, if that were proved against the prisoner in a French court, ho would be held guilty of murder, and would probably suiter the extreme penalty of the law. 'J he French penal code recognises the use of such pow-ers for unlawful ends as a felony, find if such use. results in the de-iith. of the victim, the lelony becomes tho crime of murder. The English law, whether wisely or not, does not recognise these powers at all, and therefore I must ask you to dismiss from your minds all.tho allegations as to their use." 'Hie judge paused again, as though to give the jury time to consider what ■lie had sai d, then continued : "Did the accused administer these noxious drugs to the deceased in order to bring him so completely under his personal control that, at his suggestion, he should make an untirely unjust and preposterous will? And did he, in the second place, continue' the administration until he had driven his unhappy victim into such a condition of mental and moral ruin and collapse that tho very suggestion of tho word suicide, or the idea of it, the giving of a knife, a pistol, or a razor, would so act upon the mind temporarily insane as to make the final and fatal act practically inevitable?"

Aiter a lengthy address, the judge thus concluded: ! "You will now be good enough to i consider your vei'dict, and in doing , so, 1 must ask you to dismiss the question of the will entirely from your mind, save in so far as it is connected with the main charge. With the validity or otherwise of the will this court has absolutely nothing to do." The jury filed out of tho box, ajid retired to the little room in which so many human fates have been decided. Halkine had already given up hope. His defense had necessarily been a weak one, in spito of tho great ability of his council. The analysis of the cigars, wine and medicine, Sir Godfrey's diary, and tho result of the post-mortem examination had forced tho judge, in spite of his admirable impartiality, to sum up dead against him. He had left these possibilities entirely 1 out of his Calculations in fact, he had not even considered them

a:i such. In about twenty minutes tlio jurors began to coine back, the buzz of conversation in the court ceased, and the people settled thcinselvs to listen to the words of fate. Halkine's eyes

wondered over the jury box as the

jurors took their places ; some of them , looked at him furtively and Jialf shy- j ly, and he knew what they meant. Then his glrfnce sought that of IzahIlama.l, and the brilliant blue eyes. under the dark brows Hashed back a signal which he' read as meaning: "You are doomed!—yet hope." When tho jurors were in their places, the clerk arose, and asked the usual question: "Gentlomen, are you agreed upon your verdict?" "We are," replied the foreman. [ "l>o you find the prisoner guilty or not guilty of the charge of administering noxious drugs Avith intent to do bodily harm?" "We find him guilty." "Do you find, tkat the lato Sir Godfrey Enstone committed suicide while under the influence of these drugs, and that his suicide was the result of their effects?" •

"Wo are fully agreed upon that point also," was the decisive reply. "That amounts to a verdict of , guilty on both counts?" Tho foreman bowed, and sat down. "Let the prisoner stand up," now came in clear, stern tones from tho judge's lips, and again tho ominous pen feather began to move, this time toward the dock. Halkine stood up and faced his fate, gray white, bub firm-lipped, steady-eyed and composed.

"Jenner Halkine," the judge began, "after a patient and careful trial you have been convicted of a crime unparalleled in its diabolical ingenuity, and its pitiless cruelty. Fortunately for you, but tmfortunately for the interests of justice, the hitherto unheard of crime of procuring self-mur-dor i s not known in English law, otherwise the sentence which I am about to pass upon you would be the richly deserved one of death. It lias been clearly proved that you possess talents of very high order, great learning, and possibly certain powers which a.ro given to very few mortals. You have used them, in the light of full knowledge, to commit, as you thought with safety to yourself, the crime, which, I am glad to say, has 110 parallel in the history of wrong-doing. Leniency in such a case as yours

would be an insult to justice. I cannot send you to the scaffold, but it is my fluty to protect society againstMich a miscreant as you have proved yourself; therefore, it is my duty t-o pass one of tho heaviest sentences that the :law ul'.ows—that- is, that

you be kept in penal servitude for ihe term of your natural lite.'' Tho judge gathered hi-s papers together. Jenuer took a- last look at tho world ho was leaving, a warder touched hi in on the shoulder, and lie turned away to the top of the steps leading to the prison tomb, and, while the cleric was calling out the- next case most of the audience nxse to go to lunch, and talk over the most famous case of the year. CHAPTER XT']J. FIALKINE'S REYEXGE. Penal servitude for life! Banishment absolute .and perpetual from tho busy world of men, with all its possibilities of joy and sorrow, success and failure, great daring and liigS" enterprise, its glory and its shame, its light and its oarivnofis, its life and its death —all, in short, that -makes existence endurable.

But this was tho negation of everything. It was life without tho living —and death without tho dying. Penal servitude for life!

What did ifc mean, oven, to the most ordinary of mortals? The ordinary Criminal of mediocre intellect is usually crushed into stupor during the first few weeks of h's solitary experience by the tremendous weight of the doom which has fallen upon him; but to a man like Jen nor Hallcine, with vast stores of learning at his command, and vivid imagination to prey upon them until memory-be-came a torment and a curse, no such ' merciful stupor of despair could come —a despair keener a thousand times than the sullen surrender of the avefage criminal animal to a force that is too strong for him. For hi'm in very truth tlie mills of God had begun to grind. • They grind slowly, but they grind exceedingly small.

Jenner Halkine hod known this okl Spanish saying for a good many years, and he had taken it only as an eloquent condensation of the universal law of fate. Now, setting in his lonely little cell, looking out over the featureless desert lliat spread before him, and backward over the luxuriant jungle of mental and physical delights which had once been his hap- j py hunting grounds, the words had quite a different meaning for him and the memory of them was an added burden which he never could lay' aside until the mercifif! lymd of death was laid upon him; even then, if there, was any truth in the lore that he had learned from the lips of Izah-Ramal, such a release would only be an oixd--1 ing and a beginning, death and arebirth, in "which the sins of the fathers would be vij-ited on the children.

It fro happened that in smother cell of the prison, only a few yards away, Bonham De.nyer was a'r-.o serving his nine months' preliminary punishment preparatory tn the five years' penal j>ei;vituclo to which ho had been sentenced for the .fraudulent practices disclosed by the documents which Halkino had sent to the Home Office as soon as he became certain of liis treachery.

They had met and recognised each other in the exercise yard, and they had exchanged glances more eloquent than the words wKich they were forbidden to spealc. (To he Continued.)