And here again his adversary had him at a disadvantage. For his was not the mobile temperament which gives visible response to its emotional experiences. Life played upon Kenwick as upon a highly strung instrument, and drew from him whatever notes she needed in the universal symphony. But Richard Glover permitted no hand but his own to manipulate the keys of his life-board.
It was ten o'clock now but the trial seemed long in beginning. The judge had barely noticed Kenwick's entrance and continued an inaudible conversation with some one at his high desk. The district attorney, a florid little man who seemed to find difficulty in keeping on his eye-glasses, fussed with a mass of papers at the end of the long table and spoke occasionally to the bald-headed man on his right, who was evidently his colleague. Dayton leaned back in his chair and tapped the table impatiently with his pencil. Kenwick was surprised to see that the nervousness which his attorney had shown when he had visited him in jail seemed now to have completely disappeared.
There was an eminent surgeon among Kenwick's New York acquaintances who suffered from a nervous malady that was akin to palsy, and yet who, in the vital crisis of an operation, had a hand as steady as an embedded rock. He found himself wondering curiously now whether Dayton would develop under pressure an abnormal sagacity. Some miracle would have to intervene if he was to be saved from the ravenous clutches of fate.
Other persons were entering the court-room now and taking places that had evidently been reserved for them. Dayton leaned over and presented them at long distance to his client. "That fellow that just came in is Gifford, the undertaker. He got the jolt of his life when this thing blew up. Don't think he'll be much of a witness. He gets rattled. That chap with him is Dr. Markham. Ever see him before?"
Kenwick nodded. "He bandaged my leg that night in the drug-store. He'll remember it, too, for he was a little suspicious at the time that the sprain was older than I admitted. And I think he knew the man whose name I chanced to give as mine."
"Yes, that was a bad break, your chancing upon the name of Rogers. A fellow by that name was visiting out at the Paddington place, and although the doctor had never seen him, he had an engagement to play golf with him that afternoon out at the country club. Fortunately the man himself left town the next day so it wasn't as bad as it might have been. But it was an unfortunate thing, such a beast of a thing, that you should have given an assumed name at all."