As the hearing proceeded, Clavering’s case grew blacker. Against some of the most damning facts he had some strong perjured evidence, but the perjurers were exposed with the evidence. Against all, he had his own strenuous denial of everything and the call for proof. But proof was forthcoming at every point. And it was all Richard Baskerville’s handiwork. Clavering knew this so well that although perfectly alert as to the statements made by the keen–eyed, sharp–witted lawyers from New York, he kept his eyes fixed on Baskerville, who was handing out paper after paper and making whispered explanations—who was, in short, the arsenal for the weapons so mercilessly used against Clavering.
The two men engaged in this deadly and tremendous strife, which involved not only millions of money and a seat in the United States Senate, but also the characters and souls of men, eyed each other with a certain respect. It was no man of ordinary mould whom Baskerville had sought to destroy, and that Clavering would be destroyed there was no reasonable doubt. The last day’s work meant expulsion from the Senate, a disgrace so huge, so far–reaching, that it was worse than sentencing a man to death. Apart from the degree of honesty in Clavering’s own party, it was perfectly well understood that no party would dare to go before the country assuming the burden of the gigantic frauds of which he was being convicted. And it was due to Baskerville that the evidence to convict had been found. All that the other lawyers had done was insignificant beside the two years of patient research, the disentangling of a thousand complicated legal threads, which was Baskerville’s work. Some of the evidence he presented had been collected in the wildest parts of the West and South at the imminent risk of his life; all of it had required vast labor and learning.
Being a natural lover of fighting, Baskerville in the beginning had taken a purely human interest in tracking this man down and had thought himself engaged in a righteous work in driving him out of public life. He still knew he was right in doing this, but it had long since become a painful and irksome task to him. He had come to love this man’s daughter, of all the women in the world,—to love her so well and to confide in her so truly that not even her parentage could keep him from marrying her. But he knew that he was stabbing her to the heart. She had forgiven him in advance; like him, love and sacrifice had asserted their rights and reigned in their kingdom, but that she must suffer a cruel abasement for her father’s iniquities Baskerville knew. And, with this knowledge, nothing but his sense of duty and honor kept him at his post.