“C. Q.”; or, In the Wireless House
it took a peculiar pleasure in being able to don the black cap and sentence the son of a marquis to be hanged—particularly one who had been so foolish as to try to escape from its grasp.
Micky had sat through two days of it once and now it all came back to him in the night. He saw the jury whispering to one another in the box—carefully dressed men from the city in braided cutaways and “dickies.” He saw Graeme sitting by the rail with his counsel, the center of attraction and comment, and the bevy of powdered women in picture hats with their escorts, most of whom had played tennis and croquet with the prisoner and whose hearts were torn with excruciating pity for poor dear Cosmo, but who would n’t have missed his trial for anything in the world. He heard the usher tap on the jury box and cry "Oyez! Oyez!" and the crisp rustle of black gowns as the three judges came swinging in with long noses a bit in air followed by the King’s Counsel, a lean barrister with a wig slightly askew who strode after them like a thoroughbred led out for a warm-up. It angered him, the affected unconcern of these officers of the Crown,—as if they did n’t know it was the most screamingly sensa-142
