Page:That Royle Girl (Balmer).pdf/245

 pair of metal boxes, fitted with reflectors and equipped with lights, which the photographers had placed before the witness stand when they took pictures of the Royle girl previous to the opening of the trial. Now, with the judge in his seat, the jury in place, and while Elmen put his questions and the witness spoke her answers upon which might depend the life of the prisoner on trial, the tall youth bore the light boxes, one after the other, to a position in front of the witness stand. He gathered the cord-plugs and screwed them into light sockets on the wall and he cast upon the girl, in the witness chair, two beams of glaring light.

Meanwhile, a companion close by erected a tripod and placed upon it a motion-picture camera; he focused upon the witness, stooped and carefully inspected his subject in the ground-glass field and, satisfied, he straightened and set to turning his handle with its "click-click-click" while the witness, under the glare, testified in reply to Max Elmen's interrogations.

The judge ignored this entire proceeding; to be sure, a glaring beam, as a box was shifted, struck him in the eye and caused him to squint, but otherwise he took no notice whatever. The jury welcomed the glare, which gave them the girl for sharper and severer inspection.

Calvin kept his eyes upon the jury for the first moments and saw them examining the witness only more avidly; he searched in the double line of the jurors for the faces of the men whom most willingly he had accepted before his challenges were gone, and he saw every man of them staring at the witness with no sign of offense at the spotlights.

One juror, solely, sat back, consideringly; one seemed to keep his mind his own and not give it over to Max Elmen's antics; one looked on, externally, at the performance. Andreapolos, he was, the Greek whom Max