Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 09.pdf/192

 Why Thomas Bram Was Found Gtalty. house, and the only attempt made to show that he may have seen it was to prove that he had washed the outside of the after house. The inference desired was that he had put his head down to the level of the boards at the side of the house and looked into the window and descried the axe on the wall at the after end of the storeroom. This suggestion was rather too labored for the jury. Nor did he know where the people in the after house slept. He supposed that the man whose legs he saw on the cot in the chart-room was the passenger. There was much testimony as to the effect of lashing the wheel of a vessel. At each side of the wheel there was a rope with a loop at the end for this purpose. The most sensible thing said was that every vessel must be examined for itself upon that point. Nevertheless, it was a part of the theory of the defence that the alleged homicidal maniac had carefully lashed the wheel before making his first excursion into the house. The testi mony of experts was conflicting as to whether the wheel of that vessel could be lashed or not for a few minutes, in a stiff breeze with the waves moving her about, without her coming to or falling off noticeably. But it probably did not seem to the jury to be likely that a lashed wheel in such a wind and sea would give time enough for a homicidal maniac to lind his way down the after companion-way, forward into the main cabin to the store room, to open the storeroom, to find the axe, to take it down, to find where the second mate slept, to open his door, to chop him up, to leave him, to go across the main cabin, to enter the chart-room, to find out who the man was on the cot in there, to brain him so deeply as to knock over the cot and pitch him to the floor, to leave the chart-room, to find out where Mrs. Nash slept, to go to her door, to open it (unless she opened it when she shrieked), to attack her, to knock in the back of her head, and then to cut her up in front, to kill her, to leave her room, to go to the forward com

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panion way, to ascend its steps, to ascend the lumber steps, to walk aft across the top of the house to the place where the axe had apparently rested, from the look of the broad bloody space, to go forward from there to the lashing-plank, to find a place where the axe could be shoved under it and hide the axe under the forward side of it, not very far from where the first mate was, and to return to the wheel, without a sail's flapping or the vessel's giving any sign to the first mate or to the lookout that there was anything peculiar. Charley's testimony that he got wet by water dashing over the bow and therefore hung up his clothes to dry was corroborated by a shipmate. His gloominess and taciturn ity after the murders are well accounted for by his having seen one of them. The blood-spots from the forward com panion way make it most improbable that anyone but the first mate could have done the murder unless there was some collusion between him and Charley. But there is no evidence of any collusion, unless Charley's silence be regarded as such evidence. That theory is not in the case. But it is more than counterbalanced by the improba bility that more than one person would con trive such crimes. To add another is to contribute a new difficulty to the case. It is significant that the arrest of Charley was made under the influence of Bram, and that Bram, although he claims to have seen Charley at the mizzen-peak jig, does not claim to have then asked Charley to explain what he was doing, or why he left the wheel. If arguments are entertained which are outside of the evidence and are founded upon probabilities of opportunity and mo tive, they bear more heavily against Bram, the commanding officer, thirty-two years of age, whose business it was to know the wholeship, and who might have a piratical ambi tion, than against Charley, the sailor, fortytwo years of age, who lived in the forecastle,