eside in or
frequent that locality.

Twenty-four days had now been consumed in the trial, and as yet no
Chinese witnesses except Ah Fong had been called. Now, however, they
appeared in cohorts. Though Mooney had sworn that the streets were
practically empty at the time of the homicide forty-one Chinese
witnesses swore positively that they had been within easy view, claiming
variously to have been behind doors, peeking through shutters, at upper
windows and even on the roofs. All had identified Mock Hen as the
murderer, and none of them had ever heard of either the On Gee or the
Hip Leong Tong! Mr. Tutt could not shake them upon cross-examination,
and O'Brien began to show signs of renewed confidence. Each testified to
substantially the same story and they occupied seventeen full days in
the telling, so that when the prosecution rested, forty-two days had
been consumed since the first talesman had been called. The trial had
sunk into a dull, unbroken monotony, as Mr. Tutt said, of the "vain
repetitions of the heathen." Yet the police and the district attorney
had done all that could reasonably have been expected of them. They were
simply confronted by the very obvious fact--a condition and not a
theory--that the legal processes of Anglo-Saxon jurisprudence are of
slight avail in dealing with people of another race.

Now it is possible that even had Mr. Tutt put in no defense whatever the
jury might have refused to convict, for there was a curious air of
unreality surrounding the whole affair. It all seemed somehow as
if--assuming that it had ever taken place at all--it had occurred in
some other world and in some other age. Perhaps under what might have
been practically a direction of the court a verdict of conviction might
have been returned--but it is doubtful. The more witnesses testified to
exactly the same thing in precisely the same words the less likely it
appeared to be.

But Mr. Tutt was taking no chances and, upon the forty-third day of the
trial, at a nod from the bench, he opened his case. Never had he been
more serious; never more persuasive. Abandoning every suggestion of
frivolity, he weighed the testimony of each white witness and pointed
out its obvious lack of probative value. Not one, he said, except the
Italian woman, had had more than a fleeting glance of the face of the
man now accused of the crime. Such an identification was useless. The
Chinamen were patently lying. They had not been there at a