The Trial of Callista Blake
T. J. Hunter was up on his feet being stately and important. Warner advised himself: he must not, would not fall into the dangerous error of hating or even disliking T. J. Enact hostility, yes, whenever it might have a useful effect on the jury--enact anything at all, from sputtering rage to glacial contempt--but don't feel it! He could not afford to feel it, without a far more flexible control of his private emotions than he now possessed: much too easy for an angry man to look like a fool. And yet not hating T. J. was going to be intolerably difficult at times; for Callista could die, and T. J. was after all a good deal of a bloody bastard.

Hunter said: "Your Honor, I see it's getting on to four. My opening will be brief. If agreeable to the Court and Mr. Warner, may I make it now?"

Behind his mask Warner felt flustered and unready. He could protest; Terence Mann would obligingly call an early adjournment; Callista would have some rest, if you could give that name to her unknowable hours in the detention cell. The advantage T. J. probably hoped for, in having the jury sleep on his opening masterpiece, might be no advantage at all--a jury can forget impressions as well as facts.... Startled, he realized that Terence with his curious courtesy was deferring, looking down from the bench with harmless reminders of a ten-year friendship in his face, waiting for the defense to speak first. He said: "My client is very tired. However, I assume from what Mr. Hunter says that his opening will not run much past five o'clock--is that correct?"

"I'm sure it won't, sir. I only intend to summarize, to outline what the State expects to prove."

"Sir from you?--gah! In that case, the defense has no objection."

"Members of the jury, Callista Blake is the daughter of an artist, by all accounts a loving father, who died when she was seven, and a lady who is known to a wide circle of acquaintance as a devoted wife and mother. This lady, and Callista's father and stepfather, gave the girl a careful, decent upbringing. Callista's stepfather Dr. Herbert Chalmers of Winchester College is a distinguished man, author of a textbook in English widely used in the secondary schools. Her mother is active in the Presbyterian Church, past president of the Shanesville P.T.A.--in short I know of nothing in this girl's history or family surroundings to account for her present situation unless you attach more importance than I do to certain childhood accidents. As a baby she got a nitric acid burn, later repaired by plastic surgery. She had polio, 
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