The Trial of Callista Blake
too much chin and early frontal baldness, Hunter could have been
athlete, actor, singer. He was a near-professional with the Winchester
Choral Society, having once gone splendidly through the baritone solo in
the Brahms German Requiem when the guest artist turned up with
laryngitis. Mann, himself a serious pianist, had heard that achievement,
and remembered it at times when Hunter's courtroom personality annoyed
him: the man could hardly have sung that well unless there was in him,
somewhere, the element of compassion. In the law, Mann supposed, Hunter
could use and enjoy his musical and histrionic abilities and at the same
time make a living. "Call the Blake case!" The voice, Mann observed, was
in top form, rich, melodious, and acceptably stern.

"Mr. Warner?"

"The defense is ready." Cecil Warner was standing also, heavy and old, a
man listening to other voices though capable of employing his own heavy
thunder. The other voices were conscience, tradition, books; overtones
of what witnesses and lawyers don't say. The seamed ancient face was
fat, the kindness obvious but not the strength. Mann wondered
occasionally whether Warner had ever, like Darrow, faced all the
implications of a certain pessimism that colored most of his opinions. A
fracture imperfectly set had crippled Cecil Warner's left arm in
childhood; he could not bend the elbow beyond a ninety-degree angle. And
Warner's mind, the Judge speculated, might suffer a similar limitation,
never hitting with quite all its power. He would need it all in the next
few days.

"The People of the State of New Essex against Callista Blake."

Reasonable words; but as Mr. Delehanty intoned them, the Judge's mind
perversely visualized an army of five or six million, uniformed, with
rifles, tanks, flame-throwers, advancing in ponderous wrath against one
cornered chipmunk with tinfoil helmet and paper sword. Foolish, he knew:
the individual was not alone, and faced not the People roaring and
multitudinous but merely their representative, who might be no more
powerful a champion than his own counsel. Yet the image had pestered
Judge Mann before now, and faded in the style of the Cheshire Cat.

At other times he could not avoid the impression that the adversary

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