And then came the devil, in the person of Mr. Conger.  His face was full of hopefulness as he sat down in Charlton’s cell and smote his fat white hand upon his knee and said “Now!” and looked expectantly at his client.  He waited a moment in hope of rousing Charlton’s curiosity.

“We’ve got them!” he said presently.  “I told you we should pull through.  Leave the whole matter to me.”

“I am willing to leave anything to you but my conscience,” said Albert.

“The devil take your conscience, Mr. Charlton.  If you are guilty, and so awfully conscientious, plead guilty at once.  If you propose to cheat the government out of some years of penal servitude, why, well and good.  But you must have a devilish queer conscience, to be sure.  If you talk in that way, I shall enter a plea of insanity and get you off whether you will or not.  But you might at least hear me through before you talk about conscience.  Perhaps even your conscience would not take offense at my plan, unless you consider yourself foreordained to go to penitentiary.”

“Let’s hear your plan, Mr. Conger,” said Charlton, hoping there might be some way found by which he could escape.

Mr. Conger became bland again, resumed his cheerful and hopeful look, brought down his fat white hand upon his knee, looked up over his client’s head, while he let his countenance blossom with the promise of his coming communication.  He then proceeded to say with a cheerful chuckle that there was a flaw in the form of the indictment—­the grand jury had blundered.  He had told Charlton that something would certainly happen.  And it had.  Then Mr. Conger smote his knee again, and said “Now!” once more, and proceeded to say that his plan was to get the trial set late in the term, so that the grand jury should finish their work and be discharged before the case came on.  Then he would have the indictment quashed.

He said this with so innocent and plausible a face that at first it did not seem very objectionable to Charlton.

“What would we gain by quashing the indictment, Mr. Conger?”

“Well, if the indictment were quashed on the ground of a defect in its substance, then the case falls.  But this is only defective in form.  Another grand jury can indict you again.  Now if the District Attorney should be a little easy—­and I think that, considering your age, and my influence with him, he would be—­a new commitment might not issue perhaps before you could get out of reach of it.  If you were committed again, then we gain time.  Time is everything in a bad case.  You could not be tried until the next term.  When the next term comes, we could then see what could be done.  Meantime you could get bail.”

If Charlton had not been entirely clear-headed, or entirely in a mood to deal honestly with himself, he would have been persuaded to take this course.

“Let me ask you a question, Mr. Conger.  If the case were delayed, and I still had nothing to present against the strong circumstantial evidence of the prosecution—­if, in other words, delay should still leave us in our present position—­would there be any chance for me to escape by a fair, stand-up trial?”