The District Attorney, Mr. McFlinn, opened the case for the state.  He spoke with only the slightest accent, one that had been inherited but not cultivated.  He contented himself with a brief statement of the case.  The state would prove that Laura Hawkins, the prisoner at the bar, a fiend in the form of a beautiful woman, shot dead George Selby, a Southern gentleman, at the, time and place described.  That the murder was in cold blood, deliberate and without provocation; that it had been long premeditated and threatened; that she had followed the deceased-from Washington to commit it.  All this would be proved by unimpeachable witnesses.  The attorney added that the duty of the jury, however painful it might be, would be plain and simple.  They were citizens, husbands, perhaps fathers.  They knew how insecure life had become in the metropolis.  Tomorrow our own wives might be widows, their own children orphans, like the bereaved family in yonder hotel, deprived of husband and father by the jealous hand of some murderous female.  The attorney sat down, and the clerk called?”

“Henry Brierly.”

CHAPTER LV.

Henry Brierly took the stand.  Requested by the District Attorney to tell the jury all he knew about the killing, he narrated the circumstances substantially as the reader already knows them.

He accompanied Miss Hawkins to New York at her request, supposing she was coming in relation to a bill then pending in Congress, to secure the attendance of absent members.  Her note to him was here shown.  She appeared to be very much excited at the Washington station.  After she had asked the conductor several questions, he heard her say, “He can’t escape.”  Witness asked her “Who?” and she replied “Nobody.”  Did not see her during the night.  They traveled in a sleeping car.  In the morning she appeared not to have slept, said she had a headache.  In crossing the ferry she asked him about the shipping in sight; he pointed out where the Cunarders lay when in port.  They took a cup of coffee that morning at a restaurant.  She said she was anxious to reach the Southern Hotel where Mr. Simons, one of the absent members, was staying, before he went out.  She was entirely self-possessed, and beyond unusual excitement did not act unnaturally.  After she had fired twice at Col.  Selby, she turned the pistol towards her own breast, and witness snatched it from her.  She had seen a great deal with Selby in Washington, appeared to be infatuated with him.

(Cross-examined by Mr. Braham.) “Mist-er.....er Brierly!” (Mr. Braham had
in perfection this lawyer’s trick of annoying a witness, by drawling out
the “Mister,” as if unable to recall the name, until the witness is
sufficiently aggravated, and then suddenly, with a rising inflection,
flinging his name at him with startling unexpectedness.) “Mist-er.....er
Brierly!   What is your occupation?”

“Civil Engineer, sir.”