The Glass Village

“What happened, of course,” said Casavant, “was that she had begun to paint the picture as a dry scene. She did considerable work on it before the storm came up. When the rain started, she had the choice of either stopping work and waiting for another rainless day, or incorporating the rainstorm into her picture. Every other artist I know of would have stopped and waited. But I suppose something in the changed conditions piqued her. This was an experiment of a most unusual sort — a sort of overleaf reflection of nature, rain attacking a world that was dry to begin with. Of course, the sky must have been dark and threatening all day, so that the mood of the picture as far as she’d gone was in harmony with the suddenly altered conditions. If only she’d had time to finish this!”

Pay-off, thought Johnny. My man comes in at — what? — thirty-five to one? He felt a glow whose warmth surprised him.

“She did have time to do one thing,” smiled Johnny, “and for that Joe Kowalczyk can light a candle to her memory.”

“What’s that?” demanded Casavant.

“Aunt Fanny added something else that hadn’t been there when she started the picture. Look at the interior of the lean-to.”

On the floor of the lean-to in the unfinished painting a pile of firewood had been painted in. The individual sticks had merely been sketched; she had not even had time to give the wood grain or character. But it was recognizable as a woodpile.

“Just for the hell of it, and to make the acid test of your claim, Mr. Casavant, that when Fanny Adams did paint what she saw she painted it exactly as it was,” murmured Johnny, “suppose you count the pieces of wood she sketched in.”

Casavant produced a lens. He went close to July Corn and peered at the lean-to. “One, two, three, four...” He kept counting until he reached twenty-four.

Then he stopped.

“Twenty-four,” said Johnny softly. “And what’s Kowalczyk kept saying? That he split six lengths of log into quarters and stacked them in the lean-to. What price reliability now, Mr. Adams? Was Pal Joey telling the truth?”

“I’ll be jiggered,” said Adams in a feeble way.

“You’ve done it,” chortled Andy Webster. “By God, that Army training has something to recommend it after all. Let’s get back in there!”

“Yes, who knows?” echoed Peague. “Even into those sunless mentalities some light of doubt may fall.”

“Only thing is,” said Johnny with a frown, “what does it lead to? Seems as if it ought to give us a lot. But I just can’t put my finger on it.”

“Never mind that now,” said Judge Shinn grimly. “I want to see their faces when this is brought out.”

They hurried back to the courtroom.

They had to wait before they could spring the big surprise. First Adams rested his “case.” Then there was some legalistic hocus-pocus, and Andrew Webster opened the “defense.” He put Josef Kowalczyk on the stand as his first witness, and a long struggle began with the prisoner’s monosyllabic English. Through all of this Johnny was conscious of a restlessness about him, a feel of pressures building up. When Ferriss Adams sharply cross-examined, while Adams and Webster wrangled, the tension mounted in the room. About him Johnny could hear the stealthy creak of campchairs as bottoms tightened. They know something’s due to pop here and they’re worried stupid, Johnny thought with enjoyment as he kept chasing the artful dodger in his head: Keep dodging, I’ll corner you in time, there’s plenty of that, these poor benighted Hindus aren’t going anywhere, wriggle, you bastards. You’ll soon be wriggling like worms on a hook.

He did not really pay attention until Andy Webster put Roger Casavant on the stand as a witness — this time! — for the defense.

Johnny admired the way the old man handled Casavant and July Corn. Cudbury’s dean of the bar had been a great angler in his day. Now he pulled his fish in on a long taut line, little by little, giving it sea room, never letting it break the surface, until the jury were pulling with him, straining to catch a glimpse of what was moment by moment becoming more obviously a big one. And just when he had them at the snapping point, Judge Webster yanked.

“Will you count the pieces of firewood in Exhibit F — the painting July Corn — for the benefit of the jury, Mr. Casavant?”

And Casavant whipped out his lens, stooped over the painting, said, “One, two, three, four,” and kept counting until he reached the number twenty-four.

“Mr. Casavant, you have just heard the defendant, in confirmation of his original statement on his arrest, testify that he split six logs into quarters at Mrs. Adams’s request and stacked them in the lean-to. Six logs quartered make how many pieces of firewood?”

“Twenty-four.”

“And you have just counted how many pieces of firewood in the picture Mrs. Adams was painting when she was stopped by death?”

“Twenty-four.”