The San Francisco call., 1895-10-12
THE TWENTY-FIFTH DAY
A Hard Time for the Defendant.
Mr.. Barnes Surprising Oues-
tlons About the Belfry.

tIons About the Belfry.
Durrant was "rattled" yesterday-which
means, in plain English, that he became
uneasy at last under the severe cross-ex-
animation of District Attorney Barnes, and
lost his presence of mind and rare self
possession to a degree where he was led to
say things that cautious man should not
have said. There is no denying.
Indeed, the wonder is that he stood it so
well as he did, for the inquisitor pressed
him hard and drove home point after
point with telling force. And when it was
all over, late in the afternoon, it was Dur
rant who left the battle heated, and Mr..
Barnes who smiled complacently. The
prisoner sat down beside his mother and
famed himself.
Barnes did not drive home his points
with sIedge-hammer force, but he had a
way OF emphasizing them that was none
the less effective-perhaps even more so to
an intelligent jury like this one. He led
up gradually to each point and then when
he had almost asked the last question
about it he went back again, started all
over on new tack, but finally arrived
again at the same point, hit the same nail
again on the same spot, but with more
than double force. And where the points
sought to be emphasized were of great i'm
portance the tack was correspondingly
lengthy.
1t was so with the most startling and
sensational point made in the whole trial.
Thursday evening Mr.. Barnes asked the
witness if he had not written a statement
to his lawyers and addressed it, ''To be
opened only in case 1 am convicted" +" or
words to that purport.
Durrant denied it. Barnes pressed it.
Durrant reiterated his denial. Court ad-
iourned. In the morning Barnes had
apparently forgotten it.
He went on through the day, asking
Durrant, for instance, if his notes of DIR.
Cheney's lecture on April 3, which have
been offered in evidence for the defense as
proving his alibi, were the notes taken by
him at that lecture in his own hand
writing.
Durrant said they were. Barnes made a
small tack and led the witness to say that
he had made some changes in the book or
some additions to it after April 3. Barnes
took larger tack, the angle of which was
that Durrant had confessedly asked to see
the notebook of two other students in order
to carry out the instructions of his lawyers
and make sure that his own notes were
complete.
Then as to the lecture on April s, when
Durrant had asked Potter to have him
marked present on the rollcall when he
was absent. 1t was Durrant himself who
volunteered this information Thursday.
Yesterday Mr.. Barnes returned to it on
one OF his wide tacks, and when the angle
was reached it turned out, by Durrant's
own admission, that the reason he was not
marked present on that rollcalI, in spite OF
Potter's assistance-which fact tended to
show the validity of all rollcalls at the col
lege-was that during the lecture Durrant
had been called upon for question by the
lecturer. He failed to respond, and the
''present" mark opposite his name was
erased.
"And If you had not been called up for
quizzing," asked Mr.. Barnes, "you would
still be marked present on that rolIcall?'
81 suppose l would" was the answer.
But not until the very end of his long in
QUESTION of the defendant did Mr.. Barnes
reach the angle of his greatest tack-his
most startling surprise. Gradually he
worked back to the point where court had
adjourned on the previous day-that point
about the envelope addressed to his attor-
neys.
Mr.. Dickinson saw what was coming
and tried to head it off by an objection
claiming that seven if there had been
such an envelope it would be in the nature
of privileged communication"
The contents of 1t would. the court re-
marked, but that point had not been
reached. 1t never was. Mr.. Barnes never
meant it should be. 1t was only intro
ductory to the main question, which was,
in brief: "Did you not, on October l, in
the County Jail, tell Miss Cunningham
that you heard a noise while fixing the
sunburners; that you went to the belfry
and there you saw the body of Blanche
Lamont Iying?"
Durrant denied it, but in a rambling
fashion, with more eagerness in his face and
manner than he had previously exhibited,
and with a confession that he did argue
the point with Miss Cunningham.
Barnes repeated the question in another
form. and the defendant repeated his
rambling answer with more irrelevancies.
And in the end Judge Murphy took a
hand. and told the witness to answer the