William Monk 19 - Blind Justice

saving lives rather than destroying them. I thought I might do the same. That was a mistake. Such power corrupts more than I realized.And—” He stopped abruptly. Was he telling the whole truth? Did he really wish he had destroyed them all? After all, he had done some good with them. Exactly as Arthur Ballinger had done, in the beginning. It was Ballinger’s final revenge: to make Rathbone into what he himself had become. Exquisite. If he were somewhere in a hell of his own and could see this, he would be savoring it. There was a perfect irony to it.
    “You were going to say …?” Brancaster pressed him.
    “And I am not immune,” Rathbone said bitterly.
    “You spoke of a previous owner,” Brancaster observed. “Who was it? And how did you come to own them?”
    York looked sharply at Wystan, but Wystan did not move.
    Rathbone realized with a flood of amazement that Wystan intended Brancaster to uncover this story. He had perceived a greater purpose than merely convicting Rathbone of having transgressed the law in the trial of Taft. There was a greater issue at stake. Had that been Brancaster’s game all along? If so, it was dangerous, but perhaps brilliant.
    “Sir Oliver?” Brancaster prompted. “However unpleasant the truth, and whoever it implicates, this matter is too grave to remain secret any longer. It is not your own innocence you are protecting, or that of any other individual. The honor and integrity of all our institutions is at stake. Perhaps it would not be too extreme to say it is the core of justice itself, for which you have fought all your professional life, at no matter what cost to yourself. Over and over again you have risked your reputation to defend those whom others had condemned or abandoned.”
    Wystan stirred in his seat.
    Brancaster knew he would be allowed no more latitude.
    Rathbone knew it also.
    “I don’t know how much detail you wish me to tell,” he began, then had to stop and clear his throat.
    “All that is necessary for the court to understand is the nature of the photographs, and how it is that you possess them,” Brancaster instructed.
    There was no escape. The truth must be told publicly. Rathbonecould see Margaret in the gallery, well toward the front. She was here to watch his humiliation, the end of the career she thought he had placed before honor or loyalty. He could not protect her from the facts anymore.
    When he began, his voice was surprisingly steady.
    “There was a club created by a man of very comfortable means,” he said. “So far as I know he did not indulge in obscene pastimes himself, but he understood the excitement some men feel when they deliberately expose themselves to intense danger. The photographs I have mentioned were the initiation rite to this particular club. It was in a way a safeguard to each member; a way to ensure no one spoke about the obscenities being practiced by all of them.”
    No one moved. No one even attempted to interrupt him.
    He took a deep breath and swallowed hard. His mouth was dry. Then he continued. “They were also a perfect tool for blackmail. The man who created the club told me that the photographs were never used merely to extort money, and I believed him. It was always about power. He said that the first time he used one, it was to oblige a senior judge to rule on a case in such a way that a factory owner would be forced to stop the effluent from his works polluting the drinking water of a large number of poor people who were becoming diseased, even dying, as a result.” Again he took a deep breath. He felt as if his pounding heart was shaking his whole body. “At first I was repulsed by the idea of such blackmail, no matter the ultimate outcome. Then I thought of the children dying of the poison in the water, and the factory owner’s refusal to sacrifice some of his profit to clean it up.” His voice was growing stronger, the pain inside him easing. “I wondered—if I had the same power, would I refuse to use it and let the children die? Would it be better to cost many innocent people their health, merely to keep my hands clean of such methods?”
    There seemed to be not even a breath drawn in the room.
    “He chose to use the weapon he had,” Rathbone said. “I do not blame him for that.”
    There were murmurs now, voices in the gallery.
    “That was the only specific example he gave me, but he said therewere others like it,” Rathbone continued. “I did look up that case, and the judgment.