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Scott Velie was quick to catch the momentary flagging of attention, the diminution of intensity in the judge’s eyes, and knew it was his cue to step in. The old hypocrite’s intellectual range and judicial acumen were obviously being sorely tested.

‘Your Honour,’ he said, removing a document from his inner pocket and passing it across the desk to the judge, ‘this is a Xeroxed copy of Ivy Templeton’s birth certificate; physical evidence that Ivy was born to William and Janice Templeton and was the issue of Mrs Templeton’s womb. So, unless Mr Hoover fathered the child through sexual intercourse with Mrs Templeton, which he does not claim to have done, there is no way in my mind that he can prove the child is his. Even if, and I submit the ‘if’ is a mighty big one, even if reincarnation could be proved to be a viable theory, all it would show is that she may have formerly been Hoover’s child, but is not presently. This document is the only certified legal instrument attesting to the child’s parentage, and nothing Elliot Hoover claims or be-believes can ever change that.’

A certain strength returned to the judge’s face as he eagerly perused the birth certificate. This was something he could grapple with, something tangible, of legal import.

Holding it before Brice Mack like a cudgel, he asked, ‘What about it, counsellor, can the defendant render a like document to the court proving his legal right to claim the child as being his?’

Brice Mack’s eyes sought the floor as a small, tolerant smile formed on his lips. It was a smile that Judge Langley could not abide. It smacked of arrogance, smart, slick Jewboy arrogance, born of assurance, know-how, and the need to make it.

‘Your Honour’ - the smile spoke - ‘there is no doubt, nor is the defence contending to the contrary, that the child was produced at the time and place and to the person that the birth certificate attests to. But just because there is the physical act of a baby coming out of a womb, it can’t be assumed ipso facto that the baby necessarily belongs to that person.’

About to answer, Judge Langley was cut short as Brice Mack stood up and slammed a half dollar down on his desk with a ringing clatter.

‘If you were to swallow my half dollar, Your Honour, and it passed through your system and was finally ejected by you, would you say that that half dollar was then necessarily your property?’

Again Judge Langley, about to speak, was overridden by Mack. ‘I say to you that Janice Templeton’s body may only have been a conduit to pass Elliot Hoover’s child on from a past life into a present life.’

Both Velie and Judge Langley waited for Brice Mack to continue, as it seemed he would since he remained standing, but it gradually became evident that he had finished what he had to say and was awaiting the judge’s response.

‘Sit down, Mr Mack,’ Judge Langley said icily. ‘I’m not used to looking up to people in my own office.’

The little smile never left Brice Mack’s face as he slowly resumed his seat and hunched forward in an attitude of rapt attention.

‘To begin with, young man,’ the judge continued, ‘if I were made to straddle a commode and strain out a fifty-cent piece, it damn well would be my property.’

Brice Mack joined Scott Velie in a small chuckle, a salute to the judge’s nimble sense of humour.

‘Secondly,’ the old man went on, ‘the defence you are proposing, that of establishing the truth of reincarnation as a means of substantiating your client’s innocence, even if successful, will not let your client off the hook unless you are also able to prove the kidnapped girl was in fact the defendant’s reincarnated daughter. Your witnesses, as I now understand it, have no relationship to the defendant or to the crime he is accused of committing - they are to appear in court merely for the purpose of arguing and expounding on concepts of a philosophical and religious character, which arguments, may I say, would seem to me to be more fittingly heard in a seminary and not in a court of law. In short, Mr Mack, you are proposing a defence that is highly irregular, highly unorthodox, and one which fills me with grave misgivings.’

‘Precisely, sir.’ The warm, knowing smile again. ‘As well it should, for the very nature of this case is highly irregular and highly unorthodox. As I explained to the jury, it is a case that is unique in the annals of Anglo-Saxon jurisprudence and one that will be studied, discussed, written about, and for ever chronicled in the histories and record books detailing man’s advent on earth.’

He was courting him. Judge Langley knew the bastard was courting him - dangling the carrot fame in front of his nose, appealing to his baser instincts in order to jockey him into position. There were no ends these Hebes wouldn’t go to in order to get what they wanted, he thought sourly. And yet the point was well made; there was no denying that. There’d be a hell of a press on this baby. For a change, Part Seven would find itself bustling and glittering under the glare of lights, cameras, boob-tube lenses, hallway press conferences, the whole ball of wax. They had never thrown the big ones his way. Fuller, Kararian, Pletchkow, Tanner, they got the cream of the cases. And left the dregs for him. The family squabbles. The junkie busts. The crap. Well, maybe the time had come to drag his ass out of the sewer they had consigned him to and step up into the light of day. It would mean letting his guard down, leaving himself open to possible criticism and ridicule. But what the hell? So what? How much longer did he have left anyway? Damn heart rumbling around inside his chest like an old motor-boat. Be nice being followed around for a change. Asked questions. Made a fuss over. Yeah, it’d be nice for a change.

‘… and I submit, Your Honour, that if you deny the defence the right to develop a full understanding of what reincarnation consists of, a belief that is shared by millions upon millions of people in this world, you will be denying the defendant his constitutional right to plead his case and defend himself in the only possible manner left him. Furthermore, the defence is prepared to submit evidence supporting the defendant’s claim that the girl is his reincarnated daughter.’

Velie caught something in the judge’s look, a slight slackening of the skin around the mouth, a wandering of focus in the eyes, that set off warning bells clanging in his brain. Langley was going for it! He was buying the bullshit! Goddamn!

‘Your Honour,’ Velie quickly interposed, but even as he spoke, he knew it was too late. ‘Your Honour, this is beyond belief. Such a defence is totally unknown in Western courts. Reincarnation is believed in a portion of the world, true, but that world is not our world here. Are you going to impose another culture on our culture? You cannot do that, for then it will defy the laws that our legislature in its wisdom has passed down for the benefit of our society.’

Judge Langley’s tongue carefully moistened his lips before they opened to speak.

‘You may be absolutely right, Mr Velie, and I’m not saying you are wrong. However, I feel there is some merit in Mr Mack’s assessment of the situation. Since kidnapping is such a serious charge, I don’t feel I can deprive the defendant of any defence he chooses to engage in that has some semblance of possibility for him.’

Brice Mack remained immobile, scarcely breathing, as Scott Velie shot to his feet and, flushed with anger, turned upon the old judge.

‘Judge Langley,’ he said, pronouncing the name as he would a malediction, ‘I plead with you to reconsider a decision for which there is no legal precedent.’ His tone shifted subtly to a threatening register. ‘It may well open a Pandora’s box you may find impossible to close.’

‘Your concern is appreciated, Mr Velie,’ Langley said drily. ‘Nevertheless, until you can cite me any authority that holds reincarnation is impossible, I am not disposed to close off any area of defence for the defendant, so I will allow this testimony to go in, subject to its being connected to the actual facts of the case.’

And that was it.

Brice Mack had won.

By the time Judge Langley had returned to the bench and reconvened the court the room was more than three-quarters filled with spectators waiting breathlessly in an atmosphere charged with anticipation. How the news that something was about to break in Part Seven had managed to travel as quickly and reach as many people as it had was completely baffling to Janice. Even the press row was accommodated by an assprtment of newspaper and radio people, slouching in their seats, quietly awaiting the recommencement of the proceedings with smiling interest.

The defence attorney began with a tightly puzzled expression on his face ‘Now where were we/ he softly queried, leaving unstated but strictly implied, ‘before we were so rudely interrupted?’ The question and the way in which it was put clearly informed the jurors that he had won his point in chambers and was now able to pursue the ends of justice in a free manner. Janice noticed that several jurors smiled and that a number of them cast surreptitious glances at Scott Velie, who sat motionless with his back turned to the defence attorney. She also sensed Bill gradually sinking deeper and deeper into his seat as the message of Velie’s defeat got through to him.

‘Let me see,’ Mack continued, pretending to sort through the cobwebs of his mind for the correct point of departure, not only fully aware of exactly where he had left off but of the precise order and nuance of each word he was about to utter - written, rewritten, rehearsed, and performed for hours on end each night for the past month before the cracked mirror in his cheap roach-ridden flat on West 103rd Street.

‘Oh, yes, I was saying that we will demonstrate that the most conclusive and strongest possible familial relationship does indeed exist between the defendant, Elliot Hoover, and the child known as Ivy Templeton. A relationship, ladies and gentlemen, based not on the laws of man, which are imperfect and changeable, but on the perfect and immutable laws of a God and a religion embraced by more than one billion people on earth today; laws which are adhered to, believed in, practised, and utilized in their daily lives with the same conviction and faith that we, in this courtroom, that you, sitting in that jury box, ascribe to your own religion.’

There was a soft rustling throughout the court as Brice Mack paused. The jury exchanged glances with one another. The reporters’ pencils remained poised over their pads.

‘In the course of testimony, you will hear learned men expound on this religion, this faith and belief. You will be made privy to its tenets, its beauty, its rules and conditions, and its rewards.’ Turning towards Hoover, Brice Mack extended a finger out to him in a gentle gesture. ‘You will hear a story from that man, from his own lips - a story that will shake you, grieve you, but that will in the end thrill you and uplift you. You will know of his child, his only child, Audrey Rose, aged five, and of her tragic and horrible end along with her mother in a fiery automobile accident. You will feel the keenness of Elliot Hoover’s loss, the desperate lonpliness of his life in the aftermath of that terrible tragedy; you will hear how, in his darkest moment, a power and insight were granted him, how a message came to him, from the other side of the grave, as it were, a message through the intercession of one of this nation’s most honoured and revered exponents of psychic phenomena, the late Erik Lloyd. A message that sent this honest, bedrock American, a man such as you and I,’ he emphasized, gazing pointedly at Mr Fitzgerald, ‘on a journey to far and exotic lands in order to corroborate its authenticity, to rid himself of all sceptipism and doubt before permitting himself to credit its contents. A journey lasting seven years, during which time he embraced not only a faith and religion theretofore totally unknown to him, but a people as well, living with them, sharing their lives, their joys, their hopes, their misfortunes, and all for the purpose of ascertaining the validity of that strange and wondrous message proffered him by Erik Lloyd. A message that, if inaccurate, could seriously injure, do irreparable damage to the lives of three innocent human beings, but a message that, if true, could well provide the answer to one of man’s most ancient and unexplained mysteries; that would shed light on the very meaning and nature of life … and death.

‘A message that said …’

The graveyard silence in the courtroom sustained the perfect atmosphere for Brice Mack’s next remark, which came with the force and fury of a thunderclap.

‘SHE LIVES!’ he shouted, and wheeled around from the jury box to face the audience, his right hand pointing dramatically towards heaven. ‘YOUR DAUGHTER LIVES! AUDREY ROSE LIVES!’

Janice felt the entire courtroom jump as the words rent the air. Even Judge Langley flinched. Only Bill, burrowed deeply in his seat, eyes shut, chin sunk into his collar, mired in liquor and his own despair, seemed out of it.

‘She lives!’ Mack crooned tremblingly, his voice filled with a child’s awe. ‘Audrey Rose has returned! Her soul has crossed over the vale of darkness into a new earth life where it now resides in perfect harmony within the body of a child - a child who dwells in the city of New York and who is called Ivy.’

A general breath was exhaled by the court, accompanied by scattered titters. The jurors’ faces seemed stiff and unnatural, under cpnstraint tp maintain the proper degree of decorum under the circumstances; a losing battle in Juror Number Four, Mr Potash, the accountant, who was smiling blatantly.

Judge Langley pounded his gavel for order but voiced no warning.

‘Yes, folks,’ Brice Mack continued on a less histrionic note, ‘this is the message that Elliot Hoover received from Erik Lloyd. It said that his daughter was alive. That Audrey Rose had been reincarnated. And through subsequent investigations, he would learn that on August 4, 1964, at exactly eight twenty-seven in the morning, a few minutes after the car accident which took his child’s life, she was reborn in New York Hospital to Mr and Mrs William Templeton and would in this earth life henceforth be known as Ivy.’

Janice heard the woman reporter in front of her softly chuckle and say, ‘Oh, come now.’ Bill, deep in his seat beside her, made neither sound nor movement and seemed to be asleep or, Janice did not rule out the possibility, passed out.