Mrs. Balfame by Gertrude Atherton

It was two o'clock and ten minutes. The eleven remaining spectators, one of them a woman in evening dress, were sound asleep. The sheriff was pacing up and down with his hands behind his back, his perturbed glance ranging between the clock and the door leading into the jury-room. Occasionally he slipped on a bit of the debris and kicked it aside. The reporters slumbered at their tables or stared moodily ahead. One gnawed his pencil; another tore leaves of copy paper into morsels and laboriously built something that looked like a child's house of blocks. Outside it was deathly still. The snow was falling softly. It was too early for a cock-crow. Occasionally some one snored. The footfalls of the sheriff made no noise.

Suddenly every reporter present sat up with the scent of blood in his nostrils. Their ears twitched. The fumes blew out of their highly organised brains like mist before a bracing wind. An automobile was dashing down the road, its horn shrieking a series of brief peremptory notes, which sounded like "Wait! Wait! Wait!"