Read "The Skeleton Key" by Bernard Capes online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
(_From the Bickerdike MS._)
Who that was present at that scene could ever forget its anguish and pathos? Its fierce dramatic intensity will remain for all time indelibly seared on my soul. Could I believe in my friend's guilt? Knowing him, it was impossible: and yet that seemingly incontrovertible evidence as to when the shot was fired? If he had done it, if he _had_ done it, not his own nature but some fiend temporarily in possession of it must have directed his hand. But I would not believe he had done it. I would not, until I had heard him confess to it with his own lips. However appearances might be against him, he should find an unshakable ally in me. And if the worst were to come to the worst, and the trial confirm his guilt beyond dispute, there would be that yet for me to plead in revision of my former evidence so cruelly surprised from me, to plead in virtue of my intimacy with the unhappy boy -- that in the moods to which he was subject he was apt to lose complete control of himself, and to behave on occasions veritably like a madman. It might mitigate, extenuate -- who could say? But in the meantime I would not believe -- not though the world accused him.