The testimony of Stokes and Josie has contradicted the prosecution’s assertion of cold-blooded murder. Stokes feared for his life before entering the Grand Central Hotel on the day of the shooting; in the stairwell he saw Fisk pull a pistol, or thought he did; his shots were fired in self-defense. So Stokes has said. Josie has corroborated Stokes’s reason for fear and Fisk’s possession of a gun.

But, doubtless worried that the jury will judge the siren and her paramour less than credible, the defense hedges its bets. It summons expert witnesses who suggest that Fisk died not of shock from the gunshot wounds but from the opium administered for the pain. “A man in the prime of life, in unusually sound health, receives a severe injury from a pistol-shot wound,” defense counsel Townsend says to Dr. John M. Carnochan, physician and surgeon. “That man being a man of temperate habits in the use of spirituous liquors, the shock is recovered from, his pulse seventy-six, respiration twenty-four, the wound having been inflicted about half past four in the afternoon, his pulse having fallen very low, about half past six his pulse is seventy-six and respiration twenty-four, and about half past ten his pulse is natural and respiration normal, his intelligence good—would you apprehend any danger from shock?”

“When we see a patient recovering from shock, his functions again working naturally,” Carnochan replies, “we would infer that there is no immediate apprehension of collapse.”

Townsend asks Dr. Benjamin Macready the same questions and receives a similar negative. “What was the cause of the death of Mr. Fisk?” Townsend then inquires.

“I have no doubt that the cause of death was directly the influence of opium,” Macready answers. “It was not shock. It was opium and nothing else.”

The defense returns to its argument that Stokes was insane, at least temporarily, at the time of the shooting. To establish a pattern of unbalance, his lawyers summon Edward H. Stokes, the seventy-two-year-old father of the prisoner. “Mr. Stokes, state to your recollection whether or not you have discovered any change in the conduct of the prisoner, and if so where and of what character?”

“From the time of his first trouble with Mr. Fisk, six or eight months before his arrest.”

“Will you state to the jury what those appearances or evidences were?”

“He complained of a great pain in his head.” The elder Stokes covers his eyes and cradles his head as if in severe pain. “There was an entire unfixedness of purpose; he would propose a thing one moment, and the next he would fly off on another subject. On one or two occasions, when I would proffer any advice, he would seem very much excited and very disrespectful, different from his former behavior.”

“Did you notice anything peculiar in his countenance or his eye?”

“Yes, sir.”

“What was it?”

“I can hardly describe it, rather different from what I had ever seen before.”

“Have there been cases of insanity in your family?”

Mr. Stokes winces visibly. “Yes, sir. I had a brother who died in the insane asylum.”

“Any other cases?”

“I had a sister who became imbecile.”

Nancy Stokes, the mother of the prisoner, testifies that her son had grown very agitated after his tangle with Fisk. “His eyes had a wild appearance that I had never seen before,” she says.

Howard Stokes, the prisoner’s brother, describes a particular manifestation of Stokes’s nervousness. “He told me he couldn’t pass a night without the pistol, and hadn’t for some time.”

Ned Stokes squirms under the testimony of those who know him best. The unconcern he affected just after Fisk’s death has vanished; escaping from this trial with his life seems to demand surrendering his self-respect. The bargain might be necessary, but he doesn’t like it.