He fell back into his seat, overwhelmed by a sudden giddiness. His thoughts whirled in his head, a mass of confused colors and shapes. What should he do? What could he do? He felt impelled to cry aloud that this was his son, and his son must be released. He put down the impulse. His son did not know it was he who had given the bottle. He watched while Yul-chun drank the tea in great gulps. Before he could finish, a guard saw him drinking and he came up to the barrier and snatched the bottle away.
“Who gave you this bottle?” he bawled.
“I found it in my hand,” Yul-chun said.
The guard turned and glared at all those near the barrier. Since Il-han sat nearest, he fixed upon him.
“Was it you, old man?”
Il-han was too dazed to speak and before he could recover, his servant spoke for him. “This old man is stone deaf,” he said. “He cannot hear you.”
The guard, getting no better answer from the fearful people, satisfied himself with striking a blow on Yul-chun’s right shoulder, and so heavily that blood trickled out from the broken flesh and mingled with the sweat, but Yul-chun did not move, not even to lift his head.
Now the judges returned and the trials began again and Il-han gathered his wits together to understand what was said. The first prisoner summoned was a teacher in a Christian school, a thin tall young man who had, it seemed, confessed the day before the trials that he had been compelled by the missionary American who was the headmaster of the school to appear at the place of the assassination. Now he denied what yesterday he had confessed. He denied, too, that he was a member of the New Peoples Society, to which yesterday he had also confessed. The judge, hearing these denials, was indignant.
“How can you deny before the Court today what yesterday you confessed to the procurator?” the judge demanded.
The man, who said he was once a corporal in the Korean army but was now a gymnastics teacher in a Christian school, replied, “I made false confessions yesterday because I was tortured by the authorities.”
“What!” the judge exclaimed in further anger. “You, a teacher, demean yourself to make false confessions because of torture?”
The man said doggedly that he could not hold out longer, and so he had lied. To all further questions he repeated no, he had never been visited by a ringleader in the conspiracy; no, he had never heard the plot discussed; no, he had not told the missionary of such a plot; no, he did not know there was a party of conspirators armed with revolvers at the railroad station at Syun-chun on the day of the attempted assassination; no, he had not even heard that the Governor-General was passing there; no, he did not know whether students in the school had been approached by the ringleader in the conspiracy; no, neither he nor his pupils had revolvers — how could they, when all were searched before being allowed on the platform?
So went the questions and answers, the prisoner standing in dogged patience until the questioner for the Court grew more and more loud in his demands. He pointed to a large box on the platform.
“Do you not know that this box was kept in the Christian school and in it were hidden revolvers?”
“I only went to the school to teach gymnastics. I know nothing else,” the prisoner replied.
The judge now lost patience and shouted.
“Next prisoner!”
The next prisoner, a squat, sturdy fellow who said he was thirty-eight years old and a farmer, answered all questions in the same fashion as had the first prisoner. He knew nothing of the New Peoples Society, nothing of the alleged meetings in the Christian schools; nothing of the purchase of revolvers or of assassination. He had never given money to buy revolvers, nor had he heard speeches against the Governor-General. Neither did he know whether the missionary headmaster had told the story of David and Goliath, and he knew nothing about the story, or about David or Goliath; no, he did not know which was the brave man, David or Goliath, yes, he had before confessed that he knew all these matters, but his confession was false and made under extreme torture.
The judge now became grim. He ordered the prisoner dismissed and the next man brought forward. Il-han had fully recovered his wits and he listened with both ears and his entire attention. The pattern of the trials was becoming clear. Under his son’s instruction, for who but Yul-chun could conceive so clever a plan, each prisoner denied every charge to which he had before confessed, saying that he had confessed only under extreme torture. The judges, the entire Court, also perceived the pattern, and the trials went on in ominous calm until evening. Then the Court adjourned until the next morning.
“I will not go home,” Il-han said to his servant. “Find me a bed in an inn and tell the mother of my sons that here I stay until the trials are concluded.”
The man obeyed, and Il-han ate a hearty meal at the inn and laid himself down on a mattress in a room with three traveling merchants. Pulling his quilt to his neck, he reviewed the day and marveled again at his son’s cleverness, and laughed under his beard, and then slept as he had not slept for many a night.
The second day of the trials proceeded exactly as the first, except that Il-han overslept and arrived too late to seat himself close to the barrier. He could not tell, therefore, where Yul-chun sat, and he could only stretch his head high to watch for his son’s appearance in the prisoners’ dock. All day he waited, listening to each prisoner deny the confession made before under torture. Most of these prisoners were young men, teachers or pupils from Christian schools, and the more he heard the more alarmed Il-han became for his second son lest he, too, become Christian. Fourteen men were examined on this second day. David and Goliath were also discussed, but all fourteen prisoners denied knowing these characters, although one young man of weak intellect said that he believed David was considered the braver of the two. Nothing else did the fourteen know. So ended the second day of the trial, and Il-han returned in high spirit to the inn, where his servant waited with a dish of kimchee from Sunia, who said the kimchee at the inn doubtless was not fit to eat.
The third day was not different from the first and the second. To the questions asked before, only a few new questions were added.
“Did the American Christian headmaster address the students, urging them to be bold and undertake a great effort?”
“Did you go to the railway station disguised as a Christian student?”
“Did you not see American Christian missionaries signal their pupils as the Governor-General walked along the platform?”
“Did you tell the students at the Taiyong Christian School to inspire one another with the same ideas that were declared by the assassin of Prince Ito in Harbin?”
“Do you not remember the names of the men to whom revolvers were given?”