Free Judgment on Deltchev by Eric Ambler

rostrum and with his own guards walked slowly toward the glazed doors. Nobody else in court moved. They watched him. At the door he paused and looked back. Then with a small, friendly nod he turned away again and went on through the doors.
    I looked at Pashik. He was standing stiffly and awkwardly as if caught in the act of rising. He did not seem to notice his discomfort. He looked at me rather strangely. ‘A good man, Mr Foster,’ he said softly, ‘in his way, a great man.’
    But I did not pay much attention to him. Even now I can remember everything I thought during that next half-hour. I was very shocked by what I had seen and heard and full of hatred for the People’s Party regime. I think that if I had met Dr Prochaska in the corridor outside the courtroom I should have hit him. But soon I began to think more reasonably.
    Nobody, I thought, could share the experience I had just had without also sharing my passionate indignation at what was being done in that sunny courtroom. If I could convey the scene with even a tenth of the impact it had in reality, I would arouse a storm of anger that might damage the regime appreciably. And then an idea began to form in my mind of how I might write about the Deltchev trial.
    This, I thought suddenly, was more than just the crooked trial of a politician by his more powerful opponents. Here, epitomized, was the eternal conflict between the dignity of mankind and the brutish stupidity of the swamp. Deltchev, sick and alone, knowing that nothing could save him from a verdict and a sentence already decided upon, was yet prepared to go on fighting for thetruth he believed in. Dimitrov at the Reichstag fire trial had fought for his life and won. Deltchev’s life was already forfeit, but he was fighting nonetheless and might win a greater victory. And the fight was of his own choosing. Months back he could have escaped abroad and made the Government’s task easy. He had not done so. Long-forgotten sentences began to run through my mind.
    Will you then flee from well-ordered cities and virtuous men? And is existence worth having on these terms? Or will you go to them without shame, and talk to them, Socrates? And what will you say to them? What you say here about virtue and justice and institutions and laws being the best things among men? Would that be decent of you? Surely not … Will there be no one to remind you that in your old age you were not ashamed to violate the most sacred laws from a miserable desire for a little more life?… This, dear Crito, is the voice I seem to hear murmuring in my ears, like the sound of a flute in the ears of a mystic …
    I was deeply moved. I was also beginning to enjoy myself.
    And then I got back to my hotel, and Petlarov was waiting in the corridor.
    We went into my room and I told him what had happened.
    He nodded coolly when I had finished. ‘Oh yes. Poor Yordan. He is certainly not strong. But how foolish of them not to tell Prochaska how the victim was being prepared! But we may expect foolishness. You see, they have always been able to rely before upon the folly of others. Now that they have to rely on themselves, their deficienciesare revealed. Of course an incident like that will make no difference to the outcome of the trial.’
    ‘No, but it will make a great difference to the comments on the trial in the Atlantic countries.’
    ‘The comments of the West did not save Petkov or Mindszenty. I think it is interesting, however, in quite a different way.’ He smiled thinly. ‘Why do you think Yordan made this demonstration? What did he hope to gain by it?’
    ‘He saw an opportunity of hitting back and he took it. Surely, that’s obvious. It was splendid.’
    ‘He saw an opportunity and took it, certainly. What exactly did he say finally – the last two sentences?’
    I had scribbled down Deltchev’s words as he had said them. I read the last two sentences again. ‘ “I merely ask you to note that he makes wrong