“How have you happened to become so familiar with court life?”“Oh, me, I am not so familiar with it as that. Once-twice—that is enough for one who know how to use his eyes and ear—more is not necessary.”“No, as you say, once or twice ought to be enough; it’s a pity that you’ve found it necessary to extend your experience. Orsini, have you ever been in jail?”“Who—me?” The glittering smile with which Mr. Orsini was in the habit of decorating his periods was not completely withdrawn, but it became slightly more reticent. His lambent eyes roved reproachfully in the direction of Mr. Farr, who seemed more absorbed than ever in his notes. “In what kind of a jail you mean?”Mr. Lambert looked obviously disconcerted. “I mean jail—any kind of a jail.”“Was it up on a hill, perhaps, this jail?” inquired his victim helpfully.“On a hill? What’s that got to do with it? How should I know whether it was on a hill?”“A high hill, mebbe, with trees all about it?” Once more Orsini’s hands were eloquent.“All right, all right, were you ever in a jail on a hill with trees around it?”Orsini gazed blandly into the irate and contemptuous countenance thrust toward him. “No, sair,” he replied regretfully. “If that jail was up on a hill with trees around it, then I was not in that jail.”Once more the courtroom, reckless of the gavel, yielded to helpless and hilarious uproar, and for this time they were spared. One look at Mr. Lambert’s countenance, a full moon in the throes of apoplexy, had undermined even Judge Carver’s iron reserves. The gavel remained idle while he indulged himself in a severe attack of coughing behind a large and protective handkerchief. The red-headed girl was using a more minute one to mop her eyes when she paused, startled and incredulous. Across the courtroom, Patrick and his wife Susan were laughing into each other’s eyes, for one miraculous moment the gay and care-free comrades of old; for one moment—and then, abruptly, memory swept back her lifted veil and they sat staring blankly at the dreadful havoc that lay between them, who had been wont to seek each other in laughter. Slowly, painfully, Sue Ives wrenched her eyes back to their schooled vigilance, and after an interminable breath, Pat Ives turned his haunted ones back to the window, beyond which the sky was still blue. Only in that second’s wait the red-headed girl had seen the dark flush sweep across his pallor, and the hunger in those imploring eyes, frantic and despairing as those of a small boy who had watched a beloved hand slam a heavy door in his face.“Why, he loves her!” thought the red-headed girl. “He loves her dreadfully!” Those few scattered seconds when laughter and hope and despair had swept across a court—how long—how long they seemed! And yet they would have scantily sufficed to turn a pretty phrase or a platitude on the weather. They had just barely served to give the portly Lambert time to recover his breath, his voice, and his venom, all three of which he was now proceeding to utilize simultaneously and vigorously.“I see, I see. You’re particular about your jails—like them in valleys, do you? Now be good enough to answer my question without any further trifling.”“What question is that?”“Have you ever been in jail?”Mr. Orsini’s expression became faintly tinged with caution, but its affability did not diminish. “When?” he inquired impartially.“When? Any time! Will—you—answer—my—question?”Thus rudely adjured, his victim yielded to the inevitable with philosophy, humour, and grace. “Not any time—no, no! That is too exaggerate’. But sometimes—yes—I do not deny that sometimes I have been in jail.”Under the eyes of the entranced spectators, Mr. Lambert’s rosy jowls darkened to a fine, deep, full-bodied maroon. “You don’t deny it, hey? Well, that’s very magnanimous and gratifying—very gratifying indeed. Now will you continue to gratify us by telling us just why you went to jail?”Mr. Orsini dismissed his penal career with an eloquent shrug. “Ah, well, for what thing do you not go to jail in these days? If you do not have money to pay for fine, it is jail for you! You drink beer what is two and three quarter, you shake up some dice where you think nobody care, you drive nine and one-half mile over a bridge where it say eight and one half——”“That will do, Orsini. In 1911 did you or did you not serve eight months in jail for stealing some rings from a hotel room?”“Ah, that—that is one dirty lie—one dirty plant is put on me! I get that——”From under the swarthy skin of the erstwhile suave citizen of the world there leaped, sallow with fury, livid with fear, the Calabrian peasant, ugly and vengeful, chattering with incoherent rage. Lambert eyed him with profound satisfaction.“Yes, yes—naturally. It always is. Very unfortunate; our jails are crowded with these errors. It’s true, too, isn’t it, Orsini, that less than three weeks before the murder you told Mr. Bellamy that the reason you hadn’t asked your little Milanese friend to marry you was that you couldn’t afford to buy her an engagement ring?”“You—you——”“Just one moment, Orsini.” The prosecutor’s low voice cut sharply across the thick, violent stammering. “Don’t answer that question. . . . Your Honour, I once more respectfully inquire as to whether this is the trial of Mr. Bellamy and Mrs. Ives or of my witnesses, individually and en masse?”“And the Court has told you once before that it does not reply to purely rhetorical questions, Mr. Farr. You are perfectly aware as to whose trial this is, and while the Court is inclined to agree as to the impropriety of the last question, it does not believe that it is in error in stating that it is some time since you have seen fit to object to any of the questions put by Mr. Lambert to your witness.”“Your Honour is quite correct. It being my profound conviction that I have an absolutely unshakable case, I have studiously refrained from injecting the usual note of acrimonious bickering into these proceedings that is supposed to be the legal prerogative. This kind of thing causes me profoundly to regret my forbearance, I may state. About two out of three witnesses that I’ve put on the stand have been practically accused of committing or abetting this murder. Whether they’re all supposed to be in one gigantic conspiracy or to have played lone hands is still a trifle hazy, but there’s no doubt whatever about the implications. Miss Page, Miss Cordier, Mr. Farwell, Mr. Ives, Mr. Orsini—it’ll be getting around to me in a minute.”“I object to this, Your Honour, I object!” The choked and impassioned voice of Mr. Dudley Lambert went down before the clear, metallic clang of the prosecutor’s, roused at last from lethargy.“And I object, too—I object to a great many things! I object to the appalling gravity of a trial for murder being turned into a farce by the kind of thing that’s been going on here this morning. I’m entirely serious in saying that Mr. Lambert might just as well select me as a target for his insinuations. I used to live in Rosemont. I have a good sharp pocket knife—my wife hasn’t a sapphire ring to her name—I’ve been arrested three times—twice for exceeding a speed limit of twenty-two miles an hour and once for trying to reason with a traffic cop who had delusions of grandeur and a——”“That will do, Mr. Farr.” There was a highly peremptory note in Judge Carver’s voice. “The Court has exercised possibly undue liberality in permitting you to extend your observations on this point, because it seemed well taken. It does not believe that you will gain anything by further elaboration. Mr. Lambert your last question is overruled. Have you any further ones to put to the witness?”Mr. Lambert, looking a striking combination of a cross baby and a bulldog, did not take these observations kindly. “Am I denied the opportunity of attacking the credibility of the extraordinary collection of individuals that Mr. Farr chooses to produce as witnesses?”“You are not. In what way does your inquiry as to Mr. Orsini’s inability to provide a young woman with an engagement ring purport to attack his credibility?”“It purports to show that Orsini had a distinct motive for robbery and——”“Precisely. And precisely for that reason, since Mr. Orsini is not on trial here, the Court considers the question irrelevant and incompetent, as well as improper. Have you any further ones to put?”“No.” The rage that was consuming the unchastened Mr. Lambert choked his utterance and bulged his eyes. “No further questions. May I have an exception from Your Honour’s ruling?”“Certainly.”Orsini, stepping briskly down from the witness box, lingered long enough to bestow on his late inquisitor a glance in which knives flashed and blood flowed freely—a glance which Mr. Lambert, goaded by frustrated rage, returned with interest. The violence remained purely ocular, however, and the obviously disappointed spectators began to crawl laboriously to their feet.“Call for Turner.”“Joseph Turner!”A bright-eyed, brown-faced, friendly-looking boy swung alertly into the box and fired a pair of earnest young eyes on the prosecutor.“What was your occupation on June nineteenth of this year, Mr. Turner?”“I was bus driver over the Perrytown route.”“Still are?”“No, sir; driving for the same outfit, but over a new route—Redfield to Glenvale.”“Ever see these before, Turner?”The prosecutor lifted a black chiffon cape and lace scarf from the pasteboard box beside him and extended them casually toward the witness.The boy eyed them soberly. “Yes, sir.”“When?”“Two or three times, sir; the last time was the night of the nineteenth of June.”“At what time?”“At about eight-thirty-five.”“Where did you pick Mrs. Bellamy up?”“At about a quarter of a mile beyond her house, toward the club. There’s a bus stop there, and she stepped out from some deep shadows at the side of the road and signalled me to stop.”“Did you know Mrs. Bellamy by name at that time?”“No, sir; I found out later. That’s when I learned where her house was too.”“Was yours the first bus that she could have caught?”“If she missed the eight o’clock bus. Mine was the next.”“Did anything particularly draw your attention to her?”“Yes, sir. She had her face all muffled up in her veil, the way she always did, but I specially noticed her slippers. They were awfully pretty shiny silver slippers, and when I let her out at the corner before Orchards it was sort of muddy, and I thought they sure were foolish little things to walk in, but that it was a terrible pity to spoil ’em like that.”“How long did it take you to cover the distance between the point from which you picked Mrs. Bellamy up to the point at which you set her down?”“About eight minutes, I should say. It’s a little over two miles—nearer two and a half, I guess.”“Did she seem in a hurry?”“Yes, sir, she surely did; when she got out at the Orchards corner she started off almost at a run. I pretty nearly called to her to look out or she’d trip herself, but then I decided that it wasn’t none of my business, and of course it wasn’t.”“How do you fix the date and the time, Turner?”“Well, that’s easy. It was my last trip that night to Perrytown, see? And about the date, next morning I saw how there had been the—a—well, a murder at Orchards, and I remembered her and those silver slippers, and that black cloak, so I dropped in at headquarters to tell ’em what I knew—and it was her all right. They made me go over and look at her, and I won’t forget that in a hurry, either—no, sir.”The boy who had driven her to Orchards set his lips hard, turning his eyes resolutely from the little black cloak. “I got ’em to change my route the next day,” he said, his pleasant young voice suddenly shaken.“You say that you had driven her over several times before?”“Well, two or three times, I guess—all in that last month too. I only had the route a month.”“Same time—half-past eight?”“That’s right—eight-thirty.”“Anything in particular call your attention to her?”“Well, I should think she’d have called anyone’s attention to her,” said Joe Turner gently. “Even all wrapped up like that, she was prettier than anything I ever saw in my whole life.” And he added, more gently still: “About twenty times prettier.”The prosecutor stood silent for a moment, letting the hushed voice evoke once more that radiant image, lace-scarfed, silver-slippered, slipping off into the shadows. “That will be all,” he said. “Cross-examine.”“No questions.” Even Lambert’s voice boomed less roundly.“Next witness—Sergeant Johnson.”“Sergeant Hendrick Johnson!”Obedient to Ben Potts’s lyric summons, a young gentleman who looked like a Norse god inappropriately clothed in gray whipcord and a Sam Browne belt strode promptly down the aisle and into the witness box.“Sergeant Johnson, what was your occupation on the nineteenth of June, 1926?”“State trooper—sergeant.”“When did you first receive notification of the murder at Orchards?”“At a little before ten on the morning of the twentieth of June. I’d just dropped in at headquarters when Mr. Conroy came in to report what he’d discovered at the cottage.”“Please tell us what happened then.”“I was detailed to accompany Mr. Dutton, the coroner, Dr. Stanley and another trooper, Dan Wilkins, to the cottage. Mr. Dutton took Dr. Stanley along with him in his roadster, and Wilkins rode with me in my side car. We left headquarters at a little after ten and got to the cottage about quarter past.”“Just one moment. Do I understand that the state troopers have headquarters in Rosemont?”“That’s correct, sir.”“Of which you are in charge?”“That’s correct too.”“Who had the key to the cottage?”“I had it; Mr. Conroy had turned it over to me. I unlocked the door of the cottage myself, and we all went in together.” The crisp, assured young voice implied that a murder more or less was all in the day’s work to the state police.“Did you drive directly up to the cottage door?”“No; we left the motorcycle and the car just short of the spot where the little dirt road to the cottage hits the gravel road to the main house and went in on foot, using the grass strip that edges the road.”“Any special reason for that?”“There certainly was. We didn’t want to mix up footprints and other marks any more than they’d been mixed already.”“What happened after you got in the house?”“Well, Mr. Dutton and the doctor took charge of the body, and we helped them to move it into the dining room across the hall, after a careful inspection had been made of the position of the body. As a matter of fact, a chalk outline was made of it for further analysis, if necessary, and I took a flash light or so of it so that we’d have that, too, to check up with later. I helped to carry the body to the other room and place it on the table, where it was decided to keep it until the autopsy could be performed. I then locked the door of the parlour so that nothing could be disturbed there, put the key in my pocket, and went out to inspect the marks in the dirt road. I left Mr. Dutton and Dr. Stanley with the body and sent Wilkins down the road to a gas station to telephone Mr. Bellamy that his wife had been found in the cottage. There was no telephone in the cottage, and the one at the main house had been disconnected.”“Sergeant, was Mr. Bellamy under suspicion at the time that you telephoned him?”“I didn’t do the telephoning,” corrected Sergeant Johnson dispassionately; and added more dispassionately still; “Everyone was under suspicion.”“Mr. Bellamy no more than another?”“What I said was,” remarked the sergeant with professional reticence, “that everyone was under suspicion.”Mr. Farr met the imperturbable blue eye of his witness with an expression in which irritation and discretion were struggling for supremacy. Discretion triumphed. “Did you discover any tracks on the cottage road?”“I surely did.”“Footprints?”“No; there were some prints, but they were too cut up and blurred to make much out of. What I found were tire tracks.”“More than one set?”“There were traces of at least four sets, two of them made by the same car.”“All equally distinct?”“No, they varied considerably. The ground in the cottage road is of a distinctly clayey character, which under the proper conditions would act almost as a cast.”“What would be a proper condition?”“A damp state following a rainstorm, followed in turn by sufficient fair weather to permit the impression to dry out.”“Was such a state in existence?”“In one case—yes. There was a storm between one and three on the afternoon of the nineteenth. We’ll call the tire impressions A, B 1 and 2, and C. A showed only very vague traces of a very broad, massive tire on a heavy car. It was almost obliterated, showing that it must have been there either before or during the downpour.”“Would those tracks have corresponded to the ones on Mr. Farwell’s car?”“There were absolutely no distinguishing tire marks left; it could have been Mr. Farwell’s or any other large car. C had come much later, when the ground had had time to dry out considerably. They were the traces of a medium-sized tire on fairly dry ground. They cut across the tracks left by both A and B.”“Could they have been made by Mr. Conroy’s car?”“I think that very likely they were. I checked up as well as possible under the conditions, and they corresponded all right.”“What about the B impressions?”“Both the B impressions were as sharp and distinct as though they had been made in wax. They were made by the same car; judging from the soil conditions, at an interval of an hour or so. We made a series of tests later to see how long it retained moisture.”“Of what nature were these impressions, sergeant?”“They were narrow tires, such as are used on the smaller, lighter cars,” said Sergeant Johnson, a slight tinge of gravity touching the curtness of his unemotional young voice. “Two of the tires—the ones on the front right and rear left wheels had the tread so worn off that it would be risky to hazard a guess as to their manufacture. The ones on the front left and rear right were brand new, and the impressions in both cases were as clear cut as though you’d carved them. The impressions of B 2 were even deeper than B 1, showing that the car must have stood much longer at one time than at another. We experimented with that, too, but the results weren’t definite enough to report on positively.”“What makes you so clear as to which were B 2?”“At one spot B 2 was superimposed on B 1 very distinctly.”“What were the makes of the rear right and left front tires, sergeant?”“The rear right was a new Ajax tire; the front left was a practically new Silvertown cord.”“Did they correspond with any of the cars mentioned so far in this case?”“They corresponded exactly with the tires on Mr. Stephen Bellamy’s car when we inspected it on the afternoon of June twentieth.”“No possibility of error?”“Not a chance,” said Sergeant Johnson, succinctly and gravely.“Exactly. Had the car been washed at the time you inspected it, Sergeant?”“No, sir, it had not.”“Was there mud on the tires?”“Yes, but as it was of much the same character as the mud in Mr. Bellamy’s own drive, we attached no particular importance to it.”“Was there any grease on the car?”“No, sir; we made a very thorough inspection. There was no trace of grease.”“Did you find anything else of consequence on the premises, sergeant?”“I picked up a kind of lunch box in the shrubbery outside, and in the dining room, on a chair in the corner, I found a black cape—chiffon, I expect you call it—a black lace scarf and a little black silk bag with a shiny clasp that looked like diamonds.”“Did you keep a list of the contents of the bag?”“I did.”“Have you it with you?”“I have.”“Let’s hear it, please?”“ ‘Contents of black purse found in dining room of Thorne Cottage, June 20, 1926,’ ” read Sergeant Johnson briskly, “ ‘One vanity case, pale green enamel; one lip stick, same; one small green linen handkerchief, marked Mimi; leather frame inclosing snapshot of man in tennis clothes, inscribed For My Mimi from Steve; sample of blue chiffon with daisies; gold pencil; two theatre-ticket stubs to Vanities, June eighth; three letters, written on white bond paper, signed Pat.’ ”“That’s all?”“That’s all.”“Are these the articles found in the dining room, sergeant?”Sergeant Johnson eyed the contents of the box placed before him somewhat cursorily. “Those are the ones.”“Just check over the contents of the bag, will you? Nothing missing?”“Not a thing.”“I ask to have these marked for identification and offer them in evidence, Your Honour.”“No objections,” said Mr. Lambert unexpectedly.Mr. Farr eyed him incredulously for a moment, as though he doubted the evidence of his ears. Then, rather thoughtfully, he produced another object from the inexhaustible maw of his desk and poised it carefully on the ledge under the sergeant’s nose. It was a box—a nice, shiny tin box, painted a cheerful but decorous maroon—the kind of a box that good little boys carry triumphantly to school, bursting with cookies and apples and peanut-butter sandwiches. It had a neat handle and a large, beautiful, early English initial painted on the top.“Did you recognize this, sergeant?”“Yes. It’s a lunch box that I picked up back of the shrubbery to the left of the Orchards cottage.”“Had it anything in it?”“It was about three-quarters empty. There was a ham sandwich and some salted nuts and dates in it, and a couple of doughnuts.”“What should you say that the initial on the cover represented?”“I shouldn’t say,” remarked the sergeant frankly. “It’s got too many curlicues and doodads. It might be a D, or it might be P, or then again, it mightn’t be either.”“So far as you know, it hasn’t been identified as anyone’s property?”“No, sir.”“It might have been left there at some previous date?”“Well, it might have been; but the food seemed pretty fresh, and there were some new twigs broken off, as though someone had pressed way back into the shrubbery.”“I offer this box in evidence, Your Honour, not as of any evidential value, but merely to keep the record straight as to what was turned over by the police.”“No objections,” said Mr. Lambert with that same surprising promptitude, his eyes following the shiny box somewhat hungrily.“Very well, sergeant, that’s all. Cross-examine.”“Did you examine the portion of the drive to the rear of the cottage, sergeant?” inquired Mr. Lambert with genial interest.“Yes, sir.”“Find any traces of tires?”“No, sir.”“No further questions,” intoned Mr. Lambert mellifluously.Mr. Farr turned briskly to an unhappy-looking young man crouching apprehensively in a far corner. “Now, Mr. Oliver, I’m going to get you just to read these three letters into the record. I’m unable to do it myself, as I’ve been subjected to considerable eye strain recently.”“Do I start with the one on top?” inquired the wretched youth, who looked as though he were about to die at any moment.“Start with the first in order of date,” suggested Mr. Farr benevolently. “May twenty-first, I think it is. And just raise your voice a little so we’ll all be able to hear you.”“Darling, darling,” roared Mr. Oliver unbelievably, and paused, staring about him wildly, flame coloured far beyond the roots of his russet hair. “May twenty-first,” he added in a suffocated whisper.Darling, darling:I waited there for you for over an hour. I couldn’t believe that you weren’t coming—not after you’d promised. And when I got back and found that hateful, stiff little note—— Mimi, how could you? You didn’t mean it to say, “I don’t love you”? It didn’t say that, did it? It sounded so horribly as though that was what it was trying to say that I kept both hands over my ears all the time that I was reading it. I won’t believe it. You do—you must. You’re the only thing that I’ve ever loved in all my life, Mimi; I swear it. You’re the only thing that I’ll ever love, as long as I live.You say that you’re frightened; that there’s been talk—oh, darling, what of it? “They say? What say they? Let them say!” They’re a lot of wise, sensible, good-for-nothing idiots, who haven’t anything better to do in the world than wag their heads and their tongues, or else they’re a pack of young fools, frantic with jealousy because they can’t be beautiful like Mimi or lucky like Pat. If their talk gets really dangerous or ugly we can shut them all up in ten seconds by telling them that we’re planning to shake the dust of Rosemont from our heels any minute, and live happy ever after in some “cleaner, greener land.”Do you want me to tell them that I’ve asked you fifteen thousand and three times to burn all our bridges and marry me, Mimi? Or didn’t you hear me? You always look then as though you were listening to someone else—someone with a louder voice than mine, saying “Wait—not yet. Think again—you’ll be sorry. Be careful—be careful.” Don’t listen to that liar, Mimi—listen to Pat, who loves you.To-morrow night, about nine, I’ll have the car at the back road. I’ll manage to get away somehow, and you must too. Wear that frilly thing that I love—you know, the green one—and the slippers with butterflies on them, and nothing on your hair. The wickedest thing that you ever do is to wear a hat. No, I’m wrong, you can wear something on your hair, after all. On the two curls right behind your ears—the littlest curls—my curls—you can wear two drops of that stuff that smells like lilacs in the rain. And I’ll put you—and your curls—and your slippers—and your sweetness—and your magic—into my car and we’ll drive twenty miles away from those wagging tongues. And, Mimi, I’ll teach you how beautiful it is to be alive and young and in love, in a world that’s full of spring and stars and lilacs. Oh, Mimi, come quickly and let me teach you!Pat.The halting voice laboured to an all too brief silence. Even the back of Mr. Oliver’s neck was incandescent—perhaps he would not have flamed so hotly if he had realized how few eyes in the courtroom were resting on him. For across the crowded little room, Sue Ives, all her gay serenity gone, was staring at the figure by the window with terrified and incredulous eyes, black with tears.“Oh, Pat—oh, Pat,” cried those drowning eyes, “what is this that you have done to us? Never loved anyone else? Never in all your life? What is this that you have done?”And as though in answer to that despairing cry, the man by the window half rose, shaking his head in fierce entreaty.“Don’t listen! Don’t listen!” implored his frantic eyes. . . .“Now the next one, Mr. Oliver,” said Mr. Farr.Rosemont, June 8th.Mimi darling, darling, darling:It’s after four o’clock and the birds in the vines outside the window are making the most awful row. I haven’t closed my eyes yet, and now I’m going to stop trying. What’s the use of sleeping, when here’s another day with Mimi in it? Dawn—I always thought it was the worst word in the English language, and here I am on my knees waiting for it, and ranting about it like any fool—like any happy, happy fool.I’m so happy that it simply isn’t decent. I keep telling myself that we’re mad—that there’s black trouble ahead of us—that I haven’t any right in the world to let you do this—that I’m older and ought to be wiser. And when I get all through, the only thing I can remember is that I feel like a kid waking up on his birthday to find the sun and the moon and the stars and the world and a little red wagon sitting in a row at the foot of his bed. Because I have you, Mimi, and you’re the sun and the moon and the stars and the world—and a little red wagon too, my beautiful love.Well, here’s the sun himself, and no one in Rosemont to pay any attention to him but the milkman and me. “The sun in splendour”—what comes after that, do you remember? Not that it makes any difference; the only thing that makes any difference is that what will come after that in just a few minutes will be a clock striking five—and then six and then seven and it will be another day—another miraculous, incredible day getting under way in a world that holds Mimi in it. Lucky day, lucky world, lucky, lucky me, Mimi, who will be your worshipper while this world lasts.Good morning, Beautiful.Your Pat.The eyes of the Court swung avidly back to the slim figure in the space before them, but for once that bright head was bowed. Sue Ives was no longer looking at Mimi’s worshipper.“And the next?” murmured Farr.Rosemont, June 9th.My little heart:I went to bed the minute I got home, just as I promised, but it didn’t do much good. I did go to sleep for a bit, but it was only to dream that you were leaning over me again with your hair swinging down like two lovely clouds of fire and saying over and over in that small, blessed voice—that voice that I’d strain to hear from under three feet of sod—“It’s not a dream, love, it’s not a dream—it’s Mimi, who’s yours and who’s sweeter than all the dreams you’ll dream between here and heaven. Wake up. Wake up! She’s waiting for you. How can you sleep?” And I couldn’t sleep; no, it’s no use. Mimi, how can I ever sleep again, now that I have you?It wasn’t just a dream that between those shining clouds that are your hair your eyes were bright with laughter and with tears, was it, Mimi? No, that was not a dream. To think that anyone in the world can cry and still be beautiful! It must be an awful temptation to do it all the time—only I know that you won’t. Darling, don’t cry. Even when you look beautiful and on the edge of laughter, it makes me want to kill myself. It’s because you’re afraid, isn’t it—afraid that we won’t be able to make a go of it? Don’t be afraid. If you will come to me—really, forever, not in little snatched bits of heaven like this, but to belong to me all the days of my life—if you will believe in me and trust me, I swear that I’ll make you happy. I swear it.I know that at first it may be hideously hard. I know that giving up everything here and starting life all over somewhere with strangers will be hard to desperation. But it will be easier than trying to fight it out here, won’t it, Mimi? And in the end we’ll hold happiness in our hands—you’ll see, my blessed. Don’t cry, don’t cry, my little girl—not even in dreams, not even through laughter. Because, you see, like the Prince and Princess in the fairy tale, we’re going to live happy ever after.Your Pat.“That concludes the letters?” inquired Judge Carver, hopefully, his eyes on the bowed head beneath his throne.“That concludes them,” said Mr. Farr, removing them deftly from the assistant prosecutor’s palsied fingers. “And as it is close to four, I would like to make a suggestion. The state is ready to rest its case with these letters, but an extremely unfortunate occurrence has deprived us so far of one of our witnesses, who is essential as a link in the chain of evidence that we have forged. This witness was stricken three weeks ago with appendicitis and rushed to a New York hospital. I was given every assurance that he would be able to be present by this date, but late last week unfavourable symptoms developed and he has been closely confined ever since.“I have here the surgeon’s certificate that he is absolutely unable to take the stand to-day, but that it is entirely possible that he may do so by Monday. As this is Friday, therefore, I respectfully suggest that we adjourn to Monday, when the state will rest its case.”“Have you any objections, Mr. Lambert?”“Every objection, Your Honour!” replied Mr. Lambert with passionate conviction. “I have two witnesses myself who have come here at great inconvenience to themselves and are obliged to return at the earliest possible moment. What about them? What about the unfortunate jury? What about the unfortunate defendants? I have most emphatic objections to delaying this trial one second longer.”“Then I can only suggest that the trial proceed and that the state be permitted to produce its witness as soon as is humanly possible, in which case the defense would necessarily be permitted to produce what witnesses it saw fit in rebuttal.”Mr. Lambert, still flown with some secret triumph, made an ample gesture of condescension.“Very well, I consider it highly irregular, but leave it that way—leave it that way by all means. Now, Your Honour——”“You say you have a certificate, Mr. Farr?”“Yes, Your Honour.”“May we have its contents?”“Certainly.” Mr. Farr tendered it promptly. “It’s from the chief surgeon at St. Luke’s. As you see, it simply says that it would be against his express orders that Dr. Barretti should take the stand to-day, but that, if nothing unfavourable develops, he should be able to do so by Monday.”“Yes. Well, Mr. Farr, if Mr. Lambert has no objections you may produce Dr. Barretti then. You have no further questions?”“None, Your Honour.”“Very well, the Court stands adjourned until to-morrow at ten.”“What name did he say?” inquired the reporter in a curiously hushed voice. “Dr. What?”“It sounded like Barretti,” said the red-headed girl, getting limply to her feet.“The poor fool!” murmured the reporter in the same awe-stricken tones.“What?”“Lambert. Did you get that? The poor blithering fool doesn’t know who he is and where he’s heading.”“Well, who is he?” inquired the red-headed girl over her shoulder despairingly. She felt that if anything else happened she would sit on the floor and cry, and she didn’t want to—much.“It’s Barretti—Gabriel Barretti,” said the reporter. “The greatest finger-print expert in the world. Lord, it means that he must have their—— What in the world’s the matter? D’you want a handkerchief?”The red-headed girl, nodding feebly, clutched at the large white handkerchief with one hand and the large blue serge sleeve with the other. Anyway, she hadn’t sat on the floor.The fourth day of the Bellamy trial was over.
“How have you happened to become so familiar with court life?”
“Oh, me, I am not so familiar with it as that. Once-twice—that is enough for one who know how to use his eyes and ear—more is not necessary.”
“No, as you say, once or twice ought to be enough; it’s a pity that you’ve found it necessary to extend your experience. Orsini, have you ever been in jail?”
“Who—me?” The glittering smile with which Mr. Orsini was in the habit of decorating his periods was not completely withdrawn, but it became slightly more reticent. His lambent eyes roved reproachfully in the direction of Mr. Farr, who seemed more absorbed than ever in his notes. “In what kind of a jail you mean?”
Mr. Lambert looked obviously disconcerted. “I mean jail—any kind of a jail.”
“Was it up on a hill, perhaps, this jail?” inquired his victim helpfully.
“On a hill? What’s that got to do with it? How should I know whether it was on a hill?”
“A high hill, mebbe, with trees all about it?” Once more Orsini’s hands were eloquent.
“All right, all right, were you ever in a jail on a hill with trees around it?”
Orsini gazed blandly into the irate and contemptuous countenance thrust toward him. “No, sair,” he replied regretfully. “If that jail was up on a hill with trees around it, then I was not in that jail.”
Once more the courtroom, reckless of the gavel, yielded to helpless and hilarious uproar, and for this time they were spared. One look at Mr. Lambert’s countenance, a full moon in the throes of apoplexy, had undermined even Judge Carver’s iron reserves. The gavel remained idle while he indulged himself in a severe attack of coughing behind a large and protective handkerchief. The red-headed girl was using a more minute one to mop her eyes when she paused, startled and incredulous. Across the courtroom, Patrick and his wife Susan were laughing into each other’s eyes, for one miraculous moment the gay and care-free comrades of old; for one moment—and then, abruptly, memory swept back her lifted veil and they sat staring blankly at the dreadful havoc that lay between them, who had been wont to seek each other in laughter. Slowly, painfully, Sue Ives wrenched her eyes back to their schooled vigilance, and after an interminable breath, Pat Ives turned his haunted ones back to the window, beyond which the sky was still blue. Only in that second’s wait the red-headed girl had seen the dark flush sweep across his pallor, and the hunger in those imploring eyes, frantic and despairing as those of a small boy who had watched a beloved hand slam a heavy door in his face.
“Why, he loves her!” thought the red-headed girl. “He loves her dreadfully!” Those few scattered seconds when laughter and hope and despair had swept across a court—how long—how long they seemed! And yet they would have scantily sufficed to turn a pretty phrase or a platitude on the weather. They had just barely served to give the portly Lambert time to recover his breath, his voice, and his venom, all three of which he was now proceeding to utilize simultaneously and vigorously.
“I see, I see. You’re particular about your jails—like them in valleys, do you? Now be good enough to answer my question without any further trifling.”
“What question is that?”
“Have you ever been in jail?”
Mr. Orsini’s expression became faintly tinged with caution, but its affability did not diminish. “When?” he inquired impartially.
“When? Any time! Will—you—answer—my—question?”
Thus rudely adjured, his victim yielded to the inevitable with philosophy, humour, and grace. “Not any time—no, no! That is too exaggerate’. But sometimes—yes—I do not deny that sometimes I have been in jail.”
Under the eyes of the entranced spectators, Mr. Lambert’s rosy jowls darkened to a fine, deep, full-bodied maroon. “You don’t deny it, hey? Well, that’s very magnanimous and gratifying—very gratifying indeed. Now will you continue to gratify us by telling us just why you went to jail?”
Mr. Orsini dismissed his penal career with an eloquent shrug. “Ah, well, for what thing do you not go to jail in these days? If you do not have money to pay for fine, it is jail for you! You drink beer what is two and three quarter, you shake up some dice where you think nobody care, you drive nine and one-half mile over a bridge where it say eight and one half——”
“That will do, Orsini. In 1911 did you or did you not serve eight months in jail for stealing some rings from a hotel room?”
“Ah, that—that is one dirty lie—one dirty plant is put on me! I get that——”
From under the swarthy skin of the erstwhile suave citizen of the world there leaped, sallow with fury, livid with fear, the Calabrian peasant, ugly and vengeful, chattering with incoherent rage. Lambert eyed him with profound satisfaction.
“Yes, yes—naturally. It always is. Very unfortunate; our jails are crowded with these errors. It’s true, too, isn’t it, Orsini, that less than three weeks before the murder you told Mr. Bellamy that the reason you hadn’t asked your little Milanese friend to marry you was that you couldn’t afford to buy her an engagement ring?”
“You—you——”
“Just one moment, Orsini.” The prosecutor’s low voice cut sharply across the thick, violent stammering. “Don’t answer that question. . . . Your Honour, I once more respectfully inquire as to whether this is the trial of Mr. Bellamy and Mrs. Ives or of my witnesses, individually and en masse?”
“And the Court has told you once before that it does not reply to purely rhetorical questions, Mr. Farr. You are perfectly aware as to whose trial this is, and while the Court is inclined to agree as to the impropriety of the last question, it does not believe that it is in error in stating that it is some time since you have seen fit to object to any of the questions put by Mr. Lambert to your witness.”
“Your Honour is quite correct. It being my profound conviction that I have an absolutely unshakable case, I have studiously refrained from injecting the usual note of acrimonious bickering into these proceedings that is supposed to be the legal prerogative. This kind of thing causes me profoundly to regret my forbearance, I may state. About two out of three witnesses that I’ve put on the stand have been practically accused of committing or abetting this murder. Whether they’re all supposed to be in one gigantic conspiracy or to have played lone hands is still a trifle hazy, but there’s no doubt whatever about the implications. Miss Page, Miss Cordier, Mr. Farwell, Mr. Ives, Mr. Orsini—it’ll be getting around to me in a minute.”
“I object to this, Your Honour, I object!” The choked and impassioned voice of Mr. Dudley Lambert went down before the clear, metallic clang of the prosecutor’s, roused at last from lethargy.
“And I object, too—I object to a great many things! I object to the appalling gravity of a trial for murder being turned into a farce by the kind of thing that’s been going on here this morning. I’m entirely serious in saying that Mr. Lambert might just as well select me as a target for his insinuations. I used to live in Rosemont. I have a good sharp pocket knife—my wife hasn’t a sapphire ring to her name—I’ve been arrested three times—twice for exceeding a speed limit of twenty-two miles an hour and once for trying to reason with a traffic cop who had delusions of grandeur and a——”
“That will do, Mr. Farr.” There was a highly peremptory note in Judge Carver’s voice. “The Court has exercised possibly undue liberality in permitting you to extend your observations on this point, because it seemed well taken. It does not believe that you will gain anything by further elaboration. Mr. Lambert your last question is overruled. Have you any further ones to put to the witness?”
Mr. Lambert, looking a striking combination of a cross baby and a bulldog, did not take these observations kindly. “Am I denied the opportunity of attacking the credibility of the extraordinary collection of individuals that Mr. Farr chooses to produce as witnesses?”
“You are not. In what way does your inquiry as to Mr. Orsini’s inability to provide a young woman with an engagement ring purport to attack his credibility?”
“It purports to show that Orsini had a distinct motive for robbery and——”
“Precisely. And precisely for that reason, since Mr. Orsini is not on trial here, the Court considers the question irrelevant and incompetent, as well as improper. Have you any further ones to put?”
“No.” The rage that was consuming the unchastened Mr. Lambert choked his utterance and bulged his eyes. “No further questions. May I have an exception from Your Honour’s ruling?”
“Certainly.”
Orsini, stepping briskly down from the witness box, lingered long enough to bestow on his late inquisitor a glance in which knives flashed and blood flowed freely—a glance which Mr. Lambert, goaded by frustrated rage, returned with interest. The violence remained purely ocular, however, and the obviously disappointed spectators began to crawl laboriously to their feet.
“Call for Turner.”
“Joseph Turner!”
A bright-eyed, brown-faced, friendly-looking boy swung alertly into the box and fired a pair of earnest young eyes on the prosecutor.
“What was your occupation on June nineteenth of this year, Mr. Turner?”
“I was bus driver over the Perrytown route.”
“Still are?”
“No, sir; driving for the same outfit, but over a new route—Redfield to Glenvale.”
“Ever see these before, Turner?”
The prosecutor lifted a black chiffon cape and lace scarf from the pasteboard box beside him and extended them casually toward the witness.
The boy eyed them soberly. “Yes, sir.”
“When?”
“Two or three times, sir; the last time was the night of the nineteenth of June.”
“At what time?”
“At about eight-thirty-five.”
“Where did you pick Mrs. Bellamy up?”
“At about a quarter of a mile beyond her house, toward the club. There’s a bus stop there, and she stepped out from some deep shadows at the side of the road and signalled me to stop.”
“Did you know Mrs. Bellamy by name at that time?”
“No, sir; I found out later. That’s when I learned where her house was too.”
“Was yours the first bus that she could have caught?”
“If she missed the eight o’clock bus. Mine was the next.”
“Did anything particularly draw your attention to her?”
“Yes, sir. She had her face all muffled up in her veil, the way she always did, but I specially noticed her slippers. They were awfully pretty shiny silver slippers, and when I let her out at the corner before Orchards it was sort of muddy, and I thought they sure were foolish little things to walk in, but that it was a terrible pity to spoil ’em like that.”
“How long did it take you to cover the distance between the point from which you picked Mrs. Bellamy up to the point at which you set her down?”
“About eight minutes, I should say. It’s a little over two miles—nearer two and a half, I guess.”
“Did she seem in a hurry?”
“Yes, sir, she surely did; when she got out at the Orchards corner she started off almost at a run. I pretty nearly called to her to look out or she’d trip herself, but then I decided that it wasn’t none of my business, and of course it wasn’t.”
“How do you fix the date and the time, Turner?”
“Well, that’s easy. It was my last trip that night to Perrytown, see? And about the date, next morning I saw how there had been the—a—well, a murder at Orchards, and I remembered her and those silver slippers, and that black cloak, so I dropped in at headquarters to tell ’em what I knew—and it was her all right. They made me go over and look at her, and I won’t forget that in a hurry, either—no, sir.”
The boy who had driven her to Orchards set his lips hard, turning his eyes resolutely from the little black cloak. “I got ’em to change my route the next day,” he said, his pleasant young voice suddenly shaken.
“You say that you had driven her over several times before?”
“Well, two or three times, I guess—all in that last month too. I only had the route a month.”
“Same time—half-past eight?”
“That’s right—eight-thirty.”
“Anything in particular call your attention to her?”
“Well, I should think she’d have called anyone’s attention to her,” said Joe Turner gently. “Even all wrapped up like that, she was prettier than anything I ever saw in my whole life.” And he added, more gently still: “About twenty times prettier.”
The prosecutor stood silent for a moment, letting the hushed voice evoke once more that radiant image, lace-scarfed, silver-slippered, slipping off into the shadows. “That will be all,” he said. “Cross-examine.”
“No questions.” Even Lambert’s voice boomed less roundly.
“Next witness—Sergeant Johnson.”
“Sergeant Hendrick Johnson!”
Obedient to Ben Potts’s lyric summons, a young gentleman who looked like a Norse god inappropriately clothed in gray whipcord and a Sam Browne belt strode promptly down the aisle and into the witness box.
“Sergeant Johnson, what was your occupation on the nineteenth of June, 1926?”
“State trooper—sergeant.”
“When did you first receive notification of the murder at Orchards?”
“At a little before ten on the morning of the twentieth of June. I’d just dropped in at headquarters when Mr. Conroy came in to report what he’d discovered at the cottage.”
“Please tell us what happened then.”
“I was detailed to accompany Mr. Dutton, the coroner, Dr. Stanley and another trooper, Dan Wilkins, to the cottage. Mr. Dutton took Dr. Stanley along with him in his roadster, and Wilkins rode with me in my side car. We left headquarters at a little after ten and got to the cottage about quarter past.”
“Just one moment. Do I understand that the state troopers have headquarters in Rosemont?”
“That’s correct, sir.”
“Of which you are in charge?”
“That’s correct too.”
“Who had the key to the cottage?”
“I had it; Mr. Conroy had turned it over to me. I unlocked the door of the cottage myself, and we all went in together.” The crisp, assured young voice implied that a murder more or less was all in the day’s work to the state police.
“Did you drive directly up to the cottage door?”
“No; we left the motorcycle and the car just short of the spot where the little dirt road to the cottage hits the gravel road to the main house and went in on foot, using the grass strip that edges the road.”
“Any special reason for that?”
“There certainly was. We didn’t want to mix up footprints and other marks any more than they’d been mixed already.”
“What happened after you got in the house?”
“Well, Mr. Dutton and the doctor took charge of the body, and we helped them to move it into the dining room across the hall, after a careful inspection had been made of the position of the body. As a matter of fact, a chalk outline was made of it for further analysis, if necessary, and I took a flash light or so of it so that we’d have that, too, to check up with later. I helped to carry the body to the other room and place it on the table, where it was decided to keep it until the autopsy could be performed. I then locked the door of the parlour so that nothing could be disturbed there, put the key in my pocket, and went out to inspect the marks in the dirt road. I left Mr. Dutton and Dr. Stanley with the body and sent Wilkins down the road to a gas station to telephone Mr. Bellamy that his wife had been found in the cottage. There was no telephone in the cottage, and the one at the main house had been disconnected.”
“Sergeant, was Mr. Bellamy under suspicion at the time that you telephoned him?”
“I didn’t do the telephoning,” corrected Sergeant Johnson dispassionately; and added more dispassionately still; “Everyone was under suspicion.”
“Mr. Bellamy no more than another?”
“What I said was,” remarked the sergeant with professional reticence, “that everyone was under suspicion.”
Mr. Farr met the imperturbable blue eye of his witness with an expression in which irritation and discretion were struggling for supremacy. Discretion triumphed. “Did you discover any tracks on the cottage road?”
“I surely did.”
“Footprints?”
“No; there were some prints, but they were too cut up and blurred to make much out of. What I found were tire tracks.”
“More than one set?”
“There were traces of at least four sets, two of them made by the same car.”
“All equally distinct?”
“No, they varied considerably. The ground in the cottage road is of a distinctly clayey character, which under the proper conditions would act almost as a cast.”
“What would be a proper condition?”
“A damp state following a rainstorm, followed in turn by sufficient fair weather to permit the impression to dry out.”
“Was such a state in existence?”
“In one case—yes. There was a storm between one and three on the afternoon of the nineteenth. We’ll call the tire impressions A, B 1 and 2, and C. A showed only very vague traces of a very broad, massive tire on a heavy car. It was almost obliterated, showing that it must have been there either before or during the downpour.”
“Would those tracks have corresponded to the ones on Mr. Farwell’s car?”
“There were absolutely no distinguishing tire marks left; it could have been Mr. Farwell’s or any other large car. C had come much later, when the ground had had time to dry out considerably. They were the traces of a medium-sized tire on fairly dry ground. They cut across the tracks left by both A and B.”
“Could they have been made by Mr. Conroy’s car?”
“I think that very likely they were. I checked up as well as possible under the conditions, and they corresponded all right.”
“What about the B impressions?”
“Both the B impressions were as sharp and distinct as though they had been made in wax. They were made by the same car; judging from the soil conditions, at an interval of an hour or so. We made a series of tests later to see how long it retained moisture.”
“Of what nature were these impressions, sergeant?”
“They were narrow tires, such as are used on the smaller, lighter cars,” said Sergeant Johnson, a slight tinge of gravity touching the curtness of his unemotional young voice. “Two of the tires—the ones on the front right and rear left wheels had the tread so worn off that it would be risky to hazard a guess as to their manufacture. The ones on the front left and rear right were brand new, and the impressions in both cases were as clear cut as though you’d carved them. The impressions of B 2 were even deeper than B 1, showing that the car must have stood much longer at one time than at another. We experimented with that, too, but the results weren’t definite enough to report on positively.”
“What makes you so clear as to which were B 2?”
“At one spot B 2 was superimposed on B 1 very distinctly.”
“What were the makes of the rear right and left front tires, sergeant?”
“The rear right was a new Ajax tire; the front left was a practically new Silvertown cord.”
“Did they correspond with any of the cars mentioned so far in this case?”
“They corresponded exactly with the tires on Mr. Stephen Bellamy’s car when we inspected it on the afternoon of June twentieth.”
“No possibility of error?”
“Not a chance,” said Sergeant Johnson, succinctly and gravely.
“Exactly. Had the car been washed at the time you inspected it, Sergeant?”
“No, sir, it had not.”
“Was there mud on the tires?”
“Yes, but as it was of much the same character as the mud in Mr. Bellamy’s own drive, we attached no particular importance to it.”
“Was there any grease on the car?”
“No, sir; we made a very thorough inspection. There was no trace of grease.”
“Did you find anything else of consequence on the premises, sergeant?”
“I picked up a kind of lunch box in the shrubbery outside, and in the dining room, on a chair in the corner, I found a black cape—chiffon, I expect you call it—a black lace scarf and a little black silk bag with a shiny clasp that looked like diamonds.”
“Did you keep a list of the contents of the bag?”
“I did.”
“Have you it with you?”
“I have.”
“Let’s hear it, please?”
“ ‘Contents of black purse found in dining room of Thorne Cottage, June 20, 1926,’ ” read Sergeant Johnson briskly, “ ‘One vanity case, pale green enamel; one lip stick, same; one small green linen handkerchief, marked Mimi; leather frame inclosing snapshot of man in tennis clothes, inscribed For My Mimi from Steve; sample of blue chiffon with daisies; gold pencil; two theatre-ticket stubs to Vanities, June eighth; three letters, written on white bond paper, signed Pat.’ ”
“That’s all?”
“That’s all.”
“Are these the articles found in the dining room, sergeant?”
Sergeant Johnson eyed the contents of the box placed before him somewhat cursorily. “Those are the ones.”
“Just check over the contents of the bag, will you? Nothing missing?”
“Not a thing.”
“I ask to have these marked for identification and offer them in evidence, Your Honour.”
“No objections,” said Mr. Lambert unexpectedly.
Mr. Farr eyed him incredulously for a moment, as though he doubted the evidence of his ears. Then, rather thoughtfully, he produced another object from the inexhaustible maw of his desk and poised it carefully on the ledge under the sergeant’s nose. It was a box—a nice, shiny tin box, painted a cheerful but decorous maroon—the kind of a box that good little boys carry triumphantly to school, bursting with cookies and apples and peanut-butter sandwiches. It had a neat handle and a large, beautiful, early English initial painted on the top.
“Did you recognize this, sergeant?”
“Yes. It’s a lunch box that I picked up back of the shrubbery to the left of the Orchards cottage.”
“Had it anything in it?”
“It was about three-quarters empty. There was a ham sandwich and some salted nuts and dates in it, and a couple of doughnuts.”
“What should you say that the initial on the cover represented?”
“I shouldn’t say,” remarked the sergeant frankly. “It’s got too many curlicues and doodads. It might be a D, or it might be P, or then again, it mightn’t be either.”
“So far as you know, it hasn’t been identified as anyone’s property?”
“No, sir.”
“It might have been left there at some previous date?”
“Well, it might have been; but the food seemed pretty fresh, and there were some new twigs broken off, as though someone had pressed way back into the shrubbery.”
“I offer this box in evidence, Your Honour, not as of any evidential value, but merely to keep the record straight as to what was turned over by the police.”
“No objections,” said Mr. Lambert with that same surprising promptitude, his eyes following the shiny box somewhat hungrily.
“Very well, sergeant, that’s all. Cross-examine.”
“Did you examine the portion of the drive to the rear of the cottage, sergeant?” inquired Mr. Lambert with genial interest.
“Yes, sir.”
“Find any traces of tires?”
“No, sir.”
“No further questions,” intoned Mr. Lambert mellifluously.
Mr. Farr turned briskly to an unhappy-looking young man crouching apprehensively in a far corner. “Now, Mr. Oliver, I’m going to get you just to read these three letters into the record. I’m unable to do it myself, as I’ve been subjected to considerable eye strain recently.”
“Do I start with the one on top?” inquired the wretched youth, who looked as though he were about to die at any moment.
“Start with the first in order of date,” suggested Mr. Farr benevolently. “May twenty-first, I think it is. And just raise your voice a little so we’ll all be able to hear you.”
“Darling, darling,” roared Mr. Oliver unbelievably, and paused, staring about him wildly, flame coloured far beyond the roots of his russet hair. “May twenty-first,” he added in a suffocated whisper.
Darling, darling:I waited there for you for over an hour. I couldn’t believe that you weren’t coming—not after you’d promised. And when I got back and found that hateful, stiff little note—— Mimi, how could you? You didn’t mean it to say, “I don’t love you”? It didn’t say that, did it? It sounded so horribly as though that was what it was trying to say that I kept both hands over my ears all the time that I was reading it. I won’t believe it. You do—you must. You’re the only thing that I’ve ever loved in all my life, Mimi; I swear it. You’re the only thing that I’ll ever love, as long as I live.You say that you’re frightened; that there’s been talk—oh, darling, what of it? “They say? What say they? Let them say!” They’re a lot of wise, sensible, good-for-nothing idiots, who haven’t anything better to do in the world than wag their heads and their tongues, or else they’re a pack of young fools, frantic with jealousy because they can’t be beautiful like Mimi or lucky like Pat. If their talk gets really dangerous or ugly we can shut them all up in ten seconds by telling them that we’re planning to shake the dust of Rosemont from our heels any minute, and live happy ever after in some “cleaner, greener land.”Do you want me to tell them that I’ve asked you fifteen thousand and three times to burn all our bridges and marry me, Mimi? Or didn’t you hear me? You always look then as though you were listening to someone else—someone with a louder voice than mine, saying “Wait—not yet. Think again—you’ll be sorry. Be careful—be careful.” Don’t listen to that liar, Mimi—listen to Pat, who loves you.To-morrow night, about nine, I’ll have the car at the back road. I’ll manage to get away somehow, and you must too. Wear that frilly thing that I love—you know, the green one—and the slippers with butterflies on them, and nothing on your hair. The wickedest thing that you ever do is to wear a hat. No, I’m wrong, you can wear something on your hair, after all. On the two curls right behind your ears—the littlest curls—my curls—you can wear two drops of that stuff that smells like lilacs in the rain. And I’ll put you—and your curls—and your slippers—and your sweetness—and your magic—into my car and we’ll drive twenty miles away from those wagging tongues. And, Mimi, I’ll teach you how beautiful it is to be alive and young and in love, in a world that’s full of spring and stars and lilacs. Oh, Mimi, come quickly and let me teach you!Pat.
Darling, darling:
I waited there for you for over an hour. I couldn’t believe that you weren’t coming—not after you’d promised. And when I got back and found that hateful, stiff little note—— Mimi, how could you? You didn’t mean it to say, “I don’t love you”? It didn’t say that, did it? It sounded so horribly as though that was what it was trying to say that I kept both hands over my ears all the time that I was reading it. I won’t believe it. You do—you must. You’re the only thing that I’ve ever loved in all my life, Mimi; I swear it. You’re the only thing that I’ll ever love, as long as I live.
You say that you’re frightened; that there’s been talk—oh, darling, what of it? “They say? What say they? Let them say!” They’re a lot of wise, sensible, good-for-nothing idiots, who haven’t anything better to do in the world than wag their heads and their tongues, or else they’re a pack of young fools, frantic with jealousy because they can’t be beautiful like Mimi or lucky like Pat. If their talk gets really dangerous or ugly we can shut them all up in ten seconds by telling them that we’re planning to shake the dust of Rosemont from our heels any minute, and live happy ever after in some “cleaner, greener land.”
Do you want me to tell them that I’ve asked you fifteen thousand and three times to burn all our bridges and marry me, Mimi? Or didn’t you hear me? You always look then as though you were listening to someone else—someone with a louder voice than mine, saying “Wait—not yet. Think again—you’ll be sorry. Be careful—be careful.” Don’t listen to that liar, Mimi—listen to Pat, who loves you.
To-morrow night, about nine, I’ll have the car at the back road. I’ll manage to get away somehow, and you must too. Wear that frilly thing that I love—you know, the green one—and the slippers with butterflies on them, and nothing on your hair. The wickedest thing that you ever do is to wear a hat. No, I’m wrong, you can wear something on your hair, after all. On the two curls right behind your ears—the littlest curls—my curls—you can wear two drops of that stuff that smells like lilacs in the rain. And I’ll put you—and your curls—and your slippers—and your sweetness—and your magic—into my car and we’ll drive twenty miles away from those wagging tongues. And, Mimi, I’ll teach you how beautiful it is to be alive and young and in love, in a world that’s full of spring and stars and lilacs. Oh, Mimi, come quickly and let me teach you!
Pat.
The halting voice laboured to an all too brief silence. Even the back of Mr. Oliver’s neck was incandescent—perhaps he would not have flamed so hotly if he had realized how few eyes in the courtroom were resting on him. For across the crowded little room, Sue Ives, all her gay serenity gone, was staring at the figure by the window with terrified and incredulous eyes, black with tears.
“Oh, Pat—oh, Pat,” cried those drowning eyes, “what is this that you have done to us? Never loved anyone else? Never in all your life? What is this that you have done?”
And as though in answer to that despairing cry, the man by the window half rose, shaking his head in fierce entreaty.
“Don’t listen! Don’t listen!” implored his frantic eyes. . . .
“Now the next one, Mr. Oliver,” said Mr. Farr.
Rosemont, June 8th.Mimi darling, darling, darling:It’s after four o’clock and the birds in the vines outside the window are making the most awful row. I haven’t closed my eyes yet, and now I’m going to stop trying. What’s the use of sleeping, when here’s another day with Mimi in it? Dawn—I always thought it was the worst word in the English language, and here I am on my knees waiting for it, and ranting about it like any fool—like any happy, happy fool.I’m so happy that it simply isn’t decent. I keep telling myself that we’re mad—that there’s black trouble ahead of us—that I haven’t any right in the world to let you do this—that I’m older and ought to be wiser. And when I get all through, the only thing I can remember is that I feel like a kid waking up on his birthday to find the sun and the moon and the stars and the world and a little red wagon sitting in a row at the foot of his bed. Because I have you, Mimi, and you’re the sun and the moon and the stars and the world—and a little red wagon too, my beautiful love.Well, here’s the sun himself, and no one in Rosemont to pay any attention to him but the milkman and me. “The sun in splendour”—what comes after that, do you remember? Not that it makes any difference; the only thing that makes any difference is that what will come after that in just a few minutes will be a clock striking five—and then six and then seven and it will be another day—another miraculous, incredible day getting under way in a world that holds Mimi in it. Lucky day, lucky world, lucky, lucky me, Mimi, who will be your worshipper while this world lasts.Good morning, Beautiful.Your Pat.
Rosemont, June 8th.
Mimi darling, darling, darling:
It’s after four o’clock and the birds in the vines outside the window are making the most awful row. I haven’t closed my eyes yet, and now I’m going to stop trying. What’s the use of sleeping, when here’s another day with Mimi in it? Dawn—I always thought it was the worst word in the English language, and here I am on my knees waiting for it, and ranting about it like any fool—like any happy, happy fool.
I’m so happy that it simply isn’t decent. I keep telling myself that we’re mad—that there’s black trouble ahead of us—that I haven’t any right in the world to let you do this—that I’m older and ought to be wiser. And when I get all through, the only thing I can remember is that I feel like a kid waking up on his birthday to find the sun and the moon and the stars and the world and a little red wagon sitting in a row at the foot of his bed. Because I have you, Mimi, and you’re the sun and the moon and the stars and the world—and a little red wagon too, my beautiful love.
Well, here’s the sun himself, and no one in Rosemont to pay any attention to him but the milkman and me. “The sun in splendour”—what comes after that, do you remember? Not that it makes any difference; the only thing that makes any difference is that what will come after that in just a few minutes will be a clock striking five—and then six and then seven and it will be another day—another miraculous, incredible day getting under way in a world that holds Mimi in it. Lucky day, lucky world, lucky, lucky me, Mimi, who will be your worshipper while this world lasts.
Good morning, Beautiful.
Your Pat.
The eyes of the Court swung avidly back to the slim figure in the space before them, but for once that bright head was bowed. Sue Ives was no longer looking at Mimi’s worshipper.
“And the next?” murmured Farr.
Rosemont, June 9th.My little heart:I went to bed the minute I got home, just as I promised, but it didn’t do much good. I did go to sleep for a bit, but it was only to dream that you were leaning over me again with your hair swinging down like two lovely clouds of fire and saying over and over in that small, blessed voice—that voice that I’d strain to hear from under three feet of sod—“It’s not a dream, love, it’s not a dream—it’s Mimi, who’s yours and who’s sweeter than all the dreams you’ll dream between here and heaven. Wake up. Wake up! She’s waiting for you. How can you sleep?” And I couldn’t sleep; no, it’s no use. Mimi, how can I ever sleep again, now that I have you?It wasn’t just a dream that between those shining clouds that are your hair your eyes were bright with laughter and with tears, was it, Mimi? No, that was not a dream. To think that anyone in the world can cry and still be beautiful! It must be an awful temptation to do it all the time—only I know that you won’t. Darling, don’t cry. Even when you look beautiful and on the edge of laughter, it makes me want to kill myself. It’s because you’re afraid, isn’t it—afraid that we won’t be able to make a go of it? Don’t be afraid. If you will come to me—really, forever, not in little snatched bits of heaven like this, but to belong to me all the days of my life—if you will believe in me and trust me, I swear that I’ll make you happy. I swear it.I know that at first it may be hideously hard. I know that giving up everything here and starting life all over somewhere with strangers will be hard to desperation. But it will be easier than trying to fight it out here, won’t it, Mimi? And in the end we’ll hold happiness in our hands—you’ll see, my blessed. Don’t cry, don’t cry, my little girl—not even in dreams, not even through laughter. Because, you see, like the Prince and Princess in the fairy tale, we’re going to live happy ever after.Your Pat.
Rosemont, June 9th.
My little heart:
I went to bed the minute I got home, just as I promised, but it didn’t do much good. I did go to sleep for a bit, but it was only to dream that you were leaning over me again with your hair swinging down like two lovely clouds of fire and saying over and over in that small, blessed voice—that voice that I’d strain to hear from under three feet of sod—“It’s not a dream, love, it’s not a dream—it’s Mimi, who’s yours and who’s sweeter than all the dreams you’ll dream between here and heaven. Wake up. Wake up! She’s waiting for you. How can you sleep?” And I couldn’t sleep; no, it’s no use. Mimi, how can I ever sleep again, now that I have you?
It wasn’t just a dream that between those shining clouds that are your hair your eyes were bright with laughter and with tears, was it, Mimi? No, that was not a dream. To think that anyone in the world can cry and still be beautiful! It must be an awful temptation to do it all the time—only I know that you won’t. Darling, don’t cry. Even when you look beautiful and on the edge of laughter, it makes me want to kill myself. It’s because you’re afraid, isn’t it—afraid that we won’t be able to make a go of it? Don’t be afraid. If you will come to me—really, forever, not in little snatched bits of heaven like this, but to belong to me all the days of my life—if you will believe in me and trust me, I swear that I’ll make you happy. I swear it.
I know that at first it may be hideously hard. I know that giving up everything here and starting life all over somewhere with strangers will be hard to desperation. But it will be easier than trying to fight it out here, won’t it, Mimi? And in the end we’ll hold happiness in our hands—you’ll see, my blessed. Don’t cry, don’t cry, my little girl—not even in dreams, not even through laughter. Because, you see, like the Prince and Princess in the fairy tale, we’re going to live happy ever after.
Your Pat.
“That concludes the letters?” inquired Judge Carver, hopefully, his eyes on the bowed head beneath his throne.
“That concludes them,” said Mr. Farr, removing them deftly from the assistant prosecutor’s palsied fingers. “And as it is close to four, I would like to make a suggestion. The state is ready to rest its case with these letters, but an extremely unfortunate occurrence has deprived us so far of one of our witnesses, who is essential as a link in the chain of evidence that we have forged. This witness was stricken three weeks ago with appendicitis and rushed to a New York hospital. I was given every assurance that he would be able to be present by this date, but late last week unfavourable symptoms developed and he has been closely confined ever since.
“I have here the surgeon’s certificate that he is absolutely unable to take the stand to-day, but that it is entirely possible that he may do so by Monday. As this is Friday, therefore, I respectfully suggest that we adjourn to Monday, when the state will rest its case.”
“Have you any objections, Mr. Lambert?”
“Every objection, Your Honour!” replied Mr. Lambert with passionate conviction. “I have two witnesses myself who have come here at great inconvenience to themselves and are obliged to return at the earliest possible moment. What about them? What about the unfortunate jury? What about the unfortunate defendants? I have most emphatic objections to delaying this trial one second longer.”
“Then I can only suggest that the trial proceed and that the state be permitted to produce its witness as soon as is humanly possible, in which case the defense would necessarily be permitted to produce what witnesses it saw fit in rebuttal.”
Mr. Lambert, still flown with some secret triumph, made an ample gesture of condescension.
“Very well, I consider it highly irregular, but leave it that way—leave it that way by all means. Now, Your Honour——”
“You say you have a certificate, Mr. Farr?”
“Yes, Your Honour.”
“May we have its contents?”
“Certainly.” Mr. Farr tendered it promptly. “It’s from the chief surgeon at St. Luke’s. As you see, it simply says that it would be against his express orders that Dr. Barretti should take the stand to-day, but that, if nothing unfavourable develops, he should be able to do so by Monday.”
“Yes. Well, Mr. Farr, if Mr. Lambert has no objections you may produce Dr. Barretti then. You have no further questions?”
“None, Your Honour.”
“Very well, the Court stands adjourned until to-morrow at ten.”
“What name did he say?” inquired the reporter in a curiously hushed voice. “Dr. What?”
“It sounded like Barretti,” said the red-headed girl, getting limply to her feet.
“The poor fool!” murmured the reporter in the same awe-stricken tones.
“What?”
“Lambert. Did you get that? The poor blithering fool doesn’t know who he is and where he’s heading.”
“Well, who is he?” inquired the red-headed girl over her shoulder despairingly. She felt that if anything else happened she would sit on the floor and cry, and she didn’t want to—much.
“It’s Barretti—Gabriel Barretti,” said the reporter. “The greatest finger-print expert in the world. Lord, it means that he must have their—— What in the world’s the matter? D’you want a handkerchief?”
The red-headed girl, nodding feebly, clutched at the large white handkerchief with one hand and the large blue serge sleeve with the other. Anyway, she hadn’t sat on the floor.
The fourth day of the Bellamy trial was over.