Chapter IV“Well, this is the time you beat me to it,” commented the reporter approvingly. “That’s the hat I like too. Want a pencil?”“I always want a pencil,” said the red-headed girl. “And I beat everybody to it. I’d rather get here at six o’clock than go through that howling mob of maniacs one single time more. Besides, I’ve been sleeping, so I might as well be here. Besides, I thought that if I got here early you might tell me whether it was Mr. Ives or Mr. Farwell who did it.”“Who did what?”“Who killed Mrs. Bellamy.”“Oh, Lord!” groaned the reporter. “Why is it that every mortal soul at a murder trial spends his life trying to pin the crime on to anyone in the world but the people being tried for it. Talk about juries!”“I’m not talking about juries,” said the red-headed girl firmly. “I’m talking about Mr. Farwell, and Mr. Ives. Don’t you think that it was funny that Mr. Farwell was there that day?”“Oh, comical as all get out! Still and all, I believe that he was there precisely when he said he was. That poor devil was telling the truth.”“How do you know?” inquired the red-headed girl respectfully.“Oh, you get hunches at this game when you’ve been at it long enough.”“That must be nice. Did you get a hunch about Mr. Ives?”“About Pat Ives? I haven’t heard him yet.”“What did it mean, his not being at that poker game?”“Well, it might have meant anything in the world—or nothing. The only thing that’s perfectly clear is that it meant that last night was undoubtedly one of wassail and carouse for Uncle Dudley Lambert.”“Why?”“My dear child, didn’t you see the look of unholy glee that flooded the old gentleman’s countenance when he realized that young Mr. Ives hadn’t a shadow of an alibi for that eventful evening?”“Well, but why?”“Because the only thing that Uncle Dudley would as soon do as save his angel goddaughter from the halter is to drape one around Pat Ives’s neck. He’s hated Pat ever since he dared to subject his precious Sue to a life of good healthy hardship in New York; he’s never forgiven him for estranging her from her father; and since he found out that he betrayed her with the Bellamy girl, he’s been simply imbecile with rage. And now, through some heaven-sent fluke, he’s enabled to put his life in jeopardy. He’s almost out of his head. He’d better go a bit warily, however. If I can read the human countenance—and it may interest you to know that I can read the human countenance—Mrs. Patrick Ives is not entirely in favour of sending her unworthy spouse to the gallows. She had a monitory look in her eye that bodes ill for Uncle Dudley if she ever realizes what he’s doing.”The red-headed girl heaved an unhappy sigh. “Well, I don’t believe that anyone did it,” she remarked spaciously. “Not anyone here, I mean. Burglars, probably, or one of those funny organizations, or——”“Silence, silence! The Court!”Mr. Farr had a new purple necktie, sombre and impressive; Mr. Lambert was a trifle more frivolous, though the polka dots were discreet; Mrs. Ives wore the same tweed suit, the same copper-coloured hat. Heavens, it might as well be a uniform!“Call Miss Cordier.”“Miss Melanie Cordier!”The slim elegance of the figure in the severely simple black coat and blackclochehat was especially startling when one remembered that Miss Melanie Cordier was the waitress in the Ives household. It was a trifle more comprehensible when one remembered that she was as Gallic as her name implied. With her creamy skin, her long black eyes and smooth black curves of hair, her lacquer-red mouth exactly matching the lacquer-red camellia on her lapel, Miss Cordier bore a striking resemblance to a fashion magazine’s cover designs. She mounted the witness box with profound composure and seated herself, elaborately at ease.“Miss Cordier, what was your occupation on the nineteenth of June, 1926?”“I was waitress in the employment of Mrs. Patrick Ives.” There was only the faintest trace of accent in the clear syllables—a slight softening of consonants and broadening of vowels, becoming enough variations on an Anglo-Saxon theme.“How long had you been in her employ?”“A year and nine month—ten month. I could not be quite sure.”“How did you happen to go to Mrs. Ives?”“It was through Mrs. Bellamy that I go.”“Mrs. Stephen Bellamy?”“Yes, sir, through Mrs. Stephen Bellamy.”“Will you tell us just how that happened, Miss Cordier?”“Assuredly. My little younger sister had been sent by an agency three or four years ago to Mrs. Bellamy directly when she land in this country. She was quite inexperience’, you understand, and could not command a position such as one trained could demand; but Mrs. Bellamy was good to her and she work hard, and after a while she marries a young man who drives for the grocer and they——”“Yes, quite so, Miss Cordier. My question was, how did Mrs. Bellamy happen to send you to Mrs. Ives?”“Yes, that is what I explain.” Miss Cordier, exquisitely unruffled, pursued the even tenor of her way. “Sometime when my sister was there with Mrs. Bellamy I would go out to show her what she should do. For me, I have been a waitress for eight years and am well experience’. Well, then I see Mrs. Bellamy and tell her that if some time she knows of a excellent position in that Rosemont, I would take it so that sometime I could see my little sister who is marrying that young man from the grocer’s. And about two years ago, maybe, she write to me to say that her friend Mrs. Patrick Ives she is looking for a extremely superior waitress. So that is how I go to Mrs. Ives.”“Are you still in the employ of Mrs. Ives?”“No. On June twentieth I resign, since I am not quite content with something that have happen.”“Did this occurrence have anything to do with the death of Mrs. Bellamy?”“That I do not say. But I was not content.”“Miss Cordier, have you seen this book before? I call your attention to its title—Stone on Commercial Paper, Volume III.”Miss Cordier’s black eyes swept it perfunctorily. “Yes, that book I know.”“When did you last see it?”“The night of June nineteenth, about nine o’clock.”“Where?”“In the study of Mr. Ives.”“What particularly brought it to your attention?”“Because I take it out of the corner by the desk to look inside it.”“For what purpose?”“Because I want to see whether a note I put there that afternoon still was there.”“And was that note still there, Miss Cordier?”“No, monsieur, that note, it was gone.”The prosecutor tossed the impressive volume carelessly on to the clerk’s desk. “I offer this volume in evidence, Your Honour.”“Any objections?” Judge Carver turned an inquiring eye on the bulky figure of Dudley Lambert, hovering uncertainly over the buckram-clad repository of correspondence.Mr. Lambert, shifting from one foot to the other, eyed the volume as though he were endeavouring to decide whether it were an infernal machine or a jewel casket, and with one final convulsive effort arrived at a conclusion: “No objection.”“Miss Cordier, to whom was the note that you placed in the book addressed?”“It was addressed to Mr. Patrick Ives.”“Was it written by you?”“Ah, no, no, monsieur.”“Do you know by whom it was written?”“Yes, monsieur.”“By whom?”“By Mrs. Stephen Bellamy.”“And how did it happen that you were in possession of a note from Mrs. Bellamy to Mr. Ives?”“It was the habit of Mrs. Bellamy to mail to me letters that she desire’ to have reach Mr. Ives, without anyone should know. Outside there would be my name on the envelope; inside there would be a more small envelope with the name of Mr. Ives on it. That one I would put in the book.”“You had been doing this for some time?”“For some time, yes—six months—maybe eight.”“How many notes had you placed there, to the best of your recollection?”“Ah, that I am not quite sure—ten—twelve—twenty—who knows? At first once a month, maybe; that last month, two and three each week.”“At what time did you put the note there?”“Maybe fifteen minutes before seven, maybe twenty. After half-past six, I know, and not yet seven.”“Was that your usual habit?”“Oh, no, monsieur; it was my habit to put them there in the night, when I make dark the house. Half-past six, that was a very bad time, because quite easily someone might see.”“Then why did you choose that time, Miss Cordier?”“Oh, but I do not choose. You see, it was like this: That night, when MacDonald, the chauffeur, bring in the letters a little bit after six, this one it was there for me, in a envelope that was write on it Urgent. On the little envelope inside it say Urgent—Very Urgent in letters with lines under them most black, and so I know that there is great haste that Mr. Patrick Ives he should get that letter quick. So I start to go to the study, but there in the hall is all those people who have come from the club, and Mrs. Ives she send me quick to get somecanapés, and Mr. Dallas he come with me to show me what he want for the cocktails—limes and honey and all those thing, you know.” She looked appealingly at the prosecutor from the long black eyes and for a moment his tense countenance relaxed into a grim smile.“You were about to tell us why you placed the note there at that time.”“Yes; that is what I tell. Well, I wait and I wait for those people to go home, and still they do not go, but I dare not go in so long as across the hall from the study they all stay in that living room. But after a while I cannot wait any longer for fear that Mr. Patrick Ives should come and not find that most urgent note. So very quiet I slip in when I think no one look, and I put that note quick, quick in the book, and I start to come out in the hall; but when I get to the door I see there is someone in the hall and I step back again to wait till they are gone.”“And whom did you see in the hall, Miss Cordier?”“I see in the hall Mr. Elliot Farwell and Mrs. Patrick Ives.”“Did they see you?”Miss Cordier lifted eloquent shoulders. “How do I know, monsieur? Maybe they do, maybe they don’t—me, I cannot tell. I step back quick and listen, and after a while their voices stop and I hear a door close, and I come out quick through the hall and into the door to the kitchen without I see no one.”“Did you hear what Mr. Farwell and Mrs. Ives were saying?”“No, that I could not hear even when I listen, so low they talk, so low that almost they whisper.”“You heard nothing else while you were there?”“Yes, monsieur. While I stand by the desk, but before I take out the book, I heard mademoiselle go through the hall with the children.”“Mademoiselle? Mademoiselle who?” The prosecutor’s voice was expressionless enough, but there was a prophetic shadow of annoyance in his narrowed eyes.“Mademoiselle Page.”“You say that she was simply passing through the hall?”“Yes, monsieur—on her way to the stairs.”“You had not yet touched the book?”“No, monsieur.”“You waited until she passed before you did so?”“Yes.”“Was Mrs. Ives in the hall at the time that you placed the note in the book?”“Ah, that, too, I do not say. I say only that she was there one minute—one half minute after I have put it there.”“Could she have seen you place it in the book from the position in which you saw her standing?”“It is possible.”“Was she facing you?”“No, monsieur; it is Mr. Farwell who face’ me. Mrs. Ives had the back toward me.”Again that shadow of fierce annoyance, turning the blue eyes almost black. “Then what makes you say that she might have seen you?”The dark eyes meeting his widened a trifle in something too tranquil for surprise—a mild, indolent wonder at the obtuseness of the human race in general, men in particular, and prosecutors more particularly still. “I say that because it might well be that in that little minute she have turn’ the back to me, or if she have not, then it might be that she see in the mirror.”“There was a mirror?”“But yes, on the other side of the hall from the study door there is a long, long chair—a what you call a bench—where the gentlemen they leave their hats. Over that there hangs the mirror. And it was by that bench that I see Mr. Farwell and Mrs. Ives.”“And the desk and the bookcase were reflected in the mirror?”“Yes, monsieur.”“I see. Now did you notice anything at dinner, Miss Cordier?”“Nothing at all; everything was as usual, of an entire serenity.”“It was at the usual hour?”“At quarter past seven—yes.”“Who was present?”“Mrs. Patrick Ives, Mrs. Daniel Ives, Mr. Ives, as usual.”“Do you recall the conversation?”“Oh, no, monsieur, I recall only that everyone talk as always about small things. It is my practice, like an experience’ waitress, serious and discreet, to be little in the dining room—only when serving, you understand.” The serious and discreet waitress eyed her interrogator with a look of bland superiority.“Nothing struck you as unusual after dinner?”“No, no.”“You saw no one before you turned out the lights for the night?”“Oh, yes, I have seen Mrs. Daniel Ives at that time, and she ask me whether Mrs. Ives have return, and I say no.”“No one else?”“Only the other domestics, monsieur. At a little past ten I retire’ for the night.”“You went to sleep immediately?”“Yes, monsieur.”“Breakfast was just as usual the next morning?”“As usual—yes.”“At what time?”“At nine, as on all Sundays. Mrs. Patrick Ives have hers at half-past nine, when she gets home from church.”“Nothing unusual in that?”“Oh, no; on the contrary, that is her habit.”“And after breakfast, nothing unusual occurred?”“I do not know whether you call it unusual, but after breakfast, yes, something occurred.”“Just tell us what it was, please.”Miss Cordier spent an interminable moment critically inspecting a pair of immaculate cream-coloured gloves before she decided to gratify this desire: “It was just so soon as Mr. Ives and his mother have finish’ breakfast, a few minutes before half-past nine. Mr. Ives he go directly to his study, and I go after him with the Sunday papers and before I go out I ask—because me, I am desirous to know—‘Mr. Ives, you have got that note all right what I put in the book?’ And he say——”“Your Honour, I object! I object! What Mr. Ives said——”This time there was no indecision whatever in the clamour set up by the long-suffering Lambert, and the prosecutor, eyeing him benevolently, raised a warning hand to his witness. “Never mind what he said, Miss Cordier. Just tell us what you said.”“I said, after he spoke, ‘Oh, Mr. Ives, then if you have not got it, it is Mrs. Ives who have found it. She have seen me put it in the book while she stood there in the hall.’ ”The prosecutor waited for a well-considered moment to permit this conveniently revelatory reply to sink in. “It was after this conversation with Mr. Ives that you decided you would no longer remain with Mrs. Ives?”“No, monsieur, it was later in the morning that I decide that.”“Something occurred that made you decide it then?”Miss Cordier’s lacquer-red lips parted, closed, parted again. “Yes.”“What, Miss Cordier?”“At half-past eleven I have heard that Mrs. Bellamy have been killed.” The dark eyes slipped sidelong in the direction of the quiet young woman who had not so long since been her mistress. There she sat, leaning easily back in the straight, uncomfortable chair, ankles crossed, hands linked, studying the tips of her squarely cut little shoes with lowered eyes. The black eyes travelled from the edge of the kilted skirt to the edge of the small firm chin and then slid slowly back to the prosecutor: “When I heard that, I was not content, so I no longer stayed.”“Exactly.” The prosecutor plunged his hands deep in his pockets and cocked a flagrantly triumphant eye at the agitated Lambert. “You no longer stayed. That will be all, Miss Cordier. Cross-examine.”“Miss Cordier, you knew perfectly that if for one second it came to Mrs. Ives’s attention that you had been acting as go-between in the alleged correspondence between her husband and Mrs. Bellamy you would not have remained five minutes under her roof, did you not?”Miss Cordier leaned a trifle farther over the edge of the witness box to meet the rough anger of Lambert’s voice, something ugly and insolent hardening the creamy mask of her face.“I know that when Mrs. Ives is angered she is quick to speak, quick to act—yes, monsieur.”At the fatal swiftness of that blow, the ruddy face before her sagged and paled, then rallied valiantly. “And so you decided that you had better leave before Mr. Ives questioned her about finding the note and you were turned out in disgrace, didn’t you?”“I have said already, monsieur, that I leave because I have heard that Mrs. Bellamy have been murdered and I am not content.” The ominously soft voice pronounced each syllable with a lingering and deadly deliberation.Mr. Lambert eyed her savagely and moved heavily on: “You say that you were cut off from escaping through the hall by the fact that you saw that it was occupied by Mr. Farwell and Mrs. Ives?”“That is so.”“Why didn’t you go back through the dining room to the pantry?”“Because I hear Mr. Dallas and Mr. Burgoyne talking from the dining room, where they try one more cocktail.”“Why should they have thought it unusual to have you come from the study?”“I think it more prudent that no one should know I have been in that study.”“You were simply staying there in order to spy on Mrs. Ives, weren’t you?”“I could not help see Mrs. Ives unless I close’ my eyes.”Mr. Lambert was obliged to swallow twice before he was able to continue:“Did you tell Mr. Ives that Mr. Farwell was in the hall also at the time that you saw Mrs. Ives there?”“I do not remember whether I tell him or whether I do not.”“Mr. Farwell was facing you, was he not?”“Yes.”“What made you so sure that it was Mrs. Ives who took the note, not Mr. Farwell?”“Because, when I hear the door close, then I know that Mr. Farwell he has gone.”“And how did you know that?”Once more Miss Cordier raised eloquent shoulders. “Because, monsieur, I am not stupid. I look out, he is standing by the hat stand; I go back, I hear a door close, I look out once more, and he is not there. But that is of the most elementary.”“You should be a detective instead of wasting your time waiting on tables,” commented her courtly interrogator. “The plain truth is, isn’t it, that anyone in the house might have gone out and closed that door while Mr. Farwell went back to the living room with Mrs. Ives?”“If you say so, monsieur,” replied Miss Cordier indifferently.“And the plain truth is that Mr. Farwell was frantically infatuated with Mrs. Bellamy and was spying on her constantly, isn’t it?”“It is possible.”“Possible! Mr. Farwell himself stated it half a dozen times from this very witness box. It’s a plain fact. And another plain fact is that any one of a dozen other people might have passed through the hall and seen you at work, mightn’t they?”“I should not believe so—no, monsieur.”“Whether you believe it or not, it happens to be the truth. Six or eight servants, eight or ten guests—— What reason have you for believing that Miss Page herself did not notice something unusual in your attitude and turn back in time to see you place the note after you believed that she had passed?”“No reason, monsieur—only the evidence of all five of my senses.”“You are a highly talented young woman, Miss Cordier, but you can’t see with your back turned, can you?”“Monsieur is pleased to jest,” remarked Miss Cordier, in the tone of one frankly undiverted.“Don’t characterize my questions, please—answer them.”“Willingly. I do not see with my back turn’.”“So it comes down to the fact that ten—twelve—fourteen people might have seen you place this urgent and mysterious note that you so boldly charge Mrs. Ives with taking, doesn’t it?”“That is monsieur’s opinion, not mine.”Monsieur glared menacingly at the not too subtle mockery adorning the witness’s pleasing countenance.“And furthermore, Miss Cordier, it comes down to the fact that we have only your word for it that the note was ever placed in the book at all, doesn’t it?”“Monsieur does not find that sufficient?”Monsieur ignored the question, but his countenance testified eloquently that such was indeed the case.“Just how did you happen to select a book in Mr. Ives’s library as a hiding place for this correspondence?”“Because that is a good safe place, where every night he can look without anyone to watch.”“What made you think that someone else might not take out that book to read?”“That book?Stone on Commercial Paper, Volume III? Monsieur is pleased to jest!”Monsieur, scowling unattractively at some openly diverted members of the press, changed his line of attack with some abruptness. “Miss Cordier, you know a man called Adolph Platz, do you not?”Miss Cordier’s lashes flickered once—twice. “Of a certainty.”“Did you see him in the afternoon of the nineteenth of June?”“Yes.”“How did you come to know him?”“He was for a time chauffeur to Mrs. Ives.”“Married, wasn’t he?”“Married, yes.”“Mrs. Platz was a chambermaid in Mrs. Ives’s employ?”“Yes.”“They left because Mrs. Platz quarrelled with you, did they not?”“One moment, please.” The prosecutor lifted an imperious voice. “Are we to be presented with an account of all the back-stairs quarrels, past and present, indulged in by Mrs. Ives’s domestics? To the best of my belief, my distinguished adversary is entering a field, however profitable and entertaining it may prove, that I have left totally virgin. Does the court hold this proper for cross-examination?”“The Court does not. The question is overruled.”“I ask an exception, Your Honour. . . . Miss Cordier, when you were turning out the lights that night, did you go into all the downstairs rooms?”“Into all of them—yes.”“Did you see Mr. Patrick Ives in any of them?”“No, monsieur.”Sue Ives leaned forward with a swift gesture, a sudden wave of colour sweeping her from throat to brow. Mr. Lambert looked diligently away.“You have placed great stress on your skill, experience, and training as a waitress, Miss Cordier. Are you a waitress at present?”“No.”“Just what is your present occupation?”“At present I have no occupation. I rest.”“In the boarding house in Atlantic City where you have been occupied in resting for the past three or four months, you are not reposing under the name of Melanie Cordier, are you?”The black eyes darted toward the prosecutor, who stood leaning, shrewd and careless, over the back of a tilted chair. “Is it particularly germane to this inquiry whether Miss Cordier chooses to call herself Joan of Arc, if she wants to?” he inquired.“I propose to attack the credibility of this witness,” said Mr. Lambert unctuously. “I propose to prove by this witness, that while she is posing here as a correct young person and a model servant she is actually living a highly incorrect life as a supposedly married woman. . . . Miss Cordier, I ask you whether for the past three months you have not been passing as the wife of Adolph Platz, having persuaded him to abandon his own wife?”In the pale oval of her face the black eyes flamed and smoked. “And I tell you no, no, and again no, monsieur!”“You do not go under the name of Mrs. Adolph Platz?”“I do not persuade him to abandon that stupid doll, his wife. Long before I knew him, he was tired and sick of her.”“You do not go under the name of Mrs. Adolph Platz?”“That is most simple. Monsieur Platz he have been to me a excellent friend and adviser. When I explain to him that I am greatly in need of rest he suggest to me that a woman young, alone, and of not an entire lack of attraction would quite possibly find it more restful if the world should consider her married. So he is amiable enough to suggest that if it should assist me, I might for this small vacation use his name. It is only thing I have take from him, monsieur may rest assured.”“You remove a great weight from my mind,” Mr. Lambert assured her, horridly playful; “and from the minds of these twelve gentlemen as well, I am sure.” The twelve gentlemen, who had been following the lady’s simple and virtuous explanation of her somewhat unconventional conduct with startled attention, smiled for the first time in four days, shifting stiffly on their chairs and exchanging sidelong glances, skeptically jocose. “It is a pleasure to all of us to know that such chivalry as Mr. Platz has exhibited is not entirely extinct in this wicked workaday world. I hardly think that we can improve on your explanation as to why you are known in Atlantic City as Mrs. Adolph Platz, Miss Cordier. That will be all.”The prosecutor, who did not seem unduly perturbed by these weighty flights of sarcasm, continued to lean on his chair, though he once more lifted his voice: “You had saved quite a sum of money during these past years, hadn’t you, Miss Cordier?”“Yes, monsieur.”“It proved ample for your modest needs on this long-planned and greatly needed vacation, did it not?”“More than ample—yes.”“Mr. Platz had left his wife some time before these unhappy events caused you to leave Mrs. Ives, hadn’t he?”“Of a surety, monsieur.”“That’s all, thank you, Miss Cordier.”Miss Cordier moved leisurely from the stand, chic and poised as ever, disdaining even a glance at the highly gratified Lambert, and bestowing the briefest of smiles on Mr. Farr, who responded even more briefly. Many a lady, trailing sable and brocade from an opera box, has moved with less assurance and grace than Mrs. Ives’s one-time waitress, the temporary Mrs. Adolph Platz. The eyes of the courtroom, perplexed, diverted, and faintly disturbed, followed her balanced and orderly retreat, the scarlet camellia defiant as a little flag.“Call Miss Roberts.”“Miss Laura Roberts!”Miss Laura Roberts also wore black, but she wore her black with a difference. A decent, sober, respectful apparel for a decent, sober, respectful little person—Miss Roberts, comely, rosy-faced, gray-eyed, fawn-haired and soft-voiced, had all the surface qualifications of an ideal maid, and she obviously considered that those qualifications did not include scarlet lips and scarlet flowers. Under the neat black hat her eyes met the prosecutor’s shyly and bravely.“Miss Roberts, what was your occupation on June nineteenth, 1926?”“I was maid and seamstress to Mrs. Patrick Ives, sir.”The pretty English voice, with its neat, clipped accent, fell pleasantly and reassuringly on the ears of the courtroom, which relaxed with unfeigned relief from the tensity into which her Gallic colleague had managed to plunge it during her tenure of the witness box.“Did you see Mrs. Ives on the evening of the nineteenth?”“Not after dinner—no, sir. I asked her before dinner if it would be quite all right for cook and me to go down to the village to church that night, and she said quite, and not to bother about getting home early, because she wouldn’t be needing me again. So after church we met two young gentlemen that we knew and went across to the drug store and had some ices, and sat talking a bit before we walked home, so that it was well on to eleven when we got in, and all the lights were out except the one in the kitchen, so I knew that Mrs. Ives was in bed.”“What time did you leave the house for church, Miss Roberts?”“Well, I couldn’t exactly swear to it, sir, but it must have been around half-past eight; because service was at nine, and it’s a good bit of a walk, and I do remember hurrying with dinner so that I could turn down the beds and be off.”“Were you chambermaid in the household as well as seamstress-maid?”“Oh, no, sir; only it was the chambermaid’s night off, you see, and then it was my place to do it.”“I see. So on this night you turned down all the beds before eight-thirty?”“Yes, sir—all but Miss Page’s, that is.”“That wasn’t included in your duties?”“Oh, yes, sir, it was. But that night when I got to the day nurse’s door it was locked, and when I knocked, no one didn’t answer at first, and then Miss Page called out that she had a headache and had gone to bed already——”Miss Roberts hesitated and looked down at the prosecutor with honest, troubled eyes.“Nothing extraordinary about that, was there?”“Well, yes, sir, there was. You see, when I was coming down the hall I heard what I thought were voices coming out of those rooms, and crying, and I was afraid that the little girl was having more trouble with her ear. That’s why I started to go in without knocking, but after I’d been standing there a minute, I heard that it was Miss Page crying herself, fit to break her heart. I never heard anyone cry so dreadful in all my life. It fairly gave me a turn, but the moment I knocked there wasn’t a sound, and then after a minute she called out that she wouldn’t need me, just as I told you, sir. So I went on my way, of course, though I was still a bit worried. She’d been crying so dreadful, poor thing, that I was afraid she would be right down sick.”“Yes, quite so. Very much upset, as though she’d been through an agitating experience?”“Oh, yes, indeed, sir.”“You were mistaken about the voices weren’t you? It was just Miss Page crying?”“No, sir—I thought I heard voices, too.” The soft voice was barely audible.“The little girl’s?”“No, sir. It sounded—it sounded like Mr. Ives.”The prosecutor stared at her blankly.“Mr. Patrick Ives?”“Yes, sir.”“You could hear what he was saying?”“No, sir, I couldn’t; it stopped as soon as I tried the door. I thought he was talking to the little girl.”Mr. Farr continued to contemplate her blankly for a moment, and then, with an eloquent shrug of the shoulders, dismissed Mr. Ives, Miss Page, and the locked door for more fruitful pastures.“Now, Miss Roberts, your duties included the care of your mistress’s wardrobe, did they not?”“Yes, sir.”“You are quite familiar with all its contents?”“Oh, quite.”“Will you be good enough to tell us if it contains to-day all the articles that it contained on the nineteenth of June, 1926?”“No, sir, it doesn’t. Mrs. Ives gives away a lot of her things at the end of every season. We sent a big box off to a sick cousin she has in Arizona, and another to some young ladies in Delaware, and another to the——”“Never mind about the things that you sent at the end of the season. Did you send anything at about the time of the murder—within a few weeks of it, say?”The roses in Miss Roberts’s cheeks faded abruptly, and the candid eyes fled precipitately to the chair where Susan Ives sat, playing idly with the crystal clasp of her brown suède bag. At the warm, friendly, reassuring little smile that she found waiting for her, Miss Roberts apparently found heart of grace. “Yes, sir, we did,” she said steadily.“On what date, please?”“On the twentieth of June.”The courtroom drew in its breath sharply—a little sigh for its lost ease—and moved forward the inch that separated suspense from polite attention.“To whom was the package sent?”“It was sent to the Salvation Army.”“What was in it?”“Well, there were two old sweaters and a swiss dress that had shrunk quite small, and a wrapper, and some blouses and a coat.”“What kind of a coat, Miss Roberts?”“A light flannel coat—a kind of sports coat, you might call it,” said Miss Roberts clearly; but those who craned forward sharply enough could see the knuckles whiten on the small, square, capable hands.“Cream-coloured flannel?”“Well, more of a biscuit, I’d call it,” replied Mrs. Ives’s maid judicially.“The coat that Mrs. Ives had been wearing the evening before, wasn’t it?”“I believe it was, sir.”“Did you see the condition of this coat before you packed it, Miss Roberts?”“No, sir, I didn’t. It wasn’t I that packed it.”“Not you? Who did pack it?”“Mrs. Ives packed it herself.”“Ah, I see.” In that sudden white light of triumph the prosecutor’s face was almost beautiful—a cruel and sinister beauty, such as might have lighted the face of the youngest Spanish Inquisitionist as the stray shot of a question went straight to the enemy’s heart. “It was Mrs. Ives who packed it. How did it come into your hands, Miss Roberts?”“The package, sir?”“Certainly, the package.”“It was this way, sir: A little before eight Sunday morning Mrs. Ives’s bell rang and I went down to her room. She was all dressed for church, and there was a big box on her bed. She said, ‘I rang for you before, Roberts, but you were probably at breakfast. Take this down to MacDonald and tell him to mail it when he gets the papers. The post office closes at half-past nine.’ ”“Was that all that she said?”“Oh, no, sir. She asked me for some fresh gloves, and then she said over her shoulder like as she was going out, ‘It’s those things that I was getting together for the Salvation Army. I put in the coat I was wearing last night too. I absolutely ruined it with some automobile grease on Mr. Bellamy’s car.’ ”“Nothing more?”“Well, then I said, ‘Oh, madam, couldn’t it be cleaned?’ And Mrs. Ives said, ‘It isn’t worth cleaning; this is the third year I’ve had it.’ Then she went out, sir, and I took it down and gave it to MacDonald.”“Was it addressed?”“Oh, yes, sir.”“How?”“Just Salvation Army Headquarters, New York, N. Y.”“No address in the corner as to whom it came from?”“Oh, no, sir. Mrs. Ives never——”“Be good enough to confine yourself to the question. You are not aware, yourself, of the exact nature of these stains, are you, Miss Roberts?”“Yes, sir, I am,” said the pink-cheeked Miss Roberts firmly. “They were grease stains.”“What?” The prosecutor’s startled voice skipped half an octave. “Didn’t you distinctly tell me that you didn’t see this coat?”“No, sir, no more I did. It was Mrs. Ives that told me they were grease stains.”The prosecutor indulged in a brief bark of mirth that indicated more relief than amusement. “Then, as I say, you are unable to tell us of your own knowledge?”“No, sir,” replied Miss Roberts, a trifle pinker and a trifle firmer. “Mrs. Ives told me that those stains were grease stains, so I’m certainly able to say of my own knowledge that it was absolutely true if she said so.”There was something in the soft, sturdy voice that made the grimy courtroom a pleasanter place. Sue Ives’s careless serenity flashed suddenly to that of a delighted child; Stephen Bellamy’s fine, grave face warmed and lightened; the shadows lifted for a moment from Pat Ives’s haunted eyes; there was a grateful murmur from the press, a friendly stir in the jury. The quiet-eyed, soft-voiced, stubborn little Miss Roberts was undoubtedly the heroine of the moment.Mr. Farr, however, was obviously unmoved by this exhibition of devotion and loyalty. He permitted more than a trace of annoyance to penetrate his clear, metallic voice. “That’s all very pretty and touching, naturally, Miss Roberts, but from a crudely legal standpoint we are forced to realize that your statement as to the nature of the stains has no weight whatever. It is a fact, is it not, that you never laid eyes on the stained coat that Mrs. Ives sent out of her house within a few hours of the time that this murder was committed?”“Yes, sir, that is a fact.”“No further questions, Miss Roberts. Cross-examine.”“It is a fact, too, that Mrs. Ives frequently sent packages in just this way, isn’t it, Miss Roberts?” inquired Mr. Lambert mellifluously.“Oh, yes, indeed, she did—often and often.”“Was she in the habit of putting her address on packages sent to charitable institutions?”“No, sir. She didn’t want to be thanked for her charities—not ever.”“Precisely. That’s all, Miss Roberts—thanks.”“Call Orsini.”“Loo-weegee Aw-see-nee!”Luigi Orsini glanced darkly at Ben Potts as he mounted the witness stand, and Mr. Potts returned the glance with Nordic severity.“What was your occupation on June 19, 1926, Orsini?”“I work for Miz’ Bell’my.”“In what capacity?”“What you say?”“What was your job?”“I am what you call handy—do everything there is to do.”The spacious gesture implied Gargantuan labours and super-human abilities. A small, thick, stocky individual, swarthy and pompadoured, with lustrous eyes, a glittering smile, and a magnificent barytone voice, he suggested without any effort whatever infinite possibilities in the rôle of either tragedian or comedian. The redoubtable Farr eyed him with a trace of well-justified apprehension.“Well, suppose you tell us what your principal activities were on the nineteenth of June.”“Ah, well, that day me, I am very active, like per usual. At six o’clock I arise and after some small breakfast I take extra-fine strong wire and some very long sticks——”“No, no, you can skip all that. You heard Mr. Farwell’s testimony, didn’t you?”“For sure I hear that testimony.”“Was it correct that he stopped around noon at the Bellamys’ and asked for Mrs. Bellamy?”“All correct, O. K.”“Did he tell you where he was going?”“Yes, sair, he then he say he get her at that cottage.”“Nothing else?”“Not one other thing else.”“You didn’t see him again?”“No, no; I do not see him again evair.”“When did you last see Mrs. Bellamy?”“It is about eight in the evening—maybe five minute before, maybe five minute after.”“How do you fix the time?”“I have look at my watch—this watch you now see, which is a good instrument of entirely pure silver, but not always faithful.”The prosecutor waved away the bulky shining object dangled enticingly before his eyes with a gesture of almost ferocious impatience. “Never mind about that. Why did you consult your watch?”The owner of the magnificent but unfaithful instrument swelled darkly for a moment, but continued to dangle his treasure. “That you shall hear—patience. I produce the instrument at this time so that you note that while the clock over the door it say twenty minutes before the hour, this watch it say nine minute—or maybe eight. You judge for yourself. It is without a doubt eccentric. But on that night still I have consult it to see if I go to New York at eight-twenty. I wait to decide still when I see Mrs. Bell’my run down the front steps and come down to the gate where I stand.”“Did she speak to you?”“Oh, positive. She ask, ‘What, Luigi, you do not go to New York?’ ”“How did she know that you were going to New York?”“Because already before dinner I have ask permission from Mr. Bell’my if I can go to New York that evening to see a young lady from Milan that I think perhaps I marry, maybe. Miz’ Bell’my she is in the next room and she laugh and call out, ‘You tell Marietta that if she get you, one day she will find herself marry to the President of these United State’.’ I excuse myself for what may seem like a boast, but those are the words she use.”And suddenly, as though he found the memory of that gay, mocking young voice floating across the heavy air of the courtroom more unbearable than all the blood and shame and horror that had invaded it, Stephen Bellamy’s face twisted to a tortured grimace and he lifted an unsteady hand to lowered eyes.“Look!” came a penetrating whisper. “He’s crying, ain’t he? Ain’t he, Gertie?”And the red-headed girl lowered her own eyes swiftly, a shamed and guilty flush reaching to the roots of her hair. How ugly, how contemptible, one’s thoughts could sound in words!“What reply did you make to Mrs. Bellamy?”“I tell to her that I think maybe I had better not go, as that afternoon I have invest my money in a small game of chance with the gardener next door and the investment it have prove’ unsound. I say that how if I go to New York to see my young lady, it is likely that I must request of her the money to return back to Rosemont—and me, who am proud, I find that indelicate. So Miz’ Bell’my she laugh out and look quick in the little bag that she carry and give me three dollar’—to make the course of true love run more smooth, she say—and then she call back over her shoulder, ‘Better hurry, Luigi, or you miss that train.’ So I hurry, but all the same I miss it—by two small minute, because, chiefly, this watch he is too eccentric.”In spite of its eccentricity, he returned it tenderly to his vest pocket, after a final flip in the direction of the harassed Farr and the enraptured audience.“Did you notice anything else in the bag when Mrs. Bellamy opened it?”“Oh, positive. The eyes of Luigi they miss nothing what there is to see. All things they observe. In that bag of Miz’ Bell’my there are stuff, stuff in two, three letters—I dunno for sure—maybe four. But they make that small little bag bulge out so—very tight, like that.” Mr. Orsini’s eloquent hands sketched complete rotundity.“You never saw Mrs. Bellamy again?”“Not evair—no, no more—not evair.”For a moment the warm blood under the swarthy Southern skin seemed to run more slowly and coldly; but after a hasty glance at the safe, reassuring autumn sunlight slanting across the crowded room, the colour flowed boldly back to cheek and lip.“You say that you missed the train to New York. What did you do then?”“Then I curse myself good all up and down for a fool that is a fool all right, and I go back to my room in the garage and get into my bed and begin to read a story in a magazine that call itselfHonest Confessionabout a bride what——”“Never mind what you were reading. Did you notice anything unusual on your return?”“Well, maybe you don’t call it nothing unusual, but I notice that the car of Mr. Bell’my it is no longer in the garage. That make me surprise’ for a minute, because I have heard Mr. Bell’my tell Nellie, the house girl, that it is all right for her to go home early to her mother, where she sleep, because he will be there to answer the telephone if it should ring. But all the same, I go on to bed. I just think he change his mind, maybe.”“What time did you get back to the garage?”“At twenty-two minutes before nine I am in my room. That I verify by the alarm clock that repose on the top of my bureau, and which is of an entire reliability; I note it expressly, because I am enrage’ that I have miss’ that train by so small an amount.”“Orsini, do you know what kind of tires Mr. Bellamy was using on his car?”“Yes, sair, that, too, I know. There are three old tires of what they call Royal Cord make—two on back and one on front. On the left front one is a good new Silvertown Cord, what I help him to change about a month before all these things have happen. For spare, he carry a all new Ajax. And that is all there is.”“You’re perfectly sure that the Ajax wasn’t on?”“Oh, surest thing.”“When did you last see the car?”“When I go down to the gate, round half-past seven.”“And the Ajax was still on as a spare?”“That’s what.”“Did you see Mr. Bellamy again on the evening of the nineteenth?”“Yes, that evening I have seen Mr. Bell’my again.”“At what time?”“At five before ten.”“Was he alone?”“No; with him there was a lady.”“Did you recognize her?”“Yes, sair, I have recognize’ her.”“Who was this lady, Orsini?”“This lady, sair, was Miz’ Patrick Ives.”At those words, pronounced with exactly their proper dramatic inflection by that lover of the drama, Mr. Luigi Orsini, every head in the courtroom pivoted to the spot where Mrs. Patrick Ives sat with the autumn sun warming her hair to something better than gold. And quite oblivious to the ominous inquiry in those straining eyes, she turned toward Stephen Bellamy, meeting his startled eyes with a small, rueful smile, lifted brows and a little shake of the head that came as near to saying “I told you so” as good sportsmanship permitted.“You are quite positive of that?”“Oh, without one single doubt.”“How were you able to identify her?”“Because I hear her voice, as clear as I hear you, and I see her clear as I see you too.”“How were you able to do that?”“By the lights of Mr. Bell’my’s car, when she get out and look up at my window, where I stand and look out.”“Tell us just how you came to be standing there looking out, please.”“Well, after a while, I began to get sleepy over that magazine, and I look at the clock and it say ten minutes to ten, and I think, ‘Luigi, my fine fellow, to-morrow you rise at six to do the work that lies before you, and at present it is well that you should sleep.’ So I arise to turn out the light, which switch is by the window, and just when I get there to do that I hear a auto car turn in at the gate. I think, ‘Ah-ha! There now comes Mr. Bell’my.’ And then I look out of that window, for I am surprise’. It is the habit of Mr. Bell’my to put away that car so soon as he come in, but this time he don’t do that. He stop in front of the house and he help out a lady. She stand there looking up at my window, and I see her clear like it is day, but it is all dark inside, so she can see nothing. Then she say, ‘I still could swear that I have seen a light,’ and Mr. Bell’my he say, ‘Sue, don’t let this get you. I tell you that there is no one here—I saw him headed for the train. Maybe perhaps it was the shine from our own lamps what you see. Come on.’ And she say, ‘Maybe; but I could swear——’ And then I don’t hear any more, because they go into the house, and me, I stand there like one paralyze’, because always I have believe Mr. Bell’my to be a man of honour who love——”“Yes—never mind that. Did you see them come out?”“Yes, that I see, too. In five-ten minutes they come out and get quick into the car, and drive away without they say one word. They start off very fast, so that the car it jump.”“Do you know at what time Mr. Bellamy returned that night?”“No; because then I wake only half up from sleep when I hear him drive that car into the garage, and I do not turn to look at the clock.”“It was some time later?”“Some time—yes. But whether one hour—three hours—five hours, that I cannot say. What I am not sure of like my life, that I do not say.”“Exactly; very commendable. That’s all, thanks. Cross-examine.”Orsini wheeled his lustrous orbs in the direction of Mr. Lambert, whose ruddy countenance had assumed an expression of intense inhospitality, though he managed to inject an ominous suavity into his ample voice. “With those vigilant and all-seeing eyes of yours, Mr.—er—Mr. Orsini, were you able to note the garments that Mrs. Bellamy was wearing when she went past you at the gate?”“Oh, positive. A white dress, all fluffy, and a black cape, quite thin, so that almost you see through it—not quite, maybe, but almost.”“Any hat?”“On the head a small black scarf that she have wrap’ also around her neck, twice or mebbe three time. The eyes of Luigi——”“Exactly. Could you see whether she had on her jewels?”“Positive. Always like that in the evening, moreover, she wear her jewels.”“You noticed what they were?”“Same like always—same necklace out of pearls, same rings, diamond and sapphire, two on one hand, one the other—I see them when she open that bag.”“Mr. Bellamy was a person of moderate means, wasn’t he, as far as you know?”“Oh, everybody what there is around here knows he wasn’t no John P. Rockfeller, I guess.”“Do you believe that the stones were genuine?”Mr. Orsini, thus appealed to as an expert, waxed eloquent and expansive. “Oh, positive. That I know for one absolute sure thing.”“Tell us just how, won’t you?”“Well, that house girl, Nellie, one night she tell me that Miz’ Bell’my have left one of her rings at the club where she wash her hands, but that Miz’ Bell’my just laugh and say she should worry herself, because all those rings and her pearls they are insure big, and if she lose those, she go out and buy herself a new house and a auto car, and maybe a police dog too.”“I see. Had it ever occurred to you that Mrs. Bellamy was using the cottage at Orchards for other purposes than piano practice, Mr. Orsini?”Orsini’s smile flashed so generously that it revealed three really extravagant gold fillings. “Well, me, I don’t miss many things, maybe you guess. After she get that key three-four times, I think to myself, ‘Luigi, it is funny thing that nevair she give you back that key until the day after, and always those evenings she go out by herself—most generally when Mr. Bell’my he stay in town to work.’ So one of those nights when she ask for that key I permit myself to take a small little stroll up the road in Orchards, and sure thing, there is a light in that cottage and a auto car outside the door. Sufficient! I look no further. Me, I am a man of the world, you comprehend.”“Obviously.”“Just a moment, Mr. Lambert,” interrupted Judge Carver. “Is your cross-examination going to take some time?”“Quite a time, I believe, Your Honour.”“Then I think it best that we adjourn for the noon recess, as it is already after twelve. The Court stands adjourned until one-ten.”“Well, here’s where we get our comic relief,” said the reporter with unction. “That son of sunny Italy is going to give us an enviable imitation of a three-ringed circus and a bag of monkeys before he and Lambert get through with each other, or I miss my guess. He’s got a look in his eye that is worth the price of admission alone. What’s your mature opinion of him?”“I think that he’s beguiling,” said the red-headed girl somewhat listlessly. Little shadows were under her gray eyes, and she curled small limp paws about a neglected notebook. Something in the drooping shoulders under the efficient jacket suggested an exhausted baby in need of a crib and a bottle of hot milk and a firm and friendly tucking in. She made a half-hearted effort to overtake an enormous yawn that was about to engulf her, and then surrendered plaintively.“Bored?” inquired the real reporter, his countenance illuminated by an expression of agreeable surprise.“Bored?” cried the lady beside him in a voice at once scornful and outraged. “Bored? I’m half destroyed with excitement. I can’t sleep any more. I go back to the boarding house every night and sit up in front of a gas stove with an orange-and-magenta comforter over my shoulders that ought to warm the dead, writing up my notes until all hours; and then I put a purple comforter over my knees and a muffler over my nose, and get an apple and sit there alternately gnawing the apple and my fingers and trying to work out who did it until even the cats stop singing under my window and the sky begins to get that nice, appealing slate colour that’s so prettily referred to as dawn. And even then I don’t know who did it.”“Don’t you, indeed?” inquired the reporter severely, looking irritated and anxious. “Haven’t you any sense at all, you little idiot? Listen, I know a place just two blocks down where you can get some fairly decent hot soup. You go and drink about a quart of it and then trot along home and turn in, and I’ll do your notes for you to-night so well that your boss will double your salary in the morning—and if you’re very good and sleep eighteen hours, I may tell you who did the murder.”The red-headed girl, who had shuddered fastidiously at the offer of fairly decent soup, eyed him ungratefully as she extracted a packet of salted peanuts from the capacious pouch that served her as handbag, commissary, and dressing table.“Thank you kindly,” she said. “My boss wrote me two special-delivery letters yesterday to say that I was doing far the best stuff that was coming up out of Redfield—far. He said that the three clippings that I sent him of your stuff showed promise—he did, honestly. . . . I think that soup’s terrible, and this is the first time in my life that I’ve been able to stay up as late as I pleased without anyone sending me to bed. I’m mad about it. . . . Have some peanuts?”“No, thanks,” said the reporter, rising abruptly. “Anything I can get you outside?”“You’re cross!” wailed the red-headed girl, her eyes round with panic and contrition. “You are—you are—you’re absolutely furious. Wait, please—please, or I’ll hang on to your coat tails and make a scene. The real reason I don’t go out and get soup is because I don’t dare. If I went away even for a minute, something might happen, and then I wouldn’t ever sleep again. Someone might get my seat—didn’t you see that fat, sinful-looking old lady who got theGazettegirl’s place yesterday? She wouldn’t go even when three officers and the sheriff told her she had to, and theGazettegirl had to sit on a stool in the gallery, and she said she had such a rushing of rage in her ears that she couldn’t hear anything that anyone said all afternoon. So, you see—— And I would like a ham sandwich and I think that you write better than Conrad, and I apologize, and if you’ll tell me who did the murder, I’ll tell you. And please hurry, because I hope you won’t be gone long.”“You’re a nice little nut,” said the reporter, and he beamed on her forgivingly, “and I like you. I like the way your nose turns up and your mouth turns down, and I like that funny little hat you wear. . . . I’ll make it in two jumps. Watch me!”The red-headed girl watched him obediently, her face pink and her eyes bright under the funny little hat. When the door opened to let him out, she plunged her eyes apprehensively for a moment into the silent, pushing, heaving mob behind the policeman’s broad blue shoulders, shivered, and turned them resolutely away.“If I were convicted of murder to-morrow,” thought the red-headed girl passionately, “they’d shove just like that to see me hanged. Ugh! What’s the matter with us?”She eyed with an expression of profound distaste the plump lady just beyond her, conscientiously eating stuffed eggs out of a shoe box. So smug, so virtuous, so pompadoured and lynx-eyed—— Her eyes moved hastily on to the pair of giggling flappers exchanging powder puffs and anecdotes over a box of maple caramels; on to the round-shouldered youth with the unattractive complexion and unpleasant tie; on to the pretty thing with overflushed cheeks and overbright eyes above her sable scarf and beneath her Paris hat. The red-headed girl wrenched her eyes back to the empty space where there sat, tranquil and aloof, the memory of the prisoner at the bar.It was good to be able to forget those hot, hungry, cruel faces, so sleek and safe and triumphant, and to remember that other face under the shadow of the small felt hat, cool and controlled and gay—yes, gay, for all the shadows that beset it. Only—what thoughts were weaving behind that bright brow, those steady lips? Thoughts of terror, of remorse, of bitterness and horror and despair? If you were strong enough to strike down a laughing girl who barred your path, you would be strong enough to keep your lips steady, wouldn’t you?The red-headed girl stared about her wildly; she felt suddenly small and cold and terrified. Where was the reporter? What a long time—— Oh, someone had opened a window. It was only the wind of autumn that was blowing so cold then, not the wind of death. What was it those little newsboys were calling outside, yelping like puppies in the gray square?“Extra Extra! All about the mysterious——”“Well,” said the reporter’s voice at her elbow, tense with some suppressed excitement, “this is the time he did it! No enterprising Filipino and housemaid around this time. Read that and weep!”Across the flimsy sheet of the RedfieldHome Newsit ran in letters three inches high: Ex-fiancé of Murdered Girl Blows Out Brains. Prominent Clubman Found Dead in Garden at Eleven Forty-five This Morning.“I’ve got a peach of a story started over the wires this minute,” said the reporter exultantly. “Here, boy, rush this stuff and beat it back for more. I couldn’t get your sandwich.”“Well,” said the red-headed girl in a small awed voice—“well, then, that means that he did it himself, doesn’t it? That means that he couldn’t stand it any longer because he killed her, doesn’t it?”“Or it means that he good and damn well knew that Susan Ives did it,” muttered the reporter, shaken from Olympian calm to frenzied activity. “Here, boy! Boy! Hi, you, rush this—and take off the ear muffs. It’s a hundred-to-one bet that he knew that Sue’d done it, and that he’d as good as put the knife in her hand by telling her where, when, and why it should be managed. . . . Here, boy!”“He didn’t!” said the red-headed girl fiercely. “He didn’t know it. How could——”“The Court!” sang Ben Potts.“How could he know whether she——”“Silence!” intoned Ben reprovingly.Mr. Orsini and Mr. Lambert were both heading purposefully for the witness box.“Now you’ve just told us, Mr. Orsini, that you were able to see Mrs. Ives’s face when you looked down from your window in the garage as clearly as you see mine. Can you give us an idea of the approximate distance from the garage to the house?”“Positive. The distance from the middle of the garage door to the middle of the front porch step, it is”—he glanced earnestly at a small slip of paper hitherto concealed in one massive paw, and divulged a portion of its contents to his astounded interrogator—“it is forty-seven feet five inches and one half inch.”“What?”Mr. Orsini contemplated with pardonable gratification the unfeigned stupor that adorned the massive countenance now thrust incredulously forward. “Also I can now tell you the space between the front gate and the door—one hunnerd forty-three feet and a quarter of a inch,” he announced rapidly and benevolently. “Also from the fence out to the road—eleven feet nine inch and a——”Judge Carver’s gavel fell with a crash over the enraptured roar that swept the courtroom. “One more demonstration of this kind and I clear the Court. This is a trial for murder, not a burlesque performance. You, sir, answer the questions that are put to you, when they are put. What’s that object in your hand?”Mr. Orsini dangled the limp yellow article hopefully under the judge’s fine nose. “The instrument with which I make the measure,” he explained, all modest pride. “What you call a measure of tape. The card on which I make the notes as well.”Judge Carver schooled his momentarily shaken countenance to its customary rigidity and turned a lion tamer’s eye on the smothered hilarity of the press. The demoralized Lambert pulled himself together with a mighty effort; a junior counsel emitted a convulsive snort; only Mr. Farr remained entirely unmoved. Pensive, nonchalant and mildly sardonic, he bestowed a perfunctory glance on the measure of tape and returned to a critical perusal of some notes of his own, which he had been studying intently since he had surrendered his witness to his adversary. The adversary, his eyes still bulging, returned once more to the charge.“May I ask you what caused you to burden yourself with this invaluable mass of information?”“Surest thing you may ask. I do it because me, I am well familiar with the questions what all smart high-grade lawyers put when in the court—like, could you then tell us how high were those steps, and how many were those minutes, and how far were those walls—all things like that they like to go and ask, every time, sure like shooting.”“I see. A careful student of our little eccentricities. How has it happened that your crowded life has afforded you the leisure to make so exhaustive a study of our habits?”“Once again, more slow?” suggested the student affably.
“Well, this is the time you beat me to it,” commented the reporter approvingly. “That’s the hat I like too. Want a pencil?”
“I always want a pencil,” said the red-headed girl. “And I beat everybody to it. I’d rather get here at six o’clock than go through that howling mob of maniacs one single time more. Besides, I’ve been sleeping, so I might as well be here. Besides, I thought that if I got here early you might tell me whether it was Mr. Ives or Mr. Farwell who did it.”
“Who did what?”
“Who killed Mrs. Bellamy.”
“Oh, Lord!” groaned the reporter. “Why is it that every mortal soul at a murder trial spends his life trying to pin the crime on to anyone in the world but the people being tried for it. Talk about juries!”
“I’m not talking about juries,” said the red-headed girl firmly. “I’m talking about Mr. Farwell, and Mr. Ives. Don’t you think that it was funny that Mr. Farwell was there that day?”
“Oh, comical as all get out! Still and all, I believe that he was there precisely when he said he was. That poor devil was telling the truth.”
“How do you know?” inquired the red-headed girl respectfully.
“Oh, you get hunches at this game when you’ve been at it long enough.”
“That must be nice. Did you get a hunch about Mr. Ives?”
“About Pat Ives? I haven’t heard him yet.”
“What did it mean, his not being at that poker game?”
“Well, it might have meant anything in the world—or nothing. The only thing that’s perfectly clear is that it meant that last night was undoubtedly one of wassail and carouse for Uncle Dudley Lambert.”
“Why?”
“My dear child, didn’t you see the look of unholy glee that flooded the old gentleman’s countenance when he realized that young Mr. Ives hadn’t a shadow of an alibi for that eventful evening?”
“Well, but why?”
“Because the only thing that Uncle Dudley would as soon do as save his angel goddaughter from the halter is to drape one around Pat Ives’s neck. He’s hated Pat ever since he dared to subject his precious Sue to a life of good healthy hardship in New York; he’s never forgiven him for estranging her from her father; and since he found out that he betrayed her with the Bellamy girl, he’s been simply imbecile with rage. And now, through some heaven-sent fluke, he’s enabled to put his life in jeopardy. He’s almost out of his head. He’d better go a bit warily, however. If I can read the human countenance—and it may interest you to know that I can read the human countenance—Mrs. Patrick Ives is not entirely in favour of sending her unworthy spouse to the gallows. She had a monitory look in her eye that bodes ill for Uncle Dudley if she ever realizes what he’s doing.”
The red-headed girl heaved an unhappy sigh. “Well, I don’t believe that anyone did it,” she remarked spaciously. “Not anyone here, I mean. Burglars, probably, or one of those funny organizations, or——”
“Silence, silence! The Court!”
Mr. Farr had a new purple necktie, sombre and impressive; Mr. Lambert was a trifle more frivolous, though the polka dots were discreet; Mrs. Ives wore the same tweed suit, the same copper-coloured hat. Heavens, it might as well be a uniform!
“Call Miss Cordier.”
“Miss Melanie Cordier!”
The slim elegance of the figure in the severely simple black coat and blackclochehat was especially startling when one remembered that Miss Melanie Cordier was the waitress in the Ives household. It was a trifle more comprehensible when one remembered that she was as Gallic as her name implied. With her creamy skin, her long black eyes and smooth black curves of hair, her lacquer-red mouth exactly matching the lacquer-red camellia on her lapel, Miss Cordier bore a striking resemblance to a fashion magazine’s cover designs. She mounted the witness box with profound composure and seated herself, elaborately at ease.
“Miss Cordier, what was your occupation on the nineteenth of June, 1926?”
“I was waitress in the employment of Mrs. Patrick Ives.” There was only the faintest trace of accent in the clear syllables—a slight softening of consonants and broadening of vowels, becoming enough variations on an Anglo-Saxon theme.
“How long had you been in her employ?”
“A year and nine month—ten month. I could not be quite sure.”
“How did you happen to go to Mrs. Ives?”
“It was through Mrs. Bellamy that I go.”
“Mrs. Stephen Bellamy?”
“Yes, sir, through Mrs. Stephen Bellamy.”
“Will you tell us just how that happened, Miss Cordier?”
“Assuredly. My little younger sister had been sent by an agency three or four years ago to Mrs. Bellamy directly when she land in this country. She was quite inexperience’, you understand, and could not command a position such as one trained could demand; but Mrs. Bellamy was good to her and she work hard, and after a while she marries a young man who drives for the grocer and they——”
“Yes, quite so, Miss Cordier. My question was, how did Mrs. Bellamy happen to send you to Mrs. Ives?”
“Yes, that is what I explain.” Miss Cordier, exquisitely unruffled, pursued the even tenor of her way. “Sometime when my sister was there with Mrs. Bellamy I would go out to show her what she should do. For me, I have been a waitress for eight years and am well experience’. Well, then I see Mrs. Bellamy and tell her that if some time she knows of a excellent position in that Rosemont, I would take it so that sometime I could see my little sister who is marrying that young man from the grocer’s. And about two years ago, maybe, she write to me to say that her friend Mrs. Patrick Ives she is looking for a extremely superior waitress. So that is how I go to Mrs. Ives.”
“Are you still in the employ of Mrs. Ives?”
“No. On June twentieth I resign, since I am not quite content with something that have happen.”
“Did this occurrence have anything to do with the death of Mrs. Bellamy?”
“That I do not say. But I was not content.”
“Miss Cordier, have you seen this book before? I call your attention to its title—Stone on Commercial Paper, Volume III.”
Miss Cordier’s black eyes swept it perfunctorily. “Yes, that book I know.”
“When did you last see it?”
“The night of June nineteenth, about nine o’clock.”
“Where?”
“In the study of Mr. Ives.”
“What particularly brought it to your attention?”
“Because I take it out of the corner by the desk to look inside it.”
“For what purpose?”
“Because I want to see whether a note I put there that afternoon still was there.”
“And was that note still there, Miss Cordier?”
“No, monsieur, that note, it was gone.”
The prosecutor tossed the impressive volume carelessly on to the clerk’s desk. “I offer this volume in evidence, Your Honour.”
“Any objections?” Judge Carver turned an inquiring eye on the bulky figure of Dudley Lambert, hovering uncertainly over the buckram-clad repository of correspondence.
Mr. Lambert, shifting from one foot to the other, eyed the volume as though he were endeavouring to decide whether it were an infernal machine or a jewel casket, and with one final convulsive effort arrived at a conclusion: “No objection.”
“Miss Cordier, to whom was the note that you placed in the book addressed?”
“It was addressed to Mr. Patrick Ives.”
“Was it written by you?”
“Ah, no, no, monsieur.”
“Do you know by whom it was written?”
“Yes, monsieur.”
“By whom?”
“By Mrs. Stephen Bellamy.”
“And how did it happen that you were in possession of a note from Mrs. Bellamy to Mr. Ives?”
“It was the habit of Mrs. Bellamy to mail to me letters that she desire’ to have reach Mr. Ives, without anyone should know. Outside there would be my name on the envelope; inside there would be a more small envelope with the name of Mr. Ives on it. That one I would put in the book.”
“You had been doing this for some time?”
“For some time, yes—six months—maybe eight.”
“How many notes had you placed there, to the best of your recollection?”
“Ah, that I am not quite sure—ten—twelve—twenty—who knows? At first once a month, maybe; that last month, two and three each week.”
“At what time did you put the note there?”
“Maybe fifteen minutes before seven, maybe twenty. After half-past six, I know, and not yet seven.”
“Was that your usual habit?”
“Oh, no, monsieur; it was my habit to put them there in the night, when I make dark the house. Half-past six, that was a very bad time, because quite easily someone might see.”
“Then why did you choose that time, Miss Cordier?”
“Oh, but I do not choose. You see, it was like this: That night, when MacDonald, the chauffeur, bring in the letters a little bit after six, this one it was there for me, in a envelope that was write on it Urgent. On the little envelope inside it say Urgent—Very Urgent in letters with lines under them most black, and so I know that there is great haste that Mr. Patrick Ives he should get that letter quick. So I start to go to the study, but there in the hall is all those people who have come from the club, and Mrs. Ives she send me quick to get somecanapés, and Mr. Dallas he come with me to show me what he want for the cocktails—limes and honey and all those thing, you know.” She looked appealingly at the prosecutor from the long black eyes and for a moment his tense countenance relaxed into a grim smile.
“You were about to tell us why you placed the note there at that time.”
“Yes; that is what I tell. Well, I wait and I wait for those people to go home, and still they do not go, but I dare not go in so long as across the hall from the study they all stay in that living room. But after a while I cannot wait any longer for fear that Mr. Patrick Ives should come and not find that most urgent note. So very quiet I slip in when I think no one look, and I put that note quick, quick in the book, and I start to come out in the hall; but when I get to the door I see there is someone in the hall and I step back again to wait till they are gone.”
“And whom did you see in the hall, Miss Cordier?”
“I see in the hall Mr. Elliot Farwell and Mrs. Patrick Ives.”
“Did they see you?”
Miss Cordier lifted eloquent shoulders. “How do I know, monsieur? Maybe they do, maybe they don’t—me, I cannot tell. I step back quick and listen, and after a while their voices stop and I hear a door close, and I come out quick through the hall and into the door to the kitchen without I see no one.”
“Did you hear what Mr. Farwell and Mrs. Ives were saying?”
“No, that I could not hear even when I listen, so low they talk, so low that almost they whisper.”
“You heard nothing else while you were there?”
“Yes, monsieur. While I stand by the desk, but before I take out the book, I heard mademoiselle go through the hall with the children.”
“Mademoiselle? Mademoiselle who?” The prosecutor’s voice was expressionless enough, but there was a prophetic shadow of annoyance in his narrowed eyes.
“Mademoiselle Page.”
“You say that she was simply passing through the hall?”
“Yes, monsieur—on her way to the stairs.”
“You had not yet touched the book?”
“No, monsieur.”
“You waited until she passed before you did so?”
“Yes.”
“Was Mrs. Ives in the hall at the time that you placed the note in the book?”
“Ah, that, too, I do not say. I say only that she was there one minute—one half minute after I have put it there.”
“Could she have seen you place it in the book from the position in which you saw her standing?”
“It is possible.”
“Was she facing you?”
“No, monsieur; it is Mr. Farwell who face’ me. Mrs. Ives had the back toward me.”
Again that shadow of fierce annoyance, turning the blue eyes almost black. “Then what makes you say that she might have seen you?”
The dark eyes meeting his widened a trifle in something too tranquil for surprise—a mild, indolent wonder at the obtuseness of the human race in general, men in particular, and prosecutors more particularly still. “I say that because it might well be that in that little minute she have turn’ the back to me, or if she have not, then it might be that she see in the mirror.”
“There was a mirror?”
“But yes, on the other side of the hall from the study door there is a long, long chair—a what you call a bench—where the gentlemen they leave their hats. Over that there hangs the mirror. And it was by that bench that I see Mr. Farwell and Mrs. Ives.”
“And the desk and the bookcase were reflected in the mirror?”
“Yes, monsieur.”
“I see. Now did you notice anything at dinner, Miss Cordier?”
“Nothing at all; everything was as usual, of an entire serenity.”
“It was at the usual hour?”
“At quarter past seven—yes.”
“Who was present?”
“Mrs. Patrick Ives, Mrs. Daniel Ives, Mr. Ives, as usual.”
“Do you recall the conversation?”
“Oh, no, monsieur, I recall only that everyone talk as always about small things. It is my practice, like an experience’ waitress, serious and discreet, to be little in the dining room—only when serving, you understand.” The serious and discreet waitress eyed her interrogator with a look of bland superiority.
“Nothing struck you as unusual after dinner?”
“No, no.”
“You saw no one before you turned out the lights for the night?”
“Oh, yes, I have seen Mrs. Daniel Ives at that time, and she ask me whether Mrs. Ives have return, and I say no.”
“No one else?”
“Only the other domestics, monsieur. At a little past ten I retire’ for the night.”
“You went to sleep immediately?”
“Yes, monsieur.”
“Breakfast was just as usual the next morning?”
“As usual—yes.”
“At what time?”
“At nine, as on all Sundays. Mrs. Patrick Ives have hers at half-past nine, when she gets home from church.”
“Nothing unusual in that?”
“Oh, no; on the contrary, that is her habit.”
“And after breakfast, nothing unusual occurred?”
“I do not know whether you call it unusual, but after breakfast, yes, something occurred.”
“Just tell us what it was, please.”
Miss Cordier spent an interminable moment critically inspecting a pair of immaculate cream-coloured gloves before she decided to gratify this desire: “It was just so soon as Mr. Ives and his mother have finish’ breakfast, a few minutes before half-past nine. Mr. Ives he go directly to his study, and I go after him with the Sunday papers and before I go out I ask—because me, I am desirous to know—‘Mr. Ives, you have got that note all right what I put in the book?’ And he say——”
“Your Honour, I object! I object! What Mr. Ives said——”
This time there was no indecision whatever in the clamour set up by the long-suffering Lambert, and the prosecutor, eyeing him benevolently, raised a warning hand to his witness. “Never mind what he said, Miss Cordier. Just tell us what you said.”
“I said, after he spoke, ‘Oh, Mr. Ives, then if you have not got it, it is Mrs. Ives who have found it. She have seen me put it in the book while she stood there in the hall.’ ”
The prosecutor waited for a well-considered moment to permit this conveniently revelatory reply to sink in. “It was after this conversation with Mr. Ives that you decided you would no longer remain with Mrs. Ives?”
“No, monsieur, it was later in the morning that I decide that.”
“Something occurred that made you decide it then?”
Miss Cordier’s lacquer-red lips parted, closed, parted again. “Yes.”
“What, Miss Cordier?”
“At half-past eleven I have heard that Mrs. Bellamy have been killed.” The dark eyes slipped sidelong in the direction of the quiet young woman who had not so long since been her mistress. There she sat, leaning easily back in the straight, uncomfortable chair, ankles crossed, hands linked, studying the tips of her squarely cut little shoes with lowered eyes. The black eyes travelled from the edge of the kilted skirt to the edge of the small firm chin and then slid slowly back to the prosecutor: “When I heard that, I was not content, so I no longer stayed.”
“Exactly.” The prosecutor plunged his hands deep in his pockets and cocked a flagrantly triumphant eye at the agitated Lambert. “You no longer stayed. That will be all, Miss Cordier. Cross-examine.”
“Miss Cordier, you knew perfectly that if for one second it came to Mrs. Ives’s attention that you had been acting as go-between in the alleged correspondence between her husband and Mrs. Bellamy you would not have remained five minutes under her roof, did you not?”
Miss Cordier leaned a trifle farther over the edge of the witness box to meet the rough anger of Lambert’s voice, something ugly and insolent hardening the creamy mask of her face.
“I know that when Mrs. Ives is angered she is quick to speak, quick to act—yes, monsieur.”
At the fatal swiftness of that blow, the ruddy face before her sagged and paled, then rallied valiantly. “And so you decided that you had better leave before Mr. Ives questioned her about finding the note and you were turned out in disgrace, didn’t you?”
“I have said already, monsieur, that I leave because I have heard that Mrs. Bellamy have been murdered and I am not content.” The ominously soft voice pronounced each syllable with a lingering and deadly deliberation.
Mr. Lambert eyed her savagely and moved heavily on: “You say that you were cut off from escaping through the hall by the fact that you saw that it was occupied by Mr. Farwell and Mrs. Ives?”
“That is so.”
“Why didn’t you go back through the dining room to the pantry?”
“Because I hear Mr. Dallas and Mr. Burgoyne talking from the dining room, where they try one more cocktail.”
“Why should they have thought it unusual to have you come from the study?”
“I think it more prudent that no one should know I have been in that study.”
“You were simply staying there in order to spy on Mrs. Ives, weren’t you?”
“I could not help see Mrs. Ives unless I close’ my eyes.”
Mr. Lambert was obliged to swallow twice before he was able to continue:
“Did you tell Mr. Ives that Mr. Farwell was in the hall also at the time that you saw Mrs. Ives there?”
“I do not remember whether I tell him or whether I do not.”
“Mr. Farwell was facing you, was he not?”
“Yes.”
“What made you so sure that it was Mrs. Ives who took the note, not Mr. Farwell?”
“Because, when I hear the door close, then I know that Mr. Farwell he has gone.”
“And how did you know that?”
Once more Miss Cordier raised eloquent shoulders. “Because, monsieur, I am not stupid. I look out, he is standing by the hat stand; I go back, I hear a door close, I look out once more, and he is not there. But that is of the most elementary.”
“You should be a detective instead of wasting your time waiting on tables,” commented her courtly interrogator. “The plain truth is, isn’t it, that anyone in the house might have gone out and closed that door while Mr. Farwell went back to the living room with Mrs. Ives?”
“If you say so, monsieur,” replied Miss Cordier indifferently.
“And the plain truth is that Mr. Farwell was frantically infatuated with Mrs. Bellamy and was spying on her constantly, isn’t it?”
“It is possible.”
“Possible! Mr. Farwell himself stated it half a dozen times from this very witness box. It’s a plain fact. And another plain fact is that any one of a dozen other people might have passed through the hall and seen you at work, mightn’t they?”
“I should not believe so—no, monsieur.”
“Whether you believe it or not, it happens to be the truth. Six or eight servants, eight or ten guests—— What reason have you for believing that Miss Page herself did not notice something unusual in your attitude and turn back in time to see you place the note after you believed that she had passed?”
“No reason, monsieur—only the evidence of all five of my senses.”
“You are a highly talented young woman, Miss Cordier, but you can’t see with your back turned, can you?”
“Monsieur is pleased to jest,” remarked Miss Cordier, in the tone of one frankly undiverted.
“Don’t characterize my questions, please—answer them.”
“Willingly. I do not see with my back turn’.”
“So it comes down to the fact that ten—twelve—fourteen people might have seen you place this urgent and mysterious note that you so boldly charge Mrs. Ives with taking, doesn’t it?”
“That is monsieur’s opinion, not mine.”
Monsieur glared menacingly at the not too subtle mockery adorning the witness’s pleasing countenance.
“And furthermore, Miss Cordier, it comes down to the fact that we have only your word for it that the note was ever placed in the book at all, doesn’t it?”
“Monsieur does not find that sufficient?”
Monsieur ignored the question, but his countenance testified eloquently that such was indeed the case.
“Just how did you happen to select a book in Mr. Ives’s library as a hiding place for this correspondence?”
“Because that is a good safe place, where every night he can look without anyone to watch.”
“What made you think that someone else might not take out that book to read?”
“That book?Stone on Commercial Paper, Volume III? Monsieur is pleased to jest!”
Monsieur, scowling unattractively at some openly diverted members of the press, changed his line of attack with some abruptness. “Miss Cordier, you know a man called Adolph Platz, do you not?”
Miss Cordier’s lashes flickered once—twice. “Of a certainty.”
“Did you see him in the afternoon of the nineteenth of June?”
“Yes.”
“How did you come to know him?”
“He was for a time chauffeur to Mrs. Ives.”
“Married, wasn’t he?”
“Married, yes.”
“Mrs. Platz was a chambermaid in Mrs. Ives’s employ?”
“Yes.”
“They left because Mrs. Platz quarrelled with you, did they not?”
“One moment, please.” The prosecutor lifted an imperious voice. “Are we to be presented with an account of all the back-stairs quarrels, past and present, indulged in by Mrs. Ives’s domestics? To the best of my belief, my distinguished adversary is entering a field, however profitable and entertaining it may prove, that I have left totally virgin. Does the court hold this proper for cross-examination?”
“The Court does not. The question is overruled.”
“I ask an exception, Your Honour. . . . Miss Cordier, when you were turning out the lights that night, did you go into all the downstairs rooms?”
“Into all of them—yes.”
“Did you see Mr. Patrick Ives in any of them?”
“No, monsieur.”
Sue Ives leaned forward with a swift gesture, a sudden wave of colour sweeping her from throat to brow. Mr. Lambert looked diligently away.
“You have placed great stress on your skill, experience, and training as a waitress, Miss Cordier. Are you a waitress at present?”
“No.”
“Just what is your present occupation?”
“At present I have no occupation. I rest.”
“In the boarding house in Atlantic City where you have been occupied in resting for the past three or four months, you are not reposing under the name of Melanie Cordier, are you?”
The black eyes darted toward the prosecutor, who stood leaning, shrewd and careless, over the back of a tilted chair. “Is it particularly germane to this inquiry whether Miss Cordier chooses to call herself Joan of Arc, if she wants to?” he inquired.
“I propose to attack the credibility of this witness,” said Mr. Lambert unctuously. “I propose to prove by this witness, that while she is posing here as a correct young person and a model servant she is actually living a highly incorrect life as a supposedly married woman. . . . Miss Cordier, I ask you whether for the past three months you have not been passing as the wife of Adolph Platz, having persuaded him to abandon his own wife?”
In the pale oval of her face the black eyes flamed and smoked. “And I tell you no, no, and again no, monsieur!”
“You do not go under the name of Mrs. Adolph Platz?”
“I do not persuade him to abandon that stupid doll, his wife. Long before I knew him, he was tired and sick of her.”
“You do not go under the name of Mrs. Adolph Platz?”
“That is most simple. Monsieur Platz he have been to me a excellent friend and adviser. When I explain to him that I am greatly in need of rest he suggest to me that a woman young, alone, and of not an entire lack of attraction would quite possibly find it more restful if the world should consider her married. So he is amiable enough to suggest that if it should assist me, I might for this small vacation use his name. It is only thing I have take from him, monsieur may rest assured.”
“You remove a great weight from my mind,” Mr. Lambert assured her, horridly playful; “and from the minds of these twelve gentlemen as well, I am sure.” The twelve gentlemen, who had been following the lady’s simple and virtuous explanation of her somewhat unconventional conduct with startled attention, smiled for the first time in four days, shifting stiffly on their chairs and exchanging sidelong glances, skeptically jocose. “It is a pleasure to all of us to know that such chivalry as Mr. Platz has exhibited is not entirely extinct in this wicked workaday world. I hardly think that we can improve on your explanation as to why you are known in Atlantic City as Mrs. Adolph Platz, Miss Cordier. That will be all.”
The prosecutor, who did not seem unduly perturbed by these weighty flights of sarcasm, continued to lean on his chair, though he once more lifted his voice: “You had saved quite a sum of money during these past years, hadn’t you, Miss Cordier?”
“Yes, monsieur.”
“It proved ample for your modest needs on this long-planned and greatly needed vacation, did it not?”
“More than ample—yes.”
“Mr. Platz had left his wife some time before these unhappy events caused you to leave Mrs. Ives, hadn’t he?”
“Of a surety, monsieur.”
“That’s all, thank you, Miss Cordier.”
Miss Cordier moved leisurely from the stand, chic and poised as ever, disdaining even a glance at the highly gratified Lambert, and bestowing the briefest of smiles on Mr. Farr, who responded even more briefly. Many a lady, trailing sable and brocade from an opera box, has moved with less assurance and grace than Mrs. Ives’s one-time waitress, the temporary Mrs. Adolph Platz. The eyes of the courtroom, perplexed, diverted, and faintly disturbed, followed her balanced and orderly retreat, the scarlet camellia defiant as a little flag.
“Call Miss Roberts.”
“Miss Laura Roberts!”
Miss Laura Roberts also wore black, but she wore her black with a difference. A decent, sober, respectful apparel for a decent, sober, respectful little person—Miss Roberts, comely, rosy-faced, gray-eyed, fawn-haired and soft-voiced, had all the surface qualifications of an ideal maid, and she obviously considered that those qualifications did not include scarlet lips and scarlet flowers. Under the neat black hat her eyes met the prosecutor’s shyly and bravely.
“Miss Roberts, what was your occupation on June nineteenth, 1926?”
“I was maid and seamstress to Mrs. Patrick Ives, sir.”
The pretty English voice, with its neat, clipped accent, fell pleasantly and reassuringly on the ears of the courtroom, which relaxed with unfeigned relief from the tensity into which her Gallic colleague had managed to plunge it during her tenure of the witness box.
“Did you see Mrs. Ives on the evening of the nineteenth?”
“Not after dinner—no, sir. I asked her before dinner if it would be quite all right for cook and me to go down to the village to church that night, and she said quite, and not to bother about getting home early, because she wouldn’t be needing me again. So after church we met two young gentlemen that we knew and went across to the drug store and had some ices, and sat talking a bit before we walked home, so that it was well on to eleven when we got in, and all the lights were out except the one in the kitchen, so I knew that Mrs. Ives was in bed.”
“What time did you leave the house for church, Miss Roberts?”
“Well, I couldn’t exactly swear to it, sir, but it must have been around half-past eight; because service was at nine, and it’s a good bit of a walk, and I do remember hurrying with dinner so that I could turn down the beds and be off.”
“Were you chambermaid in the household as well as seamstress-maid?”
“Oh, no, sir; only it was the chambermaid’s night off, you see, and then it was my place to do it.”
“I see. So on this night you turned down all the beds before eight-thirty?”
“Yes, sir—all but Miss Page’s, that is.”
“That wasn’t included in your duties?”
“Oh, yes, sir, it was. But that night when I got to the day nurse’s door it was locked, and when I knocked, no one didn’t answer at first, and then Miss Page called out that she had a headache and had gone to bed already——”
Miss Roberts hesitated and looked down at the prosecutor with honest, troubled eyes.
“Nothing extraordinary about that, was there?”
“Well, yes, sir, there was. You see, when I was coming down the hall I heard what I thought were voices coming out of those rooms, and crying, and I was afraid that the little girl was having more trouble with her ear. That’s why I started to go in without knocking, but after I’d been standing there a minute, I heard that it was Miss Page crying herself, fit to break her heart. I never heard anyone cry so dreadful in all my life. It fairly gave me a turn, but the moment I knocked there wasn’t a sound, and then after a minute she called out that she wouldn’t need me, just as I told you, sir. So I went on my way, of course, though I was still a bit worried. She’d been crying so dreadful, poor thing, that I was afraid she would be right down sick.”
“Yes, quite so. Very much upset, as though she’d been through an agitating experience?”
“Oh, yes, indeed, sir.”
“You were mistaken about the voices weren’t you? It was just Miss Page crying?”
“No, sir—I thought I heard voices, too.” The soft voice was barely audible.
“The little girl’s?”
“No, sir. It sounded—it sounded like Mr. Ives.”
The prosecutor stared at her blankly.
“Mr. Patrick Ives?”
“Yes, sir.”
“You could hear what he was saying?”
“No, sir, I couldn’t; it stopped as soon as I tried the door. I thought he was talking to the little girl.”
Mr. Farr continued to contemplate her blankly for a moment, and then, with an eloquent shrug of the shoulders, dismissed Mr. Ives, Miss Page, and the locked door for more fruitful pastures.
“Now, Miss Roberts, your duties included the care of your mistress’s wardrobe, did they not?”
“Yes, sir.”
“You are quite familiar with all its contents?”
“Oh, quite.”
“Will you be good enough to tell us if it contains to-day all the articles that it contained on the nineteenth of June, 1926?”
“No, sir, it doesn’t. Mrs. Ives gives away a lot of her things at the end of every season. We sent a big box off to a sick cousin she has in Arizona, and another to some young ladies in Delaware, and another to the——”
“Never mind about the things that you sent at the end of the season. Did you send anything at about the time of the murder—within a few weeks of it, say?”
The roses in Miss Roberts’s cheeks faded abruptly, and the candid eyes fled precipitately to the chair where Susan Ives sat, playing idly with the crystal clasp of her brown suède bag. At the warm, friendly, reassuring little smile that she found waiting for her, Miss Roberts apparently found heart of grace. “Yes, sir, we did,” she said steadily.
“On what date, please?”
“On the twentieth of June.”
The courtroom drew in its breath sharply—a little sigh for its lost ease—and moved forward the inch that separated suspense from polite attention.
“To whom was the package sent?”
“It was sent to the Salvation Army.”
“What was in it?”
“Well, there were two old sweaters and a swiss dress that had shrunk quite small, and a wrapper, and some blouses and a coat.”
“What kind of a coat, Miss Roberts?”
“A light flannel coat—a kind of sports coat, you might call it,” said Miss Roberts clearly; but those who craned forward sharply enough could see the knuckles whiten on the small, square, capable hands.
“Cream-coloured flannel?”
“Well, more of a biscuit, I’d call it,” replied Mrs. Ives’s maid judicially.
“The coat that Mrs. Ives had been wearing the evening before, wasn’t it?”
“I believe it was, sir.”
“Did you see the condition of this coat before you packed it, Miss Roberts?”
“No, sir, I didn’t. It wasn’t I that packed it.”
“Not you? Who did pack it?”
“Mrs. Ives packed it herself.”
“Ah, I see.” In that sudden white light of triumph the prosecutor’s face was almost beautiful—a cruel and sinister beauty, such as might have lighted the face of the youngest Spanish Inquisitionist as the stray shot of a question went straight to the enemy’s heart. “It was Mrs. Ives who packed it. How did it come into your hands, Miss Roberts?”
“The package, sir?”
“Certainly, the package.”
“It was this way, sir: A little before eight Sunday morning Mrs. Ives’s bell rang and I went down to her room. She was all dressed for church, and there was a big box on her bed. She said, ‘I rang for you before, Roberts, but you were probably at breakfast. Take this down to MacDonald and tell him to mail it when he gets the papers. The post office closes at half-past nine.’ ”
“Was that all that she said?”
“Oh, no, sir. She asked me for some fresh gloves, and then she said over her shoulder like as she was going out, ‘It’s those things that I was getting together for the Salvation Army. I put in the coat I was wearing last night too. I absolutely ruined it with some automobile grease on Mr. Bellamy’s car.’ ”
“Nothing more?”
“Well, then I said, ‘Oh, madam, couldn’t it be cleaned?’ And Mrs. Ives said, ‘It isn’t worth cleaning; this is the third year I’ve had it.’ Then she went out, sir, and I took it down and gave it to MacDonald.”
“Was it addressed?”
“Oh, yes, sir.”
“How?”
“Just Salvation Army Headquarters, New York, N. Y.”
“No address in the corner as to whom it came from?”
“Oh, no, sir. Mrs. Ives never——”
“Be good enough to confine yourself to the question. You are not aware, yourself, of the exact nature of these stains, are you, Miss Roberts?”
“Yes, sir, I am,” said the pink-cheeked Miss Roberts firmly. “They were grease stains.”
“What?” The prosecutor’s startled voice skipped half an octave. “Didn’t you distinctly tell me that you didn’t see this coat?”
“No, sir, no more I did. It was Mrs. Ives that told me they were grease stains.”
The prosecutor indulged in a brief bark of mirth that indicated more relief than amusement. “Then, as I say, you are unable to tell us of your own knowledge?”
“No, sir,” replied Miss Roberts, a trifle pinker and a trifle firmer. “Mrs. Ives told me that those stains were grease stains, so I’m certainly able to say of my own knowledge that it was absolutely true if she said so.”
There was something in the soft, sturdy voice that made the grimy courtroom a pleasanter place. Sue Ives’s careless serenity flashed suddenly to that of a delighted child; Stephen Bellamy’s fine, grave face warmed and lightened; the shadows lifted for a moment from Pat Ives’s haunted eyes; there was a grateful murmur from the press, a friendly stir in the jury. The quiet-eyed, soft-voiced, stubborn little Miss Roberts was undoubtedly the heroine of the moment.
Mr. Farr, however, was obviously unmoved by this exhibition of devotion and loyalty. He permitted more than a trace of annoyance to penetrate his clear, metallic voice. “That’s all very pretty and touching, naturally, Miss Roberts, but from a crudely legal standpoint we are forced to realize that your statement as to the nature of the stains has no weight whatever. It is a fact, is it not, that you never laid eyes on the stained coat that Mrs. Ives sent out of her house within a few hours of the time that this murder was committed?”
“Yes, sir, that is a fact.”
“No further questions, Miss Roberts. Cross-examine.”
“It is a fact, too, that Mrs. Ives frequently sent packages in just this way, isn’t it, Miss Roberts?” inquired Mr. Lambert mellifluously.
“Oh, yes, indeed, she did—often and often.”
“Was she in the habit of putting her address on packages sent to charitable institutions?”
“No, sir. She didn’t want to be thanked for her charities—not ever.”
“Precisely. That’s all, Miss Roberts—thanks.”
“Call Orsini.”
“Loo-weegee Aw-see-nee!”
Luigi Orsini glanced darkly at Ben Potts as he mounted the witness stand, and Mr. Potts returned the glance with Nordic severity.
“What was your occupation on June 19, 1926, Orsini?”
“I work for Miz’ Bell’my.”
“In what capacity?”
“What you say?”
“What was your job?”
“I am what you call handy—do everything there is to do.”
The spacious gesture implied Gargantuan labours and super-human abilities. A small, thick, stocky individual, swarthy and pompadoured, with lustrous eyes, a glittering smile, and a magnificent barytone voice, he suggested without any effort whatever infinite possibilities in the rôle of either tragedian or comedian. The redoubtable Farr eyed him with a trace of well-justified apprehension.
“Well, suppose you tell us what your principal activities were on the nineteenth of June.”
“Ah, well, that day me, I am very active, like per usual. At six o’clock I arise and after some small breakfast I take extra-fine strong wire and some very long sticks——”
“No, no, you can skip all that. You heard Mr. Farwell’s testimony, didn’t you?”
“For sure I hear that testimony.”
“Was it correct that he stopped around noon at the Bellamys’ and asked for Mrs. Bellamy?”
“All correct, O. K.”
“Did he tell you where he was going?”
“Yes, sair, he then he say he get her at that cottage.”
“Nothing else?”
“Not one other thing else.”
“You didn’t see him again?”
“No, no; I do not see him again evair.”
“When did you last see Mrs. Bellamy?”
“It is about eight in the evening—maybe five minute before, maybe five minute after.”
“How do you fix the time?”
“I have look at my watch—this watch you now see, which is a good instrument of entirely pure silver, but not always faithful.”
The prosecutor waved away the bulky shining object dangled enticingly before his eyes with a gesture of almost ferocious impatience. “Never mind about that. Why did you consult your watch?”
The owner of the magnificent but unfaithful instrument swelled darkly for a moment, but continued to dangle his treasure. “That you shall hear—patience. I produce the instrument at this time so that you note that while the clock over the door it say twenty minutes before the hour, this watch it say nine minute—or maybe eight. You judge for yourself. It is without a doubt eccentric. But on that night still I have consult it to see if I go to New York at eight-twenty. I wait to decide still when I see Mrs. Bell’my run down the front steps and come down to the gate where I stand.”
“Did she speak to you?”
“Oh, positive. She ask, ‘What, Luigi, you do not go to New York?’ ”
“How did she know that you were going to New York?”
“Because already before dinner I have ask permission from Mr. Bell’my if I can go to New York that evening to see a young lady from Milan that I think perhaps I marry, maybe. Miz’ Bell’my she is in the next room and she laugh and call out, ‘You tell Marietta that if she get you, one day she will find herself marry to the President of these United State’.’ I excuse myself for what may seem like a boast, but those are the words she use.”
And suddenly, as though he found the memory of that gay, mocking young voice floating across the heavy air of the courtroom more unbearable than all the blood and shame and horror that had invaded it, Stephen Bellamy’s face twisted to a tortured grimace and he lifted an unsteady hand to lowered eyes.
“Look!” came a penetrating whisper. “He’s crying, ain’t he? Ain’t he, Gertie?”
And the red-headed girl lowered her own eyes swiftly, a shamed and guilty flush reaching to the roots of her hair. How ugly, how contemptible, one’s thoughts could sound in words!
“What reply did you make to Mrs. Bellamy?”
“I tell to her that I think maybe I had better not go, as that afternoon I have invest my money in a small game of chance with the gardener next door and the investment it have prove’ unsound. I say that how if I go to New York to see my young lady, it is likely that I must request of her the money to return back to Rosemont—and me, who am proud, I find that indelicate. So Miz’ Bell’my she laugh out and look quick in the little bag that she carry and give me three dollar’—to make the course of true love run more smooth, she say—and then she call back over her shoulder, ‘Better hurry, Luigi, or you miss that train.’ So I hurry, but all the same I miss it—by two small minute, because, chiefly, this watch he is too eccentric.”
In spite of its eccentricity, he returned it tenderly to his vest pocket, after a final flip in the direction of the harassed Farr and the enraptured audience.
“Did you notice anything else in the bag when Mrs. Bellamy opened it?”
“Oh, positive. The eyes of Luigi they miss nothing what there is to see. All things they observe. In that bag of Miz’ Bell’my there are stuff, stuff in two, three letters—I dunno for sure—maybe four. But they make that small little bag bulge out so—very tight, like that.” Mr. Orsini’s eloquent hands sketched complete rotundity.
“You never saw Mrs. Bellamy again?”
“Not evair—no, no more—not evair.”
For a moment the warm blood under the swarthy Southern skin seemed to run more slowly and coldly; but after a hasty glance at the safe, reassuring autumn sunlight slanting across the crowded room, the colour flowed boldly back to cheek and lip.
“You say that you missed the train to New York. What did you do then?”
“Then I curse myself good all up and down for a fool that is a fool all right, and I go back to my room in the garage and get into my bed and begin to read a story in a magazine that call itselfHonest Confessionabout a bride what——”
“Never mind what you were reading. Did you notice anything unusual on your return?”
“Well, maybe you don’t call it nothing unusual, but I notice that the car of Mr. Bell’my it is no longer in the garage. That make me surprise’ for a minute, because I have heard Mr. Bell’my tell Nellie, the house girl, that it is all right for her to go home early to her mother, where she sleep, because he will be there to answer the telephone if it should ring. But all the same, I go on to bed. I just think he change his mind, maybe.”
“What time did you get back to the garage?”
“At twenty-two minutes before nine I am in my room. That I verify by the alarm clock that repose on the top of my bureau, and which is of an entire reliability; I note it expressly, because I am enrage’ that I have miss’ that train by so small an amount.”
“Orsini, do you know what kind of tires Mr. Bellamy was using on his car?”
“Yes, sair, that, too, I know. There are three old tires of what they call Royal Cord make—two on back and one on front. On the left front one is a good new Silvertown Cord, what I help him to change about a month before all these things have happen. For spare, he carry a all new Ajax. And that is all there is.”
“You’re perfectly sure that the Ajax wasn’t on?”
“Oh, surest thing.”
“When did you last see the car?”
“When I go down to the gate, round half-past seven.”
“And the Ajax was still on as a spare?”
“That’s what.”
“Did you see Mr. Bellamy again on the evening of the nineteenth?”
“Yes, that evening I have seen Mr. Bell’my again.”
“At what time?”
“At five before ten.”
“Was he alone?”
“No; with him there was a lady.”
“Did you recognize her?”
“Yes, sair, I have recognize’ her.”
“Who was this lady, Orsini?”
“This lady, sair, was Miz’ Patrick Ives.”
At those words, pronounced with exactly their proper dramatic inflection by that lover of the drama, Mr. Luigi Orsini, every head in the courtroom pivoted to the spot where Mrs. Patrick Ives sat with the autumn sun warming her hair to something better than gold. And quite oblivious to the ominous inquiry in those straining eyes, she turned toward Stephen Bellamy, meeting his startled eyes with a small, rueful smile, lifted brows and a little shake of the head that came as near to saying “I told you so” as good sportsmanship permitted.
“You are quite positive of that?”
“Oh, without one single doubt.”
“How were you able to identify her?”
“Because I hear her voice, as clear as I hear you, and I see her clear as I see you too.”
“How were you able to do that?”
“By the lights of Mr. Bell’my’s car, when she get out and look up at my window, where I stand and look out.”
“Tell us just how you came to be standing there looking out, please.”
“Well, after a while, I began to get sleepy over that magazine, and I look at the clock and it say ten minutes to ten, and I think, ‘Luigi, my fine fellow, to-morrow you rise at six to do the work that lies before you, and at present it is well that you should sleep.’ So I arise to turn out the light, which switch is by the window, and just when I get there to do that I hear a auto car turn in at the gate. I think, ‘Ah-ha! There now comes Mr. Bell’my.’ And then I look out of that window, for I am surprise’. It is the habit of Mr. Bell’my to put away that car so soon as he come in, but this time he don’t do that. He stop in front of the house and he help out a lady. She stand there looking up at my window, and I see her clear like it is day, but it is all dark inside, so she can see nothing. Then she say, ‘I still could swear that I have seen a light,’ and Mr. Bell’my he say, ‘Sue, don’t let this get you. I tell you that there is no one here—I saw him headed for the train. Maybe perhaps it was the shine from our own lamps what you see. Come on.’ And she say, ‘Maybe; but I could swear——’ And then I don’t hear any more, because they go into the house, and me, I stand there like one paralyze’, because always I have believe Mr. Bell’my to be a man of honour who love——”
“Yes—never mind that. Did you see them come out?”
“Yes, that I see, too. In five-ten minutes they come out and get quick into the car, and drive away without they say one word. They start off very fast, so that the car it jump.”
“Do you know at what time Mr. Bellamy returned that night?”
“No; because then I wake only half up from sleep when I hear him drive that car into the garage, and I do not turn to look at the clock.”
“It was some time later?”
“Some time—yes. But whether one hour—three hours—five hours, that I cannot say. What I am not sure of like my life, that I do not say.”
“Exactly; very commendable. That’s all, thanks. Cross-examine.”
Orsini wheeled his lustrous orbs in the direction of Mr. Lambert, whose ruddy countenance had assumed an expression of intense inhospitality, though he managed to inject an ominous suavity into his ample voice. “With those vigilant and all-seeing eyes of yours, Mr.—er—Mr. Orsini, were you able to note the garments that Mrs. Bellamy was wearing when she went past you at the gate?”
“Oh, positive. A white dress, all fluffy, and a black cape, quite thin, so that almost you see through it—not quite, maybe, but almost.”
“Any hat?”
“On the head a small black scarf that she have wrap’ also around her neck, twice or mebbe three time. The eyes of Luigi——”
“Exactly. Could you see whether she had on her jewels?”
“Positive. Always like that in the evening, moreover, she wear her jewels.”
“You noticed what they were?”
“Same like always—same necklace out of pearls, same rings, diamond and sapphire, two on one hand, one the other—I see them when she open that bag.”
“Mr. Bellamy was a person of moderate means, wasn’t he, as far as you know?”
“Oh, everybody what there is around here knows he wasn’t no John P. Rockfeller, I guess.”
“Do you believe that the stones were genuine?”
Mr. Orsini, thus appealed to as an expert, waxed eloquent and expansive. “Oh, positive. That I know for one absolute sure thing.”
“Tell us just how, won’t you?”
“Well, that house girl, Nellie, one night she tell me that Miz’ Bell’my have left one of her rings at the club where she wash her hands, but that Miz’ Bell’my just laugh and say she should worry herself, because all those rings and her pearls they are insure big, and if she lose those, she go out and buy herself a new house and a auto car, and maybe a police dog too.”
“I see. Had it ever occurred to you that Mrs. Bellamy was using the cottage at Orchards for other purposes than piano practice, Mr. Orsini?”
Orsini’s smile flashed so generously that it revealed three really extravagant gold fillings. “Well, me, I don’t miss many things, maybe you guess. After she get that key three-four times, I think to myself, ‘Luigi, it is funny thing that nevair she give you back that key until the day after, and always those evenings she go out by herself—most generally when Mr. Bell’my he stay in town to work.’ So one of those nights when she ask for that key I permit myself to take a small little stroll up the road in Orchards, and sure thing, there is a light in that cottage and a auto car outside the door. Sufficient! I look no further. Me, I am a man of the world, you comprehend.”
“Obviously.”
“Just a moment, Mr. Lambert,” interrupted Judge Carver. “Is your cross-examination going to take some time?”
“Quite a time, I believe, Your Honour.”
“Then I think it best that we adjourn for the noon recess, as it is already after twelve. The Court stands adjourned until one-ten.”
“Well, here’s where we get our comic relief,” said the reporter with unction. “That son of sunny Italy is going to give us an enviable imitation of a three-ringed circus and a bag of monkeys before he and Lambert get through with each other, or I miss my guess. He’s got a look in his eye that is worth the price of admission alone. What’s your mature opinion of him?”
“I think that he’s beguiling,” said the red-headed girl somewhat listlessly. Little shadows were under her gray eyes, and she curled small limp paws about a neglected notebook. Something in the drooping shoulders under the efficient jacket suggested an exhausted baby in need of a crib and a bottle of hot milk and a firm and friendly tucking in. She made a half-hearted effort to overtake an enormous yawn that was about to engulf her, and then surrendered plaintively.
“Bored?” inquired the real reporter, his countenance illuminated by an expression of agreeable surprise.
“Bored?” cried the lady beside him in a voice at once scornful and outraged. “Bored? I’m half destroyed with excitement. I can’t sleep any more. I go back to the boarding house every night and sit up in front of a gas stove with an orange-and-magenta comforter over my shoulders that ought to warm the dead, writing up my notes until all hours; and then I put a purple comforter over my knees and a muffler over my nose, and get an apple and sit there alternately gnawing the apple and my fingers and trying to work out who did it until even the cats stop singing under my window and the sky begins to get that nice, appealing slate colour that’s so prettily referred to as dawn. And even then I don’t know who did it.”
“Don’t you, indeed?” inquired the reporter severely, looking irritated and anxious. “Haven’t you any sense at all, you little idiot? Listen, I know a place just two blocks down where you can get some fairly decent hot soup. You go and drink about a quart of it and then trot along home and turn in, and I’ll do your notes for you to-night so well that your boss will double your salary in the morning—and if you’re very good and sleep eighteen hours, I may tell you who did the murder.”
The red-headed girl, who had shuddered fastidiously at the offer of fairly decent soup, eyed him ungratefully as she extracted a packet of salted peanuts from the capacious pouch that served her as handbag, commissary, and dressing table.
“Thank you kindly,” she said. “My boss wrote me two special-delivery letters yesterday to say that I was doing far the best stuff that was coming up out of Redfield—far. He said that the three clippings that I sent him of your stuff showed promise—he did, honestly. . . . I think that soup’s terrible, and this is the first time in my life that I’ve been able to stay up as late as I pleased without anyone sending me to bed. I’m mad about it. . . . Have some peanuts?”
“No, thanks,” said the reporter, rising abruptly. “Anything I can get you outside?”
“You’re cross!” wailed the red-headed girl, her eyes round with panic and contrition. “You are—you are—you’re absolutely furious. Wait, please—please, or I’ll hang on to your coat tails and make a scene. The real reason I don’t go out and get soup is because I don’t dare. If I went away even for a minute, something might happen, and then I wouldn’t ever sleep again. Someone might get my seat—didn’t you see that fat, sinful-looking old lady who got theGazettegirl’s place yesterday? She wouldn’t go even when three officers and the sheriff told her she had to, and theGazettegirl had to sit on a stool in the gallery, and she said she had such a rushing of rage in her ears that she couldn’t hear anything that anyone said all afternoon. So, you see—— And I would like a ham sandwich and I think that you write better than Conrad, and I apologize, and if you’ll tell me who did the murder, I’ll tell you. And please hurry, because I hope you won’t be gone long.”
“You’re a nice little nut,” said the reporter, and he beamed on her forgivingly, “and I like you. I like the way your nose turns up and your mouth turns down, and I like that funny little hat you wear. . . . I’ll make it in two jumps. Watch me!”
The red-headed girl watched him obediently, her face pink and her eyes bright under the funny little hat. When the door opened to let him out, she plunged her eyes apprehensively for a moment into the silent, pushing, heaving mob behind the policeman’s broad blue shoulders, shivered, and turned them resolutely away.
“If I were convicted of murder to-morrow,” thought the red-headed girl passionately, “they’d shove just like that to see me hanged. Ugh! What’s the matter with us?”
She eyed with an expression of profound distaste the plump lady just beyond her, conscientiously eating stuffed eggs out of a shoe box. So smug, so virtuous, so pompadoured and lynx-eyed—— Her eyes moved hastily on to the pair of giggling flappers exchanging powder puffs and anecdotes over a box of maple caramels; on to the round-shouldered youth with the unattractive complexion and unpleasant tie; on to the pretty thing with overflushed cheeks and overbright eyes above her sable scarf and beneath her Paris hat. The red-headed girl wrenched her eyes back to the empty space where there sat, tranquil and aloof, the memory of the prisoner at the bar.
It was good to be able to forget those hot, hungry, cruel faces, so sleek and safe and triumphant, and to remember that other face under the shadow of the small felt hat, cool and controlled and gay—yes, gay, for all the shadows that beset it. Only—what thoughts were weaving behind that bright brow, those steady lips? Thoughts of terror, of remorse, of bitterness and horror and despair? If you were strong enough to strike down a laughing girl who barred your path, you would be strong enough to keep your lips steady, wouldn’t you?
The red-headed girl stared about her wildly; she felt suddenly small and cold and terrified. Where was the reporter? What a long time—— Oh, someone had opened a window. It was only the wind of autumn that was blowing so cold then, not the wind of death. What was it those little newsboys were calling outside, yelping like puppies in the gray square?
“Extra Extra! All about the mysterious——”
“Well,” said the reporter’s voice at her elbow, tense with some suppressed excitement, “this is the time he did it! No enterprising Filipino and housemaid around this time. Read that and weep!”
Across the flimsy sheet of the RedfieldHome Newsit ran in letters three inches high: Ex-fiancé of Murdered Girl Blows Out Brains. Prominent Clubman Found Dead in Garden at Eleven Forty-five This Morning.
“I’ve got a peach of a story started over the wires this minute,” said the reporter exultantly. “Here, boy, rush this stuff and beat it back for more. I couldn’t get your sandwich.”
“Well,” said the red-headed girl in a small awed voice—“well, then, that means that he did it himself, doesn’t it? That means that he couldn’t stand it any longer because he killed her, doesn’t it?”
“Or it means that he good and damn well knew that Susan Ives did it,” muttered the reporter, shaken from Olympian calm to frenzied activity. “Here, boy! Boy! Hi, you, rush this—and take off the ear muffs. It’s a hundred-to-one bet that he knew that Sue’d done it, and that he’d as good as put the knife in her hand by telling her where, when, and why it should be managed. . . . Here, boy!”
“He didn’t!” said the red-headed girl fiercely. “He didn’t know it. How could——”
“The Court!” sang Ben Potts.
“How could he know whether she——”
“Silence!” intoned Ben reprovingly.
Mr. Orsini and Mr. Lambert were both heading purposefully for the witness box.
“Now you’ve just told us, Mr. Orsini, that you were able to see Mrs. Ives’s face when you looked down from your window in the garage as clearly as you see mine. Can you give us an idea of the approximate distance from the garage to the house?”
“Positive. The distance from the middle of the garage door to the middle of the front porch step, it is”—he glanced earnestly at a small slip of paper hitherto concealed in one massive paw, and divulged a portion of its contents to his astounded interrogator—“it is forty-seven feet five inches and one half inch.”
“What?”
Mr. Orsini contemplated with pardonable gratification the unfeigned stupor that adorned the massive countenance now thrust incredulously forward. “Also I can now tell you the space between the front gate and the door—one hunnerd forty-three feet and a quarter of a inch,” he announced rapidly and benevolently. “Also from the fence out to the road—eleven feet nine inch and a——”
Judge Carver’s gavel fell with a crash over the enraptured roar that swept the courtroom. “One more demonstration of this kind and I clear the Court. This is a trial for murder, not a burlesque performance. You, sir, answer the questions that are put to you, when they are put. What’s that object in your hand?”
Mr. Orsini dangled the limp yellow article hopefully under the judge’s fine nose. “The instrument with which I make the measure,” he explained, all modest pride. “What you call a measure of tape. The card on which I make the notes as well.”
Judge Carver schooled his momentarily shaken countenance to its customary rigidity and turned a lion tamer’s eye on the smothered hilarity of the press. The demoralized Lambert pulled himself together with a mighty effort; a junior counsel emitted a convulsive snort; only Mr. Farr remained entirely unmoved. Pensive, nonchalant and mildly sardonic, he bestowed a perfunctory glance on the measure of tape and returned to a critical perusal of some notes of his own, which he had been studying intently since he had surrendered his witness to his adversary. The adversary, his eyes still bulging, returned once more to the charge.
“May I ask you what caused you to burden yourself with this invaluable mass of information?”
“Surest thing you may ask. I do it because me, I am well familiar with the questions what all smart high-grade lawyers put when in the court—like, could you then tell us how high were those steps, and how many were those minutes, and how far were those walls—all things like that they like to go and ask, every time, sure like shooting.”
“I see. A careful student of our little eccentricities. How has it happened that your crowded life has afforded you the leisure to make so exhaustive a study of our habits?”
“Once again, more slow?” suggested the student affably.