Chapter V

Chapter V“He couldn’t look so cocky and triumphant and absolutely sure of himself as that if he didn’t actually know that everything was all right,” explained the red-haired girl in a reasonable but tremulous whisper, keeping an eye in desperate need of reassurance on the portly and flamboyant Lambert, who was prowling up and down in front of the jury with an expression of lightly won victory on his rubicund countenance and a tie that boasted actual checks under a ruddy chin. Every now and then he uttered small, premonitory booms.“He could look just exactly like that if he were a God-forsaken fool,” murmured the reporter gloomily. “And would, and undoubtedly does. Whom the gods destroy they first make mad. Look out, there he goes!”“Your Honour,” intoned Mr. Lambert with unction, “gentlemen of the jury, I am not going to burden you with a lengthy dissertation at this moment. In my summing up at a later time I will attempt to analyze the fallacious and specious reasoning on which my brilliant opponent has constructed his case, but at present something else is in my mind; or perhaps I should be both more candid and more accurate if I say that something else is in my heart.“We have heard a great deal of the beauty, the charm, the enchantment, and the tragedy of the young woman whose dreadful death has brought about this trial. Much stress has been laid on her appalling fate and on the pitiful horror of so much loveliness crushed out in such a fashion. It is very far from my desire to deny or to belittle any of this. Tragic and dreadful, indeed, was the fate of Madeleine Bellamy; not one of us can think of it unmoved.“But, gentlemen, when its horror grips you most relentlessly, I ask you to think of another young woman whose fate, to my mind, has been bitterer still; who, many times in these past few days, would have been glad to change places with that dead girl, safe and quiet now, beyond the reach of the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune that have been raining about her own unprotected head. I ask you to turn your thoughts for one moment to the fate of Susan Ives, the prisoner at the bar.“Not so many weeks ago there is not one of you who would not have thought her an object of profound envy. Sue Ives, the adored, the cherished, the protected; Sue Ives, moving safe and happy through a world of flowers and blue skies that held no single cloud; Sue Ives, the lucky and beloved, the darling of the gods. There she sits before you, gentlemen, betrayed by her husband, befouled by every idle tongue that wags, torn from her children and her home, pilloried in every journal in the land from the most lofty and impeccable sheet to the vilest rag in Christendom, branded before the world as that darkest, most dreadful and most abject of creatures—a murderess.“A murderess! This girl, so loyal and generous and honest that those who knew her believed her to be of somewhat finer clay than the rest of this workaday world; so proud, so sensitive and so fastidious that those who loved her would rather a thousand times have seen her dead in her grave than subjected to the ugly torture that has been her lot these past few days. What of her lot, gentlemen? What of her fate? What has brought her to this dreadful pass? Lightness or disloyalty or bad repute or reckless indiscretion or evil intent? Your own wife, your own daughter, your own mother, could not be freer of any taint of scandal or criticism.“Accusations of this nature have been made in this court, but not by me and not against her. Of these sins, Madeleine Bellamy, the girl for whom all your pity has been invoked, has stood accused. She is dead. I, too, invoke your pity for her and such forgetfulness as you can mete out for the folly and dishonour that led to her death. For if she had not gone to that cottage to meet her lover, death would not have claimed her. She met death because she was there, alone and unprotected. Whether she was struck down by a thief, a blackmailer, an old lover or a new one, is not within my province to prove or in yours to decide. My intent is only to show you that so slight is the case against Susan Ives and Stephen Bellamy that a stronger one could be made out against half a dozen people that have been paraded before you in order to defame her.“What is this case against her? I say against her, because if you decide that Mrs. Ives is not guilty, the case against Stephen Bellamy collapses automatically. It is not the contention of the state that he committed this crime. The evidence produced shows, according to the state, that he and Mrs. Ives were together throughout the evening, at her instigation. If she had nothing whatever to do with the crime, it follows inevitably that neither did her companion. I again, therefore, turn your attention to Mrs. Ives, and ask you once more what is this case against her?“This: You are asked to believe that this girl—many of you have daughters older than Susan Ives—that this girl, gently born, gently bred and gentle-hearted, upon receiving information from a half-intoxicated and infatuated suitor of Mimi Bellamy’s that Mimi was carrying on an affair with her husband, Patrick Ives, dined peacefully at home, rose from the table, summoned Mrs. Bellamy’s adoring husband to meet her down a back lane, procured a knife from a table in her husband’s study and straightway sallied forth to remove the encumbrance that she had discovered in her smooth path by the simple and straightforward process of murdering her—murder, you note, premeditated, preconceived, and prearranged. Roughly, an hour and a half elapsed between the time that Susan Ives set out and the moment that the scream fixes as that of the murder.“Presumably some of that time was occupied in convincing Mr. Bellamy of the excellence of her scheme and some of it in idle conversation—the time must have been occupied somehow; the actual rise and fall of a knife is no lengthy matter. Mr. Bellamy, we gather, was so entertained by the death of his idolized wife that he yielded to hearty laughter—Mr. Thorne has told you of that laugh, I believe.“The lamp has gone out, so in total darkness they proceed to collect the jewels and wait peacefully until Mr. Thorne has put his keys under the doormat—the door is locked; they have thought of everything, you see—when once more they venture forth, enter an automobile that has the convenient quality of becoming either visible or invisible as serves them best, and return promptly and speedily to the house of Mr. Stephen Bellamy.“Possibly you wonder why they do that. It is barely ten, and almost anyone might see them, thereby destroying their carefully concocted movie alibi, but possibly they thought that the Bellamy house would be a nice place to hide the pearls and talk things over. We are left a trifle in the dark as to their motives here, but undoubtedly the prosecutor will clear all that up perfectly. Ten minutes later they come out, and still together start off once more, presumably in the direction of Mrs. Ives’s home so that everyone there can get a good look at them together, while Mrs. Ives still has the knife and the bloodstained coat in her possession. There they part, Mrs. Ives to straighten up a little before she takes some fruit up to Mrs. Daniel Ives, Mr. Bellamy presumably to return to his own home and a night of well-earned repose.“In the morning Mrs. Ives rises sufficiently early to pack up the blood drenched garments in a large box for the Salvation Army; she turns them over to a maid to turn over to a chauffeur, requests a fresh pair of gloves and sets forth to early church—the service which she has attended every Sunday of her life since she was a mite of six, with eyes too big for her face, hair to her waist, skirts to her knees and little white cotton gloves that would fit a doll if it weren’t too big. The prosecutor leaves her there telling her God that last night she had had to kill a girl who was liable to make a nuisance of herself before she got through by cutting down Sue Ives’s monthly income considerably. Of course it all may seem a trifle incomprehensible to us, but it’s undoubtedly perfectly clear to God and the prosecutor.“I think that that is a fair and accurate statement of the state’s case, though Mr. Farr undoubtedly can—and will—make it sound a great deal more plausible when he gets at it. But that’s what it boils down to, and all the specious reasoning and forensic and histrionic ability in the world won’t make it one atom less preposterous. That’s their case.“And on what evidence are we asked to believe this incredible farrago? I’ll tell you. We have the word of a hysterical and morbidly sensitive girl with a supposed grievance that she overheard a telephone conversation; we have the word of a vindictive young vixen who is leading nothing more nor less than a life of sin that she planted a note and failed to find it again; we have the disjointed narrative of an unfortunate fellow so far gone in drink, and love that he was half out of his senses at the time that he is supposed to be reporting these crucial events and has since blown his brains out; we have the word of an ex-jailbird who might well have more reasons than one for directing the finger of suspicion at a convenient victim; we have a trooper, eager for credit and prominence, swearing to you that he can as clearly recognize and identify a scrap of earth bearing the imprint of a bit of tire as though it were the upturned countenance of his favourite child—a bit of tire, gentlemen, which undoubtedly has some hundreds of millions of twins in this capacious country of ours.“It is on this evidence, fantastic though it may sound, that my distinguished adversary is asking you to condemn to death a gentle lady and an honest gentleman. On the testimony of a neurotic, a love thief, a jailbird, and a drunkard! These are plain words to describe plain truths. I propose to produce witnesses of unimpeachable record to substantiate every one of them.“It is, frankly, a great temptation to me to rest the case for the defense here and now; because in all honesty I cannot see how it would take any twelve sane men in this country five consecutive minutes to reach and return a verdict of not guilty. Remember, it does not devolve on me to prove that Susan Ives and Stephen Bellamy are innocent, but on the state to prove that they are guilty. If they have proved that these two are guilty, then they have proved that I am. I believe absolutely that one is not more absurd than the other.“On that profound conviction I could, I say, rest this case. But there is a bare possibility that some minor aspects of the case are not so clear to you as they are to me—there is a passionate desire on my part to leave not one stone unturned in behalf of either of my clients—and there is also, I confess, a very human desire to confront and confound some of the glib crew who have mounted the steps to that stand day after day somewhat too greatly concerned to swear away two human lives. It will not be a lengthy and exhausting performance, I promise. Four or five honest men and women will suffice, and you will find, I believe, that truth travels as fast as light.“Nor shall I produce the hundreds upon hundreds of character witnesses that I could bring before you to tell you that of all the fine and true and gallant souls that have crossed their paths, the most gallant, the finest and the truest is the girl that this very sovereign state is asking you to brand as a murderess. In the case of the People versus Susan Ives I shall call only one character witness into that box—Susan Ives herself. And if, after you have listened to her, after you have seen her, after you have heard her tell her story, you do not believe that society and the law and the people themselves, clamouring for a victim, have made a frightful and shocking error, it will be because I am not only a bad lawyer but a bad prophet as well. Gentlemen, it is my profound and solemn conviction that whatever I may be as a lawyer, I am in very truth a good prophet!”“I don’t believe he’s a bad lawyer,” said the red-headed girl breathlessly. “He’s a good lawyer. He is! He makes everyone see just how ridiculous the case against them is. That’s being a good lawyer, isn’t it. That’s making a good speech, isn’t it? That’s——”“He’s a pompous old jackass,” said the reporter unkindly. “But he loves his Sue, and he did just a little better than he knows how. Not so good at that either. You don’t make a case ridiculous by jeering at it. If——”“Call Mrs. Platz!” boomed the oblivious object of his strictures.“Mrs. Adolph Platz!”Mrs. Platz, minute and meek, with straw-coloured hair and straw-coloured lashes and a small pink nose in a small white face, advanced toward the witness stand with no assurance whatever.“Mrs. Platz, what was your position on June 19, 1926?”“I was chambermaid-waitress with Mrs. Alfred Bond at Oyster Bay.”“Had you been formerly in the employ of Mrs. Patrick Ives?”“Yes, sir, I was, for about six months in 1925. I just did chamber work there, though.”“Was your husband there at the time?”“Yes, sir. Adolph was there as what you might call a useful man. He helped with the furnace and garden and ran the station wagon—things like that.”“How long had you been married?”“Not very long, sir—not a year, quite.” Mrs. Platz’s lips were suddenly unsteady.“Mrs. Platz, why did you leave Mrs. Ives’s employ?”“Do I have to answer that, sir?”“I should very much like to have you answer it. Was it because you were discontented with your work?”“Oh, no, indeed, it wasn’t that; nobody in this world could want a kinder mistress than Mrs. Ives. It was because—it was because of Adolph.”“What about Adolph, Mrs. Platz?”“It was because——” She shook her head despairingly, fighting down the shamed, painful flush. “I don’t like talking about it, sir. I’m not one for talking much.”“I know. Still, the only thing that can help any of us now is truth. I’m sure that you want to help to give us that.”“Yes, sir, I do. All right then—it was because of the way Adolph was carrying on with Mrs. Ives’s waitress, Melanie.”“How did you know that?”“Oh, I think they wanted me to know it,” said Adolph Platz’s wife, her soft voice suddenly hard and bitter. “He was more like a lunatic over her than a sane, grown-up man—he was indeed. I caught him kissing her twice—once in the pantry and once just behind the garage. They wanted me to catch them.”“What did you do when you made this discovery?”“The first time I didn’t do anything; I was too scared and sick and surprised. I didn’t know men did things like that—you know, not the men you married—not decent ones that were your brother’s best friends, like Adolph. Other men, might, but not them. I didn’t do anything but cry some at night. But the next time I saw them I wasn’t so surprised, and I was mad right through to my bones. I jumped right in and told both of them what I thought of them, and then I went right straight to Mrs. Ives and told her I was leaving the minute she could get someone else, and I told her why too. I told her she could keep Adolph, but not me.”“What happened then?”“Then she sent for Melanie and Adolph and they both said it wasn’t so.”“Your Honour——”“Never mind what anyone said, Mrs. Platz; just tell us what happened.”“I couldn’t do that without telling you what we were all saying, sir. We were all talking at once, you see, and——”“Yes. Well, suppose you just tell us what happened as a result of this conference?”“Adolph and I left, sir. I wouldn’t have stayed no matter what happened after all that—not with me a laughingstock of all those servants for being such a dumbbell about what was going on. And Mrs. Ives didn’t want Adolph without me, so he came too. There wasn’t any way Mrs. Ives could tell which of us was speaking the truth, so she didn’t try; but all the same, she gave Melanie as good a dressing down as——”“Yes, yes, exactly. Now just what happened after you left Mrs. Ives, Mrs. Platz?”“Well, after that, sir, we had a pretty hard time. We weren’t happy, you see. I couldn’t forget, and that made it bad for us; and I guess he couldn’t either. Maybe he didn’t want to.”The flood gates, long closed, were open at last. The small, quiet, tidy person in the witness box was pouring out all her sore heart, oblivious to straining ears, conscious only of the ruddy and reassuring countenance before her.“I’m sorry, Mrs. Platz, but we aren’t permitted to learn the opinions that you formed or the conclusions that you reached. We just want the actual incidents that occurred. Now will you just try to do that?”The frustrated, troubled eyes met his honestly. “Well, I’ll try, but that sounds pretty hard, sir. What was it you wanted to know?”“Just what you did when you left Mrs. Ives.”“Yes, sir. Well, first we tried to get a job together, but we didn’t get much of a one. It was a family of seven, and we did all the work, and Dolph didn’t like it at all; so when spring came he decided to take a position as gardener on Long Island at Oyster Bay, where they wanted a single man to sleep in the garage. We fixed it up so that I was to take a job at Locust Valley as chambermaid, and we’d spend Sundays together, and evenings, too, sometimes. It looked like a pretty good plan, the way things were going, and it didn’t work out so bad until I got that letter.”“You haven’t told us about any letter, Mrs. Platz.”“No, sir, I haven’t, that’s a fact. Do you want that I should tell you now?”“Well, I don’t want you to get ahead of your story. Before you go on, I’d like to clear up one thing. What was the date on which your husband took this position?”“It was the first of April, 1926. I didn’t get mine till about two weeks later.”“Did you consider that he had left you for good at that time—deserted you, I mean?”“I certainly didn’t understand any such a thing.” A spark shone in Mrs. Platz’s mild eye. “He came to see me every Sunday of his life just like clockwork, and about once a week besides.”“He had talked of leaving you?”“He certainly didn’t, except once in a while when both of us was mad and didn’t mean anything we said—like he’d say if I didn’t quit nagging he’d walk out and leave me cold, and I’d say nothing would give me any more pleasure—you know, like married people do sometimes.”Mr. Lambert permitted himself a wintry smile.“Quite. Divorce was not contemplated by either of you?”“No, sir, we couldn’t contemplate anything like that. Divorces cost something dreadful; and besides, we hadn’t been married no more than a year about.” Mrs. Platz blinked valiantly through the straw-coloured lashes, her mouth screwed to a small, watery smile.“So, at the time you were speaking of, your relations with your husband were amiable enough, were they?”“Yes, sir; I don’t have any complaints to make. Everything was nicer than it had been since the fall before.”“What changed your relations?”Mrs. Platz, the painful flush mounting once more, fixed her eyes resolutely on the little patch of floor between her and Mr. Lambert.“It was that——”“Just a little louder, please. We all want to hear you, you know.”“It was that waitress of Mrs. Ives’. She sent for him to come back.”“How do you know that?”“Well, I’ll tell you how I know it.” Mrs. Platz leaned forward confidentially. It was good, said her quick, eager voice—after all these weary months of silence, it was good to find a friend to listen to this ugly story. “This was the way: Sunday evening came around and he hadn’t never turned up at all.”“Sunday of what date?”“Sunday, June twentieth, sir. I didn’t know what in the world to make of it, but Tuesday morning, what do I get but a letter from Dolph saying that——”“Have you still got that letter?”“Yes, sir.”“Have you got it with you?”“Yes, sir.” Mrs. Platz dipped resourcefully into her shiny black leather bag and produced a soiled bit of blue notepaper.“This is the original document?”“Oh, yes, sir.”“In your husband’s handwriting?”“Yes.”“Your Honour, I ask to have this note marked for identification, after which I offer it in evidence.”“Just one moment, Your Honour. May I ask on what grounds the correspondence of the Platz family is being introduced into this case?”“If Your Honour will permit me, I’ll explain why these documents are being introduced,” remarked Mr. Lambert briskly. “They are being introduced in order to attack the credibility of one of the prosecutor’s star witnesses; they are being introduced in order to prove conclusively and specifically that Miss Melanie Cordier is a liar, a perjurer, and a despoiler of homes. I again offer this letter in evidence—I shall have another one to offer later.”Judge Carver eyed the blue scrap in Mr. Lambert’s fingers with an expression of deep distaste. “You say that this proves that the witness was guilty of perjury?”“I do, Your Honour.”“Very well, it may be admitted.”Mr. Farr permitted himself a gesture of profound annoyance, hastily buried under a resigned shrug. “Very well, Your Honour, no objection.”“The envelope containing this letter is postmarked Atlantic City, June 20, 1926,” remarked Mr. Lambert with unction. “It says:“Dear Frieda:“Well, you will be surprised to get this, I guess, and none too pleased either, which I am not blaming you for. The fact is that I have decided that we had better not see anything more of each other, because Melanie and I, we have decided that we can’t get along any longer without each other and so she has come to me and I have got to look after her.“The reason that I did not come to see you this week-end was that I went out to Rosemont to see her and she had got in wrong with Mrs. Ives and she was in a dreadful state about this Mrs. Bellamy being killed, and she is very delicate, so I am going to see that she gets a good rest.“I hope that you will not feel too bad, as this is the best way. Melanie does not know that I am writing, as she is of a very jealous nature and does not want me writing any letters to you, so no more after this one, but I want everything to be square and aboveboard, because that is how I am. It won’t do you any good to look for me, so you can save yourself the trouble, because no matter how often you found me, I wouldn’t come back, as Melanie is very delicate and needs me. Hoping that you have no hard feelings toward me, as I haven’t any toward you,“Yours truly,“Adolph Platz.”Adolph Platz’s wife sat listening to this ingenuous document with an inscrutable expression on her small, colourless face. It was impossible to tell whether, in spite of the amiable injunctions of the surprising Mr. Platz, she yielded to the indulgence of hard feelings or not.“Have you ever seen Mr. Platz since the receipt of this letter, Mrs. Platz?”“No, sir.”“Did you ever try to find him?”“No, sir, I didn’t; but my brother Gus did. He was set on finding him, and he spent all his holidays looking in Atlantic City. He said that he hadn’t any hard feelings against him, but it certainly would be a real treat to break every bone in his body.”“And did he?”“Oh, no, sir, I don’t believe that he broke any bones—not actually broke them.”“I mean—did he find him?”“Oh, yes, sir, he found him in a very nice boarding house called Sunrise Lodge.”“Yes, exactly. Was Miss Cordier with him?”The colourless face burned suddenly, painfully. “Yes, sir, she was.”“Now did you ever hear from this husband of yours again, Mrs. Platz?”“Yes.”“When?”“In September—over a month ago.”“Have you got the letter with you?”“I have, sir—right here.”“I offer this in evidence too.”“No objection,” said Mr. Farr bitterly. “I should appreciate the opportunity of inspecting these letters after Court adjourns, however.”“Oh, gladly, gladly,” cried Mr. Lambert, sonorously jocose. “More than happy to afford you the opportunity. Now the envelope of this letter is postmarked New York, September 21, 1926. It says:“Dear Frieda:“Well, this is to say that by the time you get this I will be on my way to Canada. I have a first-class opportunity to get into a trucking business up there that has all kinds of possibilities, if you get what I mean, and I think it is better for all concerned if I start in on a new life, as you might say, as the old one was not so good. Melanie thinks so, too, as she is very sensitive about all these things that have happened, and she thinks that it would be much nicer to start a new life too. She will join me when she is through being subpœnaed for this Bellamy trial, which is all pretty fierce, wouldn’t you say so too. She doesn’t know that I am writing you, because she is still jealous, but I thought I would like you to know for the sake of old times, as you might say, and also so that you can let Gus know that it won’t do him any good to go looking for me any more. He will probably see that if you explain how I am starting this new life in Canada. Hoping that this finds you as it leaves me,“Yours truly,“Adolph Platz.”“Have you ever heard from your husband since you received this letter, Mrs. Platz?”“No, sir.”“Ever heard of him?”“No, sir.”“Thank you, that will be all. Cross-examine.”“No questions,” said Mr. Farr indifferently, and the small, unhappy shadow that had been Adolph Platz’s wife was gone.“Well,” said the reporter judicially to the red-headed girl, “you have to grant him one thing. He knows when to leave bad enough alone.”“Call Mrs. Shea.”“Mrs. Timothy Shea!”Mrs. Timothy Shea advanced belligerently toward the witness box, her forbidding countenance inappropriately decorated with a large lace turban enhanced with obese violets and a jet butterfly. She seated herself solidly, thumped a black beaded bag on to the rail before her and breathed audibly through an impressive nose.“Mrs. Shea, what is your occupation?”“I keep a boarding house in Atlantic City—known far and wide as the decentest in that place or in any other, as well as the most genteel and the best table.”“Yes. Just answer the question, please. Never mind the rest. Were you——”“I’ll thank you to let me be after telling the truth,” said Mrs. Shea, raising her voice to an unexpected volume. “It’s the truth I swore to tell and the truth I’m after telling. The decentest and the——”“Yes, undoubtedly,” said Mr. Lambert hastily. “But what I wanted to know was whether you were in court at the time that Miss Cordier was testifying?”“I was there. It will be a long day before I forget that day, and you may well say so.”“Had you seen her before?”“Had I seen her before?” inquired Mrs. Shea with a loud and melodramatic laugh. “Every day of my life for close on three months, mincing around with her eyes on the ground and her nose in the air as fine as you please, more shame to her.”“Did you know her as Miss Cordier?”“I did not.”“Under what name did you know her?”“Under the name she gave me and every other living soul in the place—the name of Mrs. Adolph Platz, that ought to have burned the skin off her tongue to use it.”“She and Mr. Platz lived with you as man and wife?”“Well, I ought to have lived in this world long enough to know that no man and his wife would go on forever playing the love-sick fools like those two,” remarked Mrs. Shea grimly. “But I thought they were new wed and would soon be over it.”“Was Mr. Platz staying with you regularly?”“Seven days and nights of the week.”“Did he pay you regularly?”“He did that!”“Did he seem to have a regular profession?”“Well, that’s all whether you’d call bootlegging a regular profession.”“Now, Your Honour,” remonstrated Mr. Farr, who had been following this absorbing recital with an air of possibly fictitious boredom, “I don’t want to indulge in any legal hairsplitting, but surely a line should be drawn somewhere when it comes to this type of baseless slander and innuendo.”“Do I understand that you have evidence of Mr. Platz’s activities?” inquired Judge Carver severely.“The evidence of two eyes and two ears and a nose,” remarked Mrs. Shea with spirit. “Goings and comings and doings such as——”“That will do, Mrs. Shea. The question hardly seems material. It is excluded. You may take your exception, Mr. Lambert.”Mr. Lambert, thus prematurely adjured, stared indignantly about him and returned somewhat uncertainly to his task.“Is it a fact that Mr. Platz’s relationship with Miss Cordier during their sojourn under your roof was simply that of a friend?”“Fact!” Mrs. Shea snorted derisively. “ ’Tis a black-hearted lie off a black-hearted baggage. Friend, indeed!”“That will do, Mrs. Shea,” said Judge Carver ominously. “Mr. Lambert, I request you to keep your witness in hand.”“It is my endeavour to do so,” replied Mr. Lambert with some sincerity and much dignity. “I will be greatly obliged, Mrs. Shea, if you omit any comments or characterizations from your replies. Will you be good enough to give us the day when you first discovered that Mrs. Cordier and Mr. Platz were not married?”“September seventeenth.”“Have you any way of fixing the date?”“You may well say so. Wasn’t it six years since Tim Shea died, and didn’t that big tall Swede come roaring down there saying that the two of them was no more married than Jackie Coogan and the Queen of Spain, and that he was going to beat the life out of his dear brother-in-law, Mr. Adolph Platz? And didn’t he go and do it, without so much as by your leave or saving your presence, and in the decentest and——”“Madam!” Judge Carver’s tone would have daunted Boadicea.“And are those what you call comments and characterizations?” inquired Mrs. Shea indignantly. “Well, God save us all!”“That will be all, thank you, Mrs. Shea,” said Mr. Lambert hastily. “Cross-examine.”“No questions,” said Mr. Farr with simple fervour. Mrs. Shea, looking baffled but menacing, moved forward with a majestic stride, leaving the courtroom in a state of freely expressed delight. Across the hum of their voices boomed Mr. Lambert’s suddenly impressive summons.“Mr. Bellamy, will you be good enough to take the stand?”Very quietly he came, the man who had been sitting there so motionless for so many days for them to gape their fill at, moving forward now to afford them better fare. Dark-eyed, low-voiced, courteous, and grave, he advanced toward the place of trial with an unhurried tread. In the lift of his head there was something curiously and effortlessly noble, thought the red-headed girl. Murderers should not hold their heads like that.“Mr. Bellamy, where were you on the night of June nineteenth at nine-thirty o’clock?”The proverbial dropped pin would have made a prodigious clatter in the silence that hovered over the waiting courtroom.“I was in my car on the River Road, about a mile or so from Lakedale.”“You were not in the neighbourhood of the Thorne estate, Orchards?”“Not within ten miles—twelve, perhaps, would be more accurate?”“Was anyone with you?”“Yes; Mrs. Patrick Ives was with me.”“You have a way of fixing the time?”“I have.”“I will ask you to do so later. Will you tell us now at what time you left the Rosemont Country Club?”“At a little before six, I think. We dined at quarter to seven, and my wife always dressed before dinner.”“Had you noticed Mr. Farwell in conversation with Mrs. Ives before you left?”“Yes; my wife had called my attention to the fact that they seemed deeply absorbed in a conversation on the club steps.”“Just how did she call your attention to it?”“She said, ‘Oh, look, El’s got another girl!’ ”“Did you make any comment on that?”“Yes; I said, ‘That’s clear gain for you, darling’——” He caught himself up, olive skin a tone paler, teeth deep in his lip. “I said, ‘That’s clear gain for you, but a bit hard on Sue.’ ”“You were aware of Mr. Farwell’s devotion to your wife?”Behind Stephen Bellamy’s tragic eyes someone smiled, charming, tolerant, ironic—and was gone.“It was impossible to be unaware of it. Mr. Farwell was candour itself on the subject, even with those who would have been more grateful for reticence.”“Your wife made no attempt to conceal it?”“To conceal it? Oh, no. There was nothing whatever to conceal; his infatuation for Mimi was common property. She laughed about it, though I think that sometimes it annoyed her.”“Did she ever mention getting a divorce in order to marry Farwell?”“A divorce? Mimi?” His eyes, blankly incredulous, met Mr. Lambert’s inquiring gaze. After a moment, he said, slowly and evenly, “No, she never mentioned a divorce.”“If she had asked for one, would you have granted it to her?”“I would have granted her anything that she asked for.”“But you would have been surprised?”Stephen Bellamy smiled with white lips. “ ‘Surprised’ is rather an inadequate word.” He sought for one more adequate—failed—and dismissed it with an eloquent motion of his hands. “I should have been more—well, astounded than it is possible for me to say.”“So you had no inkling that your wife was contemplating any such action?”“Not the faintest, not the——” Once more he pulled himself up, and after a moment’s pause, he leaned forward. “That, too, sounds ridiculously inadequate. I should like to make myself quite clear; apparently I haven’t succeeded in doing so. I believed my wife to be completely happy. You see, I believed that she loved me.”He was pale enough now to gratify the most exigent reporter of emotions, but his pleasant, leisurely voice did not falter, and it was the ruddy Lambert, not he, who seemed embarrassed.“Yes, quite so—naturally. I wished simply to establish the fact that you were not in her confidence as to her—er—attitude toward Mr. Ives. Now, Mr. Bellamy, I am going to ask you to tell us as directly and concisely as possible just what happened from the time that you and Mrs. Bellamy finished dinner that evening up to the time that you retired for the night.”“I did not retire for the night.”“I beg your pardon?”“I said that I did not retire for the night. Sleep was entirely out of the question, and I didn’t care to go up to our—to my room.”“Naturally—quite so. I will reframe my question. Will you be good enough to tell us what occurred on the evening of June nineteenth from the conclusion of dinner to, say, eleven o’clock?”“I will do my best. I’m afraid that I haven’t an especially good memory for details. Mimi had said on the way home from the club that she had told the Conroys that she would join them after dinner at the movies in Rosemont. Quite a party were going, and I asked if they were going to stop by for her. She said no; that she had arranged to meet them at the theatre, as there was no room in their car. I suggested that I drive her over, and she said not to bother, as I’d have to walk back, because she wanted to keep the car; but I told her that I didn’t mind the walk and that I wanted to pick up some tobacco and a paper in the village.“After dinner we went out to the garage together; the self-starter hadn’t been working very well, and just as I got it started, Mimi called my attention to the fact that one of the rear tires was flat. She asked what time it was, and when I told her that it was five minutes to eight, she said that there wouldn’t be time to change the tire, but that if she hurried she could catch the Conroys and make them give her a lift, even if they were crowded. They lived only about five minutes from us.”“North of you or south of you, Mr. Bellamy?”“North of us—away from the village, toward the club. I wanted to go with her, but she said that it would be awkward for me to get away if I turned up there, and it was only a five-minute walk in broad daylight. So then I let her go.”He sat silent, staring after that light swift figure, slipping farther away from him—farther—farther still.“You did not accompany her to the gate?”Stephen Bellamy jerked back those wandering eyes. “I beg your pardon?”“You didn’t accompany her to the gate?”“No. I was looking over the tire to see whether I could locate the damage; I was particularly anxious to get it in shape if I could, because we were planning to motor over next day to a nursery in Lakedale to get some things for the garden—some little lilacs and flowering almonds and some privet for a hedge that we——” He broke off abruptly, and after a moment said gently, “I beg your pardon; that’s got absolutely nothing to do with it, of course. What I was trying to explain was that I was endeavouring to locate the tire trouble. In a minute or so I did.”“You ascertained its nature?”“Yes; there was a cut in it—a small, sharp cut about half an inch long.”“Is that a usual tire injury?”“I am not a tire expert, but it seemed to me highly unusual. I didn’t give it much thought, however, except to wonder what in the world I’d gone over to cause a thing like that. I was in a hurry to get it fixed, as I said, and I remembered that I’d seen Orsini standing by the gate as we went by to the garage. I went out to ask him to get me a hand, but he’d started down the road toward Rosemont. I could see him quite a bit off, hurrying along, and I remembered that we’d given him the evening off. So I went back to the garage, took my coat off and got to work myself. I’d just got the shoe off when I heard——”“Just a minute, Mr. Bellamy. Did you see Mrs. Bellamy again when you went to the gate?”“Oh, no; she’d been gone several minutes; and in any case there is a jog in the road two or three hundred feet north of our house that would have concealed her completely.”“She was headed in the general direction of Orchards?”“In the direction of Orchards—yes.”“It was along this route that the Perrytown bus passed?”“Yes.”“Please continue.”“As I was saying, I had succeeded in getting the shoe off when I heard the telephone ringing in the library of our house. I dropped everything and went in to answer it, as there was no one else in the house.”“Who was on the telephone, Mr. Bellamy?”“It was Sue—Mrs. Ives. She wanted to know if Mimi was at home.”“Will you give us the conversation, to the best of your recollection?”“Yes. I said that she was not; that she had gone to the movies in Rosemont with the Conroys. Mrs. Ives asked how long she had been gone. I told her possibly ten or fifteen minutes. She asked me if I was sure that she had gone there, and I said perfectly sure, and asked her what in the world she was talking about. She said that it was essential to see me at once, and asked if I could get there in ten minutes. I said not quite as soon as that, as I was changing a tire, but that I thought that I could make it in fifteen or twenty. She asked me to meet her at the back road, and then—yes, then she asked me if Elliot had said anything to me. I said, ‘Sue, for God’s sake, what’s all this about?’ And she said never mind, to hurry, or something like that, and rang off before I could say anything more.”“What did you do next, Mr. Bellamy?”“Well, for a minute I didn’t know what to do—I was too absolutely dumfounded by the entire performance. And then, quite suddenly, I had a horrible conviction that something had happened to Mimi, and that Sue was trying to break it to me. I felt absolutely mad with terror, and then I thought that if I could get Mrs. Conroy on the telephone there was just a chance that they mightn’t have left yet, or that maybe some of the servants might have seen Mimi come in and could tell me that she was all right.“Anyway, I rang up, and Nell Conroy answered the ’phone, and said no, that Mimi hadn’t turned up; and that anyway they had told her not to meet them till eight-thirty, because the feature film didn’t go on till then. I said that Mimi must have made a mistake—that she’d probably gone to the theatre—something—anything—I don’t remember. All that I do remember is that I rang off somehow and stood there literally sweating with terror, trying to think what to do next. I remember putting my hand up to loosen my collar and finding it drenched; I’d forgotten all about Sue. All I could remember was that something must have happened to Mimi, and that she might need me, and that I didn’t know where she was. And then I remembered that Sue had told me to hurry and that she could explain everything. I tore out to the garage and went at the new tire like a maniac; it didn’t take me more than about eight minutes to get it on, and not more than three or four more to get over to the back road where I was to meet Sue. I didn’t pay much attention to speed limits.”“Just where is this road, Mr. Bellamy?”“Well, I don’t know whether I can make it clear. It’s a connecting road out of Rosemont between the main highway—the Perrytown Road, you know—and a parallel road about five miles west, called the River Road, that leads to Lakedale. It runs by about a quarter mile back of the Ives’ house.”“Did you arrive at this back road before Mrs. Ives?”“No. Mrs. Ives was waiting for me when I got there. I asked her whether she had been there long, and she said only a minute or two. I asked her then whether anything had happened to Mimi. She said, ‘What do you mean—happened to her?’ I said an accident of any kind, and added that I’d been practically off my head ever since she had telephoned, as I had called up the Conroys and discovered that she wasn’t there. Sue said, ‘So Elliot was right!’ She had been standing by the side of the car, talking, but when she said that, she looked around her quickly and stepped into the seat beside me. She said, ‘I’d rather not have anyone see us just now. Let’s drive over to the River Road. Mimi hasn’t been hurt, Steve. She’s gone to meet Pat at Orchards.’ I was so thunderstruck, and so immensely, so incalculably, relieved that Mimi wasn’t hurt that I laughed out loud. That sounds ridiculous, but it’s true. I laughed, and Sue said, ‘Don’t laugh, Steve; Mimi’s having an affair with Pat—she’s been having one for weeks. They don’t love us—they love each other.’ I said, ‘That’s a damned silly lie. Who told it to you—Elliot Farwell?’ ”“Were you driving at the time that this conversation took place?”“Oh, yes, we were well up the back road. I’d started the minute she asked me to. Shall I go on?”“Please.”“Do you want the whole conversation?”“Everything that was said as to the relations of Mrs. Bellamy and Mr. Ives.”“Very well. She told me that unfortunately it was no lie; that for several weeks they had been using the gardener’s cottage at Orchards for a place of rendezvous, and that Farwell had even seen them going there. I said that it made no difference to me whatever what Farwell had seen—that I wouldn’t believe it if I had seen it myself. I asked her if Farwell hadn’t been drinking when he told her this, and she said yes—that unless he had been he wouldn’t have told her. I asked her if she didn’t know that Elliot Farwell was an abject idiot about Mimi, and she said, ‘Oh, Stephen, not so abject an idiot as you—you who won’t even listen to the truth that you don’t want to hear.’ I said ‘I’ll listen to anything that you want to tell me, but truth isn’t what you hear—it’s what you believe. I don’t believe that Mimi doesn’t love me.’“She said, ‘Where is she now, Steve?’ And I said, ‘At the movies. She probably met someone on the road who gave her a lift; or else she decided to walk straight there, as she knew that the Conroys’ car would be crowded.’ She said, ‘She’s not at the movies. She’s waiting for Pat in the gardener’s cottage.’ I said, ‘And has Pat gone to meet her?’ And she said, ‘No, this time he hasn’t gone to meet her.’ I said, ‘What makes you think that?’ Sue said, ‘I don’t think it; I know it.’ I said, ‘Oh, yes, he was going to Dallases to play poker, wasn’t he?’ And after a moment she said, ‘Yes, that’s where he said he was going. I happened to know that there’s been a slip in their plan to meet to-night.’“Then she told me that she believed they were planning to run away, and that the reason she had wanted to see me was to tell me that she would never give Pat a divorce as long as she lived, and she thought if I told Mimi that before it was too late it might stop her.“We’d reached the River Road by this time, and were well on our way to Lakedale, and I said, ‘Sue, we’ve talked enough nonsense for to-night; I’ll tell you what we’ll do. We’re running low on gas, and when we get to Lakedale we’ll get some, turn around and head back for Rosemont. We can see whether the movies are out as we go through the village, and if they aren’t, you can come back to our house and wait for a minute or so until Mimi gets there. Then you can put the whole thing up to her and take your punishment like a lady when you find what a goose you’ve been. Is that a bargain?’ And she said, ‘All right, that’s a bargain.’“We’d been driving pretty slowly, so that it was after nine when we got into Lakedale; there were two or three people ahead of us at the gas station—Saturday night, you know—and Sue was very thirsty, so we asked the man at the gas pump if he could get her some water, and he did. I noticed him particularly, because he had the reddest hair that I’ve ever seen on a human being. We were at the station about ten minutes, and I looked at my watch just as we left. It said twenty minutes past nine.”“Was your watch correct, Mr. Bellamy?”“Absolutely! I check it every day at the station.”“How long a drive is it from Lakedale to Rosemont?”“Under half an hour—it’s around nine miles.”“And to Orchards from Lakedale?”“It’s close to twelve—Orchards is about three miles north of Rosemont.”“Quite so. Now will you be good enough to continue with your story?”“We hardly talked at all on our way back to Rosemont. I remember that Sue asked whether we wouldn’t get there before the film was over, and I said, ‘Probably.’ But as a matter of fact, we didn’t. We got to Rosemont at about five minutes to ten, and the theatre was dark. There were no cars in front of it and the doors were locked. I said, ‘She’ll probably be at the house,’ and Sue said, ‘If she isn’t, I think that it will look decidedly queer to have me dropping in there at this time of night.’ I said, ‘There’ll be no one there to see you; Nellie’s gone home to her mother and Orsini went to New York at eight-fifteen.’“It takes only three or four minutes from the theatre to the house, and just as we started to turn in at the gate Sue said, ‘You’re wrong; there’s a light in the garage.’ I looked up quickly, and there wasn’t a sign of a light. I laughed and said, ‘Don’t let things get on your nerves, Sue; I tell you that I saw him going to the train.’ And I helped her out of the car. There was a light in the hall, and as I opened the door I called ‘Mimi!’ No one answered, and then I remembered that I’d left it burning when I went out. I said, ‘Come in. She must be over at the Conroys’. I’ll call up and get her over.’ ”“So far so good,” said the reporter contentedly. “If Mr. Stephen Bellamy isn’t telling the truth, he’s as fertile and resourceful a liar as has crossed my trail in these many moons. Do you feel better?”“Better than best,” the red-headed girl assured him fervently. “Only I wish that Bellamy girl had died a long time ago.”“Do you indeed?”“Yes, I do indeed—about twenty years ago, before she got out of socks and hair ribbons and started in breaking men’s hearts. Elliot Farwell and Patrick Ives and Stephen Bellamy—even that little bus driver looked bewitched. Of course I ought to be sorry she’s dead—but truly she wasn’t good for very much, was she?”“Not very much. The ones who are good for very much aren’t generally particularly heartbreaking.”“You’d probably be as bad as any of them,” said the red-headed girl darkly, and relapsed into silence.“I’m universally rated rather high on susceptibility,” admitted the reporter with modest pride. “Did you sleep better last night?”“Not any better at all.”“Look here, are you telling me that after reducing me to a state of apprehension that resulted in my spending six dollars and thirty-five cents, and two hours and twenty minutes of invaluable time in a hired flivver in order to cure you of insomnia, you went back to that gas log of yours and worked half the night and had it again? Didn’t you solemnly swear——”“I’m not ever solemn when I swear. I didn’t work after twelve. If you paid six thousand dollars for it, it was a tremendous bargain. It was the nicest ride I ever took. That was why I didn’t sleep.”“Mollifying though mendacious,” said the reporter critically. “Are you by any chance a flirt?”The red-headed girl eyed him thoughtfully. After quite a lengthy period of contemplation she seemed to arrive at a decision. “No,” she said gravely, “I’m not a flirt.”“In that case,” said the reporter quite as gravely, “I’m going to get you some lunch. And if Sue Ives decides to confess to the entire newspaper fraternity that it really was she who did it, after all, I’m not going to be there—I’m going to be bringing your lunch back to you because you’re not a flirt. Do I make myself clear?”“Yes, thank you,” said the red-headed girl.She sat staring after him with round bright eyes that she was finding increasingly difficult to keep open. What was it that she had said that first day—that day that seemed so many, many days ago? Something about a murder story and a love story being the most enthralling combination in the world? Well—— The red-headed girl looked around her guiltily, wondering if she looked as pink as she felt. It was frightful to be so sleepy. It was frightful and ridiculous not to be able to sleep any more because of the troubles and passions of half a dozen people that you’d never laid eyes on in your life, and didn’t really know from Adam and Eve—or Cain and Abel were better, perhaps. What’s he to Hecuba or Hecuba to him? What indeed? She yawned despairingly.No, but that wasn’t true—you did know them—a hundred times—a thousand times better than people that lived next to you all the days of their lives. That was what gave a trial its mysterious and terrible charm; curiosity is a hunger in everyone alive, and here the sides of the houses were lifted off and you saw them moving about as though they were alone. You knew—oh, you knew everything! You knew that little Pat Ives had sold papers in the streets and that he carved ships, and that once he had played the ukulele and had taken Mimi Dawson riding on spring nights.You knew that Sue Ives had gone to church in little cotton gloves when she was six years old, and that she had a coat of cream-coloured flannel, and poor relations in Arizona, and a rose garden beyond the study window. You knew that Stephen Bellamy dined at quarter to seven and had a small car, and flowering almonds in his garden, and a wife who was more beautiful than a dream, with silver slippers and sapphire-and-diamond rings. You knew that Laura Roberts turned down the beds on the chambermaid’s night out and had a gentleman friend in the village and that—and that——“Wake up!” said the reporter’s voice urgently. “Here are the sandwiches. I broke both legs trying to get back through that crowd. . . . Oh, Lord, here’s the Court! Too late—hide ’em!”The red-headed girl hid them with a glance of unfeigned reluctance.“Mr. Bellamy,” inquired Mr. Lambert happily, “you were telling us that you went into your house. What occurred next?”“I went straight to the telephone and called up Mrs. Conroy. She answered the telephone herself, and I said, ‘Can I speak to Mimi for a moment, Nell?’ She said, ‘Why, Steve, Mimi isn’t here. The show got out early and we waited for about five minutes to make sure that she wasn’t there. I thought that she must have decided not to come.’ I said, ‘Yes, that’s what she must have decided.’ And I rang off. That same terror had me again; I felt cold to my bones. I said. ‘She’s not there. I was right the first time—something’s happened to her.’ Sue said, ‘Of course she’s not there. She went to the cottage.’ I said, ‘But you say that Pat didn’t go. She’d never wait there two hours for him. Maybe we’d better call up Dallas and make sure he’s there.’ ”The even voice hesitated—was silent. Mr. Lambert moved forward energetically. “And what did Mrs. Ives say to that?”“She said—she said, ‘No, that’s no good. He’s not at the Dallases’; he’s home.’ I said, ‘Then let’s call him up there.’ Sue said, ‘No, I’d rather not do that. I don’t want him to know about this until I decide what to do next. I give you my word of honour that he’s there. Isn’t that enough?’ I said all right, then, I’d call up the police court and the hospital to see if any accidents had been reported. I remember that Sue said something about its being premature, but none of her business. Neither the station nor the hospital had any information.”“Did you give your name?”“Naturally. I asked them to communicate with me at once if they heard anything.”“And then what, Mr. Bellamy?”“Then—then, after that, I don’t remember much. All the rest of it was sheer nightmare. I do remember Sue saying that we might retrace the route that Mimi started over toward the Conroys, on the bare chance that she had had some kind of collapse at the roadside. But that was no good, of course. And finally we decided that there was nothing more to do till morning, and that I’d better get Sue home. I drove her back to the house——”“To your house?”“No, no; the Ives’ house. I dropped her at the front gate. I didn’t drive in. I asked her to let me know if Pat was there, and she said that if he were she’d turn on the light in the study twice. I waited outside by the car for what seemed a hundred years, and after a long time the light in the study went on once, and off, and on again and off, and I got in the car and drove away.”“What time was that, Mr. Bellamy?”“I’m not sure—about quarter to eleven, perhaps. Mrs. Ives had asked me what time it was when we stopped at the gate. It was shortly after ten-thirty.”“Did you go straight home?”“Not directly—no. I drove around for quite a bit, but I couldn’t possibly tell you for how long. It’s like trying to remember things in a delirium.”“But it was only after you heard that Mrs. Bellamy had not been at the movies that you were reduced to this condition—before that everything is quite clear?”“Oh, quite.”“And you are entirely clear that at the time fixed for the murder you and Mrs. Ives were a good ten miles away from the gardener’s cottage at Orchards?”“Nearer twelve miles, I believe.”“Thank you, Mr. Bellamy; that will be all. Cross-examine.”Mr. Farr arrived in the center of the arena where sat his victim, pale and patient, with a motion so sudden that it suggested a leap. Not once had he lifted his voice during that long, laboriously retrieved narration. Now the courtroom was once more filled with its metallic clang, arresting and disturbing.“Mr. Bellamy, you’ve told us that the tools in the garage belonged to Orsini. They were perfectly accessible to anyone else, weren’t they?”“Perfectly.”“Was Mrs. Bellamy in the garage at any time before you left?”“Why, yes, I believe that she was. I remember meeting her as she came into the house just as I came downstairs to dinner—I’d gone up to wash my hands. She said she’d been out to the garage to see whether she’d left a package with some aspirin and other things from the drug store in the car. They weren’t there, and she asked me to call up the club the next day to see whether she had left them there.”“So that she would have been perfectly able to have made that incision of that tire herself?”“I should think so.”“She did not at any time suggest that you accompany her either to the movies or the Conroys, did she?”“Oh, no.”“She countered such suggestions on your part, did she not, by saying that you would have to walk back, that it would be awkward for you to get away, and other excuses of that nature?”“Yes. My wife knew that the pictures hurt my eyes, and she never urged me to——”“No, never mind that, Mr. Bellamy. Please confine yourself to yes or no, whenever it is possible. It will simplify things for both of us. It would have been entirely possible for your wife to injure that tire in order to keep you from accompanying her, wouldn’t it?”“Yes.”“Now, Mr. Bellamy, I want to get this perfectly correctly. You claim that at nine-thirty you were on the River Road twelve miles from Orchards. Do you mean twelve miles by way of the back road, Rosemont and the Perrytown Road?”“Yes.”“Retracing your way over the route that you had previously taken?”“Yes.”“But surely you know that there is another and shorter route from Lakedale to Orchards, Mr. Bellamy?”“I know that there is another route—yes. I was not aware that it was much shorter.”“Well, for your information I may state that it is some three miles shorter. Can you describe this route to us?”“Not very well, I’m afraid. I’m not at all familiar with it. I believe that it is the road that Mr. Thorne was speaking of having taken that night, leading into the back of Orchards.”“Your supposition is entirely correct. Now, will you tell us just how you get there?”“As I said, I’m not sure that I can. I believe that you continue on down the River Road until you turn off down a rather narrow, rough little road that leads directly to the back gates of Orchards. It’s practically a private road, I believe, ending at the estate.”“What is its name?”“I’m not sure, but I believe that it’s something like Thorne Path, or Road, or Lane—I’m pretty clear that it has the name Thorne in it.”“Oh, you’re clear about that, are you, in spite of the fact that you’ve never been near it?”“You misunderstood me evidently. I never said that I had never been near it. As a matter of fact, I have been over it several times—two or three anyway.”“And yet you wish us to believe that you have no idea of either the name or the distance?”“Certainly. It’s been a great many years since I’ve used it—ten, perhaps. It was at a time that I was going frequently to Orchards, when Mr. Thorne, Senior, was alive.”“And you have never used it since?”“No. It’s not a road that anyone would use unless he were going to Orchards. It’s practically a blind alley.”“Again I must ask you to refrain from qualifications and elaborations. ‘No’ is a reply to that question. The fact remains, doesn’t it, that here was an unobtrusive short cut to Orchards that you haven’t seen fit to tell us about?”Stephen Bellamy smiled slightly—that gracious and ironic smile, so oddly detached as to be disconcerting. “I’m afraid that I can’t answer that either yes or no—either would be misleading. I had completely forgotten that there was such a road.”“Completely forgotten it, had you? Had Mrs. Ives forgotten it too?”“I’m sure that I don’t know.”“Mr. Bellamy, is not this road, known as Thorne Lane, the one that you and Mrs. Ives took to reach Orchards the night of the murder?”Mr. Bellamy frowned faintly in concentration. “I beg your pardon?”“Did you not use Thorne Lane to reach Orchards on the night of the murder?”The frown vanished; for a moment, Mr. Bellamy looked frankly diverted. Were these, inquired his lifted brows, the terrors of cross-examination? “We certainly did nothing of the kind. I thought that I’d already explained that I hadn’t been over that road in ten years.”“I heard your explanation. Now, will you kindly explain to us why you didn’t use it?”“Why?” inquired Stephen Bellamy blankly.“Why, consumed with anxiety as you were for the safety of your wife, didn’t it occur to you to go to this gardener’s cottage, where you were assured that she was having a rendezvous with another man?”“I was not assured of any such thing. I was most positively assured that Mr. Ives had not gone there to meet her. Nor was I in anxiety at all about my wife during my drive with Mrs. Ives. I believed that she had gone to the movies.”“Very well, when you found out that she wasn’t at the movies, why didn’t you go then to the cottage?”“Mrs. Ives gave me her word of honour that Mr. Ives was at home. It seemed incredible to both of us that she would have waited there for over two hours.”“Incredible to both of you that she could have waited? I thought you wished us to believe that you had such entire confidence in her love for you that you were perfectly convinced that she had never been near the cottage.”“I”—the whitened lips tightened resolutely—“I did not believe that she had been. It was simply a hypothesis that I accepted in desperation—a vain attempt to believe that she might be safe, after all.”“It would have consoled you to know that she was safe in the gardener’s cottage with Patrick Ives?”“I would have given ten years of my life to have believed that she was safe and happy anywhere in the world.”“Your honour meant nothing to you?”“My honour? What had my honour to do with it?”“Do you not consider that when a man’s wife has betrayed him, his honour is involved and should be avenged?”“I believe nothing of the kind. My honour is involved only by my own actions, not by those of others.”“You would have let her go to her lover with your blessing?”Something flared in the dark eyes turned to the prosecutor’s mocking blue ones, and died. “I did not say that,” said Stephen Bellamy evenly.Judge Carver leaned forward abruptly, “Mr. Bellamy is entirely correct,” he said sternly. “He said nothing of the kind.”“I regret that I seem to have misunderstood him,” said the prosecutor with ominous meekness.“You would have prevented her?”“I would have begged her to try to find happiness with me.”“And if that had not succeeded, you would have prevented her?”“How could I have prevented her?”The prosecutor took a step forward and lowered his voice to that strange pitch that carried farther than a battle cry. “Quite simply, Mr. Bellamy. As simply as the person who drove that knife to Madeleine Bellamy’s heart prevented her joining her lover—as simply as that.”Judge Carver’s gavel fell with a crash. “Let that remark be stricken from the record!”Stephen Bellamy’s head jerked back, and from somewhere an arm flashed out to catch him. He motioned it away, steadying himself carefully with an iron grip on the witness box. His eyes, the only things alive in his frozen face, met his enemy’s unswervingly.“I did not drive that knife to her heart.” His voice was as ominously distinct as the prosecutor’s.“But you did not raise a hand to prevent it from striking?”“I could not raise a hand—I was not there.”“You did not raise a hand?”“Your Honour!”Bellamy’s eyes swung steadily to the clamorous and distracted Lambert. “Please—I’d rather answer. I have told you already that I was not there, Mr. Farr. If I had been I would have given my life—gladly, believe me—to have prevented what happened.”Farr turned a hotly incredulous countenance to Judge Carver’s impassive one. “Your Honour, I ask to have that stricken from the record as deliberately unresponsive.”“It is not strictly responsive,” conceded His Honour dispassionately. “However, the Court feels that you had already received a responsive answer, so were apparently pressing for an elaboration. It may remain.”“I defer to Your Honour’s opinion,” said Mr. Farr in a tone so far from deferential that His Honour regarded him somewhat fixedly. “Mr. Bellamy, what reason did Mrs. Ives give you for believing that Mr. Ives was at home?”“She did not give me a reason; she gave me her word of honour.”“You did not press her for one?”“No; I considered her word better than any assurance that she——”“Your Honour, I have repeatedly requested the witness to confine himself to yes and no. I ask with all deference to have the Court add its instructions to that effect.”“Confine yourself to a direct answer whenever possible, Mr. Bellamy. You are not permitted to enter into explanations.”“Very well, Your Honour.”“Nothing was said about an intercepted note, Mr. Bellamy?”“No.”“You were perfectly satisfied that she had some mysterious way of ascertaining that he had not gone out at all that evening?”“Yes.”“But at some time during the evening that assurance on your part evaporated?”“I don’t follow you.”“I’ll be clearer. By the time you reached Mrs. Ives’s home—I believe that you’ve told us that that was at about ten-thirty—your confidence in her infallibility had so diminished that you suggested that she signal to you if Mr. Ives were actually there?”“I believe that that was her suggestion.”“Her suggestion? After she had given you her word of honour that he was there?”“Yes.”“You wish that to be your final statement on that subject?”“Wait a moment.” He looked suddenly exhausted, as though he had been running for a long time. “I told you that things were very confused from the time that I found that Mimi hadn’t gone to the movies. I’m trying to get it as straight as possible. It was some time after we had left my house—after ten, I mean—and before we got to hers, that I suggested there was just a chance that she was mistaken and that Pat had gone to meet her after all. Sue said she couldn’t be mistaken, and that, anyway, they’d never dare stay at the cottage so late—it wouldn’t fit in with the movie story. I suggested then that possibly she had been right in her idea that they had been planning to run away together. Possibly that was what they had done to-night. She said, ‘Steve, you sound as though you wish they had.’ I said, ‘I wish to God they had.’ Then she said, ‘I know that Pat hasn’t been out, but I’ll let you know definitely when we go home.’ It was then that she suggested the lights.”“It all comes back very clearly now, doesn’t it, Mr. Bellamy?”“Yes.”“Very convenient, remembering all those noble bits about how you wished to God that they’d eloped, isn’t it?”“I don’t know that it’s particularly noble or convenient. It’s the truth.”“Oh, undoubtedly. Mr. Bellamy, at what time——”“Your Honour, I protest these sneers and jeers that Mr. Farr is indulging in constantly. I——”“I simply remarked that Mr. Bellamy was undoubtedly telling the truth,” said Mr. Farr in dangerously meek tones. “Do you regard that as necessarily sarcastic?”“I regard your tone as sheerly outrageous. I protest——”“It might be just as well to make no comments on the witness’s replies, of either a flattering or an unflattering nature,” remarked Judge Carver drily. “Is there a question before the witness?”“No, Your Honour. I was not permitted to complete my question.”“It may be completed.” There was a hint of acerbity in the fine voice.“Mr. Bellamy, at what time, after you left Mrs. Ives at her house, did you return to your own?”“I don’t know.” The voice was weary to the point of indifference.“You don’t know?”“No; the whole thing’s like a nightmare. Time doesn’t mean much in a nightmare.”“Well, did this nightmare condition permit you to ascertain whether it was after twelve?”“I believe that it was later.”“After one?”“Later.”“How do you know that it was later?”“I don’t know—because the sky was getting lighter, I suppose.”“You mean that dawn was breaking?”“I suppose so.”“You are telling us that you drove about until dawn?”“I am telling you that I don’t remember what I did; it was all a nightmare.”“Mr. Bellamy, why didn’t you go home to see whether your wife had returned?”For the first time the eyes fixed on the prosecutor wavered. “What?”“You heard me, I believe.”“You want to know why I didn’t go back to my house?”“Exactly.”“I don’t know—because I was more or less out of my head, I suppose.”“You were anxious to know what had become of her, weren’t you?”“Anxious!” The stiff lips wrenched themselves into something dreadfully like a smile.“Yet from eleven o’clock on you never went near your house to ascertain whether she had come home or been brought home?”“No.”“You didn’t call up the police?”“I told you I’d already called them up.”“Nor the hospital?”“I’d called them too.”“Where were they to notify you in case they had news to report?”“At my house.”“How were you to receive this information—this vital information—if you were roaming the country in an automobile?”“I don’t know.”“Weren’t you interested to know whether she was dead or alive?”“Yes.”“Then why didn’t you go home?”“I have told you—I don’t know.”“That’s your best answer?”“Yes.”“Let’s see whether I can’t help you to a better one. Isn’t the reason that you didn’t go home or call up the police or the hospital because you knew perfectly well that any information that anyone in the world could give you would be superfluous?”Stephen Bellamy focussed his weary eyes intently on the sardonic face only a few inches from his. “I’m sorry—I don’t understand what you mean.”“Don’t you? I’ll try to make it clearer. Wasn’t the reason that you didn’t go home the perfectly simple one that you knew that your wife was lying three miles away in a deserted cottage, soaked in blood and dead as a doornail?”“Oh, for God’s sake!” At the low, despairing violence of that cry some in the courtroom winced and turned away their faces from the ugly triumph flushing the prosecutor’s cold face. “I don’t know, I tell you, I don’t know. I was half crazy; I wasn’t thinking of reasons, I wasn’t thinking of anything except that Mimi was gone.”“Is that your best answer.”“Yes.”“At what time the next morning did you hear of the murder of your wife, Mr. Bellamy?”Slowly, carefully, fighting inch by inch back to the narrow plank of self-control that lay between him and destruction, Stephen Bellamy lifted his tired voice, his tired eyes. “I believe that it was about eleven o’clock.”“Who notified you?”“A trooper, I think, from the police station.”“Please tell us what he said.”“He said that Mrs. Bellamy’s body had been found in an empty cottage on the old Thorne estate, and that while it had already been identified, headquarters thought I had better go over and confirm it. I said that I would come at once.”“And did so?”“Yes.”“You saw the body?”“Yes.”“Identified it?”“Yes.”“It was clothed?”“Yes.”“In these garments, Mr. Bellamy?”And there, incredibly, it was again, that streaked and stiffened gown with its once airy ruffles, dangling over the witness box in reach of Stephen Bellamy’s fine long-fingered hand. After the first convulsive movement he sat motionless, his eyes dilated strangely under his level brows. “Yes.”“These shoes?”Lightly as butterflies they settled on the dark rim of the box, so small, so gay, so preposterous, shining silver, shining buckles. The man in the box bent those strange eyes on them. After a moment, his hand moved forward, slowly, hesitantly; the fingers touched their rusted silver, light as a caress, and curved about them, a shelter and a defense.“These shoes,” said Stephen Bellamy.Somewhere in the back of the hall a woman sobbed loudly and hysterically, but he did not lift his eyes.The prosecutor asked in a voice curiously gentle: “Mr. Bellamy, when you went into the room, was the body to the right or the left of the piano?”“To the left.”“You’re quite sure?”“Absolutely.”“Oh, God!” whispered the reporter frantically. “Oh, God, they’ve got him!”“It’s strange that you should be so sure, Mr. Bellamy,” said the prosecutor more gently still. “Because there was no piano in the room to which you were taken to see the body.”“What?” The bent head jerked back as though a whip had flicked.“There was no piano in the dining room to which they had removed the body, Mr. Bellamy. The piano was in the parlour across the hall, where the body was first discovered.”“If that is so I must have seen it when I came in and confused it somehow.”“You couldn’t very well have seen it when you came in, I’m afraid. The door to the parlour was closed and locked so that the contents of the room would not be disturbed.”“Well, then—then I must remember it from some previous occasion.”“A previous occasion? When you were never in the cottage before?”“No, no, I never said that. I never said anything like that.” The desperate voice rose slightly in its intensity. “I couldn’t have; it isn’t true. I’ve been there often—years ago, when I used to go over to play with Doug Thorne when we were kids. There was a playhouse just a few hundred feet from the cottage, and we used to run over to the cottage and get bread and jam and cookies from the old German gardener. I remember it absolutely; that’s probably what twisted me.”“But the old German gardener didn’t have any piano, Mr. Bellamy,” explained the prosecutor patiently. “Don’t you remember that Orsini particularly told us how the Italian gardener had just purchased it for his daughter before they went off on their vacation? It couldn’t have been the old German gardener.”The red-headed girl was weeping noiselessly into a highly inadequate handkerchief. “Horrid, smirking, disgusting beast!” she intoned in a small fierce whisper. “Horrid——”“No? Well, then,” said the dreadful, hunted voice, “probably Mimi told me about it. She——”“Mrs. Bellamy?” There was the slightest inflection of reproach in the soothing voice. “Mrs. Bellamy told you that her body was lying to the left of the piano as you entered the room? It isn’t just the piano, you see—I’m afraid that you’re getting a little confused. It’s the position of the body in relation to the piano. You’re quite correct about the position, of course—quite. But won’t you tell us how you were so sure of it?”“Wait, please,” said Stephen Bellamy very clearly and distinctly. “You’re quite right about the fact that I’m confused. I can see perfectly that I’m making an absolute mess of this. It’s principally because I haven’t had any sleep since God knows when, and when you don’t sleep, you——”“Mr. Bellamy, I’m sorry that I can’t let you go into that. Will you answer my question?”“I can’t answer your question. But I can tell you this, Mr. Farr—I can tell you that as God is my witness, Susan Ives and I had nothing more to do with this murder than you had. I——”“Your Honour! Your Honour!”“Be silent, sir!” Judge Carver’s voice was more imperious than his gavel. “You are completely forgetting yourself. Let that entire remark be stricken from the record. Mr. Lambert, be good enough to keep your witness in hand. I regard this entire performance as highly improper.”Mr. Lambert, a pale ghost of his rubicund self, advanced haltingly from where he had sat transfixed during the last interminable minutes. “I ask the Court’s indulgence for the witness, Your Honour. He took the stand to-day against the express advice of his physicians, who informed him that he was on the verge of a nervous breakdown. As it is now almost four, I ask that the court adjourn until to-morrow, when Mr. Bellamy will again take the stand if the prosecutor wishes to continue the cross-examination.”Judge Carver leaned forward, frowning.“If it please Your Honour,” said the prosecutor, briskly magnanimous, “that won’t be necessary. I’ve finished with Mr. Bellamy, and unless my friend wishes to ask him anything on redirect——”“Nothing on redirect,” said Mr. Lambert hollowly, his eyes on the exhausted despair of the face before him. “That will be all, Mr. Bellamy.”Slowly, stiffly, as though his very limbs had been wrenched by torture, Stephen Bellamy moved down the steps from the box, where there still rested Mimi Bellamy’s lace dress and silver slippers. When he stood a foot or so from his chair, he stopped for a moment, stared about him wildly, turning on the girl seated a little space away a look of dreadful inquiry. There she sat, slim and straight, with colour warm on her cheeks and bright in her lips, smiling that gay, friendly smile that was always waiting just behind the serene indifference of her eyes. And painfully, carefully, Stephen Bellamy twisted his stiffened lips to greet it, turned his face away and sat down. Even those across the courtroom could watch the ripple in his cheeks as his teeth clenched, unclenched, clenched.“If Your Honour has no objection,” the prosecutor was saying in that smooth new voice, “the witness that I spoke of yesterday is now in the court. He is still under his doctor’s orders, but he had an unusually good night, and is quite able to take the stand; he is anxious to do so, in fact, as he is supposed to get off for a rest as soon as possible. His testimony won’t take more than a few moments.”“Very well, let him take the stand.”“Call Dr. Barretti.”“Dr. Gabriel Barretti.”Dr. Barretti, looking much more like a distinguished diplomat than most distinguished diplomats ever look, mounted the stand with the caution of one newly risen from a hospital cot and settled himself comfortably in the uncomfortable chair. A small, close-clipped gray moustache, a fine sleek head of graying hair, a not displeasing touch of hospital pallor, brilliant eyes behind pince-nez on the most inobtrusive of black cords, and the tiny flame of the Legion of Honour ribbon lurking discreetly in his buttonhole—Dr. Barretti was far from suggesting the family physician. He turned toward the prosecutor with an air of gravely courteous interest.“Dr. Barretti, what is your profession?”“I believe that I might describe myself, without too much presumption, as a finger-print expert.”There was no trace of accent in Dr. Barretti’s finely modulated voice, and only the neatest touch of humourous deprecation.“The greatest authority in the world to-day, aren’t you, Doctor?”“It would ill become me to say so, sir, and I might find an unflattering number to disagree with me.”“Still, it’s an undisputed fact. How long has finger-printing been your occupation?”“It has been both my occupation and my hobby for about thirty-two years.”“You started to make a study of it then?”“A little before that. I studied at the time, however, with Sir Francis Galton in England and Bertillon in France. I also did considerable experimental work in Germany.”“Sir Francis Galton and Bertillon were the pioneers in the use of finger prints for identification, were they not?”“Hardly that. Finger prints for the purpose of identification were used in the Far East before history was invented to record it.”Mr. Farr frowned impatiently. “They were its foremost modern exponents as a means of criminal identification?”“Perfectly true. They were pioneers and very distinguished authorities.”“Shortly before his death in 1911, did Sir Francis Galton write a monograph on some recent developments in finger-print classification?”“He did.”“Did the dedication read ‘To Gabriel Barretti, My Pupil and My Master’?”“Yes. Sir Francis was more than generous.”“Are you officially associated with any organization at present?”“Oh, yes. I am very closely associated with the work of the Central Bureau of Identification in New York, and with the work of the Army and Navy Bureau in Washington.”“You are the court of final appeal in both places, are you not?”“I believe so. I am also an official consultant of both Scotland Yard and the Paris Sûreté.”“Exactly. Is there any opportunity of error in identification by means of finger prints?”“Granted a moderately clear impression and an able and honest expert to read it, there is not the remotest possibility of error.”“The prints would be identical?”“Oh, no; no two prints are ever identical. The pressure of the finger and the temperature of the body cause infinite minute variations.”“But they do not interfere with identification?”“No more than the fact that you raise or lower your voice alters the fact that it is your voice.”“Precisely. Now, Dr. Barretti, I ask you to identify these two photographs and to tell us what they represent.”Dr. Barretti took the two huge cardboard squares with their sinister black splotches and inspected them gravely. The jury, abruptly and violently agog with interest, hunched rapidly forward to the edges of their chairs.From over Mr. Farr’s shoulder came an old, shaken voice—the voice of Dudley Lambert, empty of its erstwhile resonance as a pricked drum: “One moment—one moment! Do I understand that you are offering these in evidence?”“I don’t know whether you understand it or not,” remarked Mr. Farr irritably. “It’s certainly what I intend to do as soon as I get them marked for identification. Now, Dr. Barretti——”“Your Honour, I object to this—I object!”“On what grounds?” inquired Judge Carver somewhat peremptorily, his own eyes fixed with undisguised interest on the large squares.“On the grounds that this entire performance is utterly irregular. I was not told that the witness held back by the prosecutor was a finger-print expert, nor that——”“You did not make any inquiries to that effect,” the judge reminded him unsympathetically.“I consider the entire performance nothing more or less than a trap, Your Honour. I know nothing about this man. I know nothing about finger prints. I am not a police-court lawyer, but a——”“Do you desire further to qualify Dr. Barretti as an expert by cross-examination?” inquired His Honour with more than his usual hint of acerbity.“I do not, Your Honour; as I stated, I am totally unable to cross-examine on the subject.”“I am sure that Dr. Barretti will hold himself at your disposal until you have had the time to consult or produce finger-print experts of your own,” said Judge Carver, bending inquiring eyes on that urbane gentleman and the restive prosecutor.“Oh, by all means,” said Mr. Farr. “One day—two days—three days—we willingly waive cross-examination until my distinguished adversary is completely prepared. May I proceed, Your Honour?”“You may.”“They represent two greatly enlarged sets of finger prints, enlarged some fifty to sixty times—both the photographs and the initialled enlargements are in the lower left-hand corners—by my photographer and myself.”“Both made at the same time?”“The photographs were made at the same time—yes.”“No, no—were the finger prints themselves?”“Oh, no, at quite different times. The set at the right is a photograph of official prints—prints made especially for our file; the one at the left, sometimes known as a casual print, was obtained from a surface at another date entirely.”“A clear impression?”“A remarkably clear impression. I believe that I may say without exaggeration—a beautiful impression.”“Each shows five fingers?”“The official one shows five fingers, the casual print shows four fingers distinctly—the fifth, the little finger, is considerably blurred, as apparently no pressure was exerted by it.”“Only one finger print is necessary in order to establish identity?”“A section of a finger print, if it is sufficiently large, will establish identity.”“These prints are from the same hand?”“From the same hand.”“It should be obvious even to the layman in comparing them that the same hand made them?”“I should think that it would be inescapable.”“No two people in the world have ever been discovered to have the same arrangement of whorls or loops or arches that constitute a finger print?”“No two in the world.”“How many finger prints have been taken?”“Oh, millions of them—the number increases so rapidly that it would be folly to guess at it.”“I’m going to ask you to give these prints to the jury, Dr. Barretti, so that they may be able to compare them at their leisure. Will you pass them on, Mr. Foreman, after you have inspected them? . . . Thanks.”The foreman of the jury fell upon them with a barely restrained pounce, the very glasses on his nose quivering with excitement. Finger prints! Things that you read about all your life, that you wondered and speculated and marvelled over—and here they were, right in your lucky hands. The rest of the jury crowded forward enviously.“Dr. Barretti, on what surface were these so-called casual prints found?”Through the courtroom there ran a stir—a murmur—that strange soaring hum with which humanity eases itself of the intolerable burden of suspense. Even the rapt jury lifted its head to catch it.“From the surface of a brass lamp—the lamp found in the gardener’s cottage on the Thorne estate known as Orchards.”“Will you tell us why it was possible to obtain so sharply defined a print from this lamp?”“Certainly. The hand that clasped the lamp was apparently quite moist, either from natural conditions of temperature or from some emotion. It had clasped the base, which was about six inches in diameter before it swelled into the portion that served as reservoir, quite firmly. The surface of the lamp had been lacquered in order to obviate polishing, making an excellent retaining surface. Furthermore, the impression was developed within twenty-four hours of the time of the murder, and the surface was at no time tampered with. The kerosene that had flowed from it freely flowed away from the base, and, in any case, the prints were on the upper portion of the base. All these circumstances united in making it possible to obtain an unusually fine print.”“One that leaves not the remotest possibility of error in comparison and identification?”“Not the remotest.”“Whose hand made those two sets of impressions, Dr. Barretti?”“The hand in both cases,” said Dr. Barretti, gravely and pleasantly, “was that of Mrs. Patrick Ives.”After a long time Mr. Farr said softly, “That is all, Dr. Barretti. Cross-examine.”And as though it had travelled a great distance and were very tired, the old strange voice that Mr. Lambert had found in the courtroom that afternoon said wearily, “No questions now. Later, perhaps—later—not now.”The fifth day of the Bellamy trial was over.

“He couldn’t look so cocky and triumphant and absolutely sure of himself as that if he didn’t actually know that everything was all right,” explained the red-haired girl in a reasonable but tremulous whisper, keeping an eye in desperate need of reassurance on the portly and flamboyant Lambert, who was prowling up and down in front of the jury with an expression of lightly won victory on his rubicund countenance and a tie that boasted actual checks under a ruddy chin. Every now and then he uttered small, premonitory booms.

“He could look just exactly like that if he were a God-forsaken fool,” murmured the reporter gloomily. “And would, and undoubtedly does. Whom the gods destroy they first make mad. Look out, there he goes!”

“Your Honour,” intoned Mr. Lambert with unction, “gentlemen of the jury, I am not going to burden you with a lengthy dissertation at this moment. In my summing up at a later time I will attempt to analyze the fallacious and specious reasoning on which my brilliant opponent has constructed his case, but at present something else is in my mind; or perhaps I should be both more candid and more accurate if I say that something else is in my heart.

“We have heard a great deal of the beauty, the charm, the enchantment, and the tragedy of the young woman whose dreadful death has brought about this trial. Much stress has been laid on her appalling fate and on the pitiful horror of so much loveliness crushed out in such a fashion. It is very far from my desire to deny or to belittle any of this. Tragic and dreadful, indeed, was the fate of Madeleine Bellamy; not one of us can think of it unmoved.

“But, gentlemen, when its horror grips you most relentlessly, I ask you to think of another young woman whose fate, to my mind, has been bitterer still; who, many times in these past few days, would have been glad to change places with that dead girl, safe and quiet now, beyond the reach of the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune that have been raining about her own unprotected head. I ask you to turn your thoughts for one moment to the fate of Susan Ives, the prisoner at the bar.

“Not so many weeks ago there is not one of you who would not have thought her an object of profound envy. Sue Ives, the adored, the cherished, the protected; Sue Ives, moving safe and happy through a world of flowers and blue skies that held no single cloud; Sue Ives, the lucky and beloved, the darling of the gods. There she sits before you, gentlemen, betrayed by her husband, befouled by every idle tongue that wags, torn from her children and her home, pilloried in every journal in the land from the most lofty and impeccable sheet to the vilest rag in Christendom, branded before the world as that darkest, most dreadful and most abject of creatures—a murderess.

“A murderess! This girl, so loyal and generous and honest that those who knew her believed her to be of somewhat finer clay than the rest of this workaday world; so proud, so sensitive and so fastidious that those who loved her would rather a thousand times have seen her dead in her grave than subjected to the ugly torture that has been her lot these past few days. What of her lot, gentlemen? What of her fate? What has brought her to this dreadful pass? Lightness or disloyalty or bad repute or reckless indiscretion or evil intent? Your own wife, your own daughter, your own mother, could not be freer of any taint of scandal or criticism.

“Accusations of this nature have been made in this court, but not by me and not against her. Of these sins, Madeleine Bellamy, the girl for whom all your pity has been invoked, has stood accused. She is dead. I, too, invoke your pity for her and such forgetfulness as you can mete out for the folly and dishonour that led to her death. For if she had not gone to that cottage to meet her lover, death would not have claimed her. She met death because she was there, alone and unprotected. Whether she was struck down by a thief, a blackmailer, an old lover or a new one, is not within my province to prove or in yours to decide. My intent is only to show you that so slight is the case against Susan Ives and Stephen Bellamy that a stronger one could be made out against half a dozen people that have been paraded before you in order to defame her.

“What is this case against her? I say against her, because if you decide that Mrs. Ives is not guilty, the case against Stephen Bellamy collapses automatically. It is not the contention of the state that he committed this crime. The evidence produced shows, according to the state, that he and Mrs. Ives were together throughout the evening, at her instigation. If she had nothing whatever to do with the crime, it follows inevitably that neither did her companion. I again, therefore, turn your attention to Mrs. Ives, and ask you once more what is this case against her?

“This: You are asked to believe that this girl—many of you have daughters older than Susan Ives—that this girl, gently born, gently bred and gentle-hearted, upon receiving information from a half-intoxicated and infatuated suitor of Mimi Bellamy’s that Mimi was carrying on an affair with her husband, Patrick Ives, dined peacefully at home, rose from the table, summoned Mrs. Bellamy’s adoring husband to meet her down a back lane, procured a knife from a table in her husband’s study and straightway sallied forth to remove the encumbrance that she had discovered in her smooth path by the simple and straightforward process of murdering her—murder, you note, premeditated, preconceived, and prearranged. Roughly, an hour and a half elapsed between the time that Susan Ives set out and the moment that the scream fixes as that of the murder.

“Presumably some of that time was occupied in convincing Mr. Bellamy of the excellence of her scheme and some of it in idle conversation—the time must have been occupied somehow; the actual rise and fall of a knife is no lengthy matter. Mr. Bellamy, we gather, was so entertained by the death of his idolized wife that he yielded to hearty laughter—Mr. Thorne has told you of that laugh, I believe.

“The lamp has gone out, so in total darkness they proceed to collect the jewels and wait peacefully until Mr. Thorne has put his keys under the doormat—the door is locked; they have thought of everything, you see—when once more they venture forth, enter an automobile that has the convenient quality of becoming either visible or invisible as serves them best, and return promptly and speedily to the house of Mr. Stephen Bellamy.

“Possibly you wonder why they do that. It is barely ten, and almost anyone might see them, thereby destroying their carefully concocted movie alibi, but possibly they thought that the Bellamy house would be a nice place to hide the pearls and talk things over. We are left a trifle in the dark as to their motives here, but undoubtedly the prosecutor will clear all that up perfectly. Ten minutes later they come out, and still together start off once more, presumably in the direction of Mrs. Ives’s home so that everyone there can get a good look at them together, while Mrs. Ives still has the knife and the bloodstained coat in her possession. There they part, Mrs. Ives to straighten up a little before she takes some fruit up to Mrs. Daniel Ives, Mr. Bellamy presumably to return to his own home and a night of well-earned repose.

“In the morning Mrs. Ives rises sufficiently early to pack up the blood drenched garments in a large box for the Salvation Army; she turns them over to a maid to turn over to a chauffeur, requests a fresh pair of gloves and sets forth to early church—the service which she has attended every Sunday of her life since she was a mite of six, with eyes too big for her face, hair to her waist, skirts to her knees and little white cotton gloves that would fit a doll if it weren’t too big. The prosecutor leaves her there telling her God that last night she had had to kill a girl who was liable to make a nuisance of herself before she got through by cutting down Sue Ives’s monthly income considerably. Of course it all may seem a trifle incomprehensible to us, but it’s undoubtedly perfectly clear to God and the prosecutor.

“I think that that is a fair and accurate statement of the state’s case, though Mr. Farr undoubtedly can—and will—make it sound a great deal more plausible when he gets at it. But that’s what it boils down to, and all the specious reasoning and forensic and histrionic ability in the world won’t make it one atom less preposterous. That’s their case.

“And on what evidence are we asked to believe this incredible farrago? I’ll tell you. We have the word of a hysterical and morbidly sensitive girl with a supposed grievance that she overheard a telephone conversation; we have the word of a vindictive young vixen who is leading nothing more nor less than a life of sin that she planted a note and failed to find it again; we have the disjointed narrative of an unfortunate fellow so far gone in drink, and love that he was half out of his senses at the time that he is supposed to be reporting these crucial events and has since blown his brains out; we have the word of an ex-jailbird who might well have more reasons than one for directing the finger of suspicion at a convenient victim; we have a trooper, eager for credit and prominence, swearing to you that he can as clearly recognize and identify a scrap of earth bearing the imprint of a bit of tire as though it were the upturned countenance of his favourite child—a bit of tire, gentlemen, which undoubtedly has some hundreds of millions of twins in this capacious country of ours.

“It is on this evidence, fantastic though it may sound, that my distinguished adversary is asking you to condemn to death a gentle lady and an honest gentleman. On the testimony of a neurotic, a love thief, a jailbird, and a drunkard! These are plain words to describe plain truths. I propose to produce witnesses of unimpeachable record to substantiate every one of them.

“It is, frankly, a great temptation to me to rest the case for the defense here and now; because in all honesty I cannot see how it would take any twelve sane men in this country five consecutive minutes to reach and return a verdict of not guilty. Remember, it does not devolve on me to prove that Susan Ives and Stephen Bellamy are innocent, but on the state to prove that they are guilty. If they have proved that these two are guilty, then they have proved that I am. I believe absolutely that one is not more absurd than the other.

“On that profound conviction I could, I say, rest this case. But there is a bare possibility that some minor aspects of the case are not so clear to you as they are to me—there is a passionate desire on my part to leave not one stone unturned in behalf of either of my clients—and there is also, I confess, a very human desire to confront and confound some of the glib crew who have mounted the steps to that stand day after day somewhat too greatly concerned to swear away two human lives. It will not be a lengthy and exhausting performance, I promise. Four or five honest men and women will suffice, and you will find, I believe, that truth travels as fast as light.

“Nor shall I produce the hundreds upon hundreds of character witnesses that I could bring before you to tell you that of all the fine and true and gallant souls that have crossed their paths, the most gallant, the finest and the truest is the girl that this very sovereign state is asking you to brand as a murderess. In the case of the People versus Susan Ives I shall call only one character witness into that box—Susan Ives herself. And if, after you have listened to her, after you have seen her, after you have heard her tell her story, you do not believe that society and the law and the people themselves, clamouring for a victim, have made a frightful and shocking error, it will be because I am not only a bad lawyer but a bad prophet as well. Gentlemen, it is my profound and solemn conviction that whatever I may be as a lawyer, I am in very truth a good prophet!”

“I don’t believe he’s a bad lawyer,” said the red-headed girl breathlessly. “He’s a good lawyer. He is! He makes everyone see just how ridiculous the case against them is. That’s being a good lawyer, isn’t it. That’s making a good speech, isn’t it? That’s——”

“He’s a pompous old jackass,” said the reporter unkindly. “But he loves his Sue, and he did just a little better than he knows how. Not so good at that either. You don’t make a case ridiculous by jeering at it. If——”

“Call Mrs. Platz!” boomed the oblivious object of his strictures.

“Mrs. Adolph Platz!”

Mrs. Platz, minute and meek, with straw-coloured hair and straw-coloured lashes and a small pink nose in a small white face, advanced toward the witness stand with no assurance whatever.

“Mrs. Platz, what was your position on June 19, 1926?”

“I was chambermaid-waitress with Mrs. Alfred Bond at Oyster Bay.”

“Had you been formerly in the employ of Mrs. Patrick Ives?”

“Yes, sir, I was, for about six months in 1925. I just did chamber work there, though.”

“Was your husband there at the time?”

“Yes, sir. Adolph was there as what you might call a useful man. He helped with the furnace and garden and ran the station wagon—things like that.”

“How long had you been married?”

“Not very long, sir—not a year, quite.” Mrs. Platz’s lips were suddenly unsteady.

“Mrs. Platz, why did you leave Mrs. Ives’s employ?”

“Do I have to answer that, sir?”

“I should very much like to have you answer it. Was it because you were discontented with your work?”

“Oh, no, indeed, it wasn’t that; nobody in this world could want a kinder mistress than Mrs. Ives. It was because—it was because of Adolph.”

“What about Adolph, Mrs. Platz?”

“It was because——” She shook her head despairingly, fighting down the shamed, painful flush. “I don’t like talking about it, sir. I’m not one for talking much.”

“I know. Still, the only thing that can help any of us now is truth. I’m sure that you want to help to give us that.”

“Yes, sir, I do. All right then—it was because of the way Adolph was carrying on with Mrs. Ives’s waitress, Melanie.”

“How did you know that?”

“Oh, I think they wanted me to know it,” said Adolph Platz’s wife, her soft voice suddenly hard and bitter. “He was more like a lunatic over her than a sane, grown-up man—he was indeed. I caught him kissing her twice—once in the pantry and once just behind the garage. They wanted me to catch them.”

“What did you do when you made this discovery?”

“The first time I didn’t do anything; I was too scared and sick and surprised. I didn’t know men did things like that—you know, not the men you married—not decent ones that were your brother’s best friends, like Adolph. Other men, might, but not them. I didn’t do anything but cry some at night. But the next time I saw them I wasn’t so surprised, and I was mad right through to my bones. I jumped right in and told both of them what I thought of them, and then I went right straight to Mrs. Ives and told her I was leaving the minute she could get someone else, and I told her why too. I told her she could keep Adolph, but not me.”

“What happened then?”

“Then she sent for Melanie and Adolph and they both said it wasn’t so.”

“Your Honour——”

“Never mind what anyone said, Mrs. Platz; just tell us what happened.”

“I couldn’t do that without telling you what we were all saying, sir. We were all talking at once, you see, and——”

“Yes. Well, suppose you just tell us what happened as a result of this conference?”

“Adolph and I left, sir. I wouldn’t have stayed no matter what happened after all that—not with me a laughingstock of all those servants for being such a dumbbell about what was going on. And Mrs. Ives didn’t want Adolph without me, so he came too. There wasn’t any way Mrs. Ives could tell which of us was speaking the truth, so she didn’t try; but all the same, she gave Melanie as good a dressing down as——”

“Yes, yes, exactly. Now just what happened after you left Mrs. Ives, Mrs. Platz?”

“Well, after that, sir, we had a pretty hard time. We weren’t happy, you see. I couldn’t forget, and that made it bad for us; and I guess he couldn’t either. Maybe he didn’t want to.”

The flood gates, long closed, were open at last. The small, quiet, tidy person in the witness box was pouring out all her sore heart, oblivious to straining ears, conscious only of the ruddy and reassuring countenance before her.

“I’m sorry, Mrs. Platz, but we aren’t permitted to learn the opinions that you formed or the conclusions that you reached. We just want the actual incidents that occurred. Now will you just try to do that?”

The frustrated, troubled eyes met his honestly. “Well, I’ll try, but that sounds pretty hard, sir. What was it you wanted to know?”

“Just what you did when you left Mrs. Ives.”

“Yes, sir. Well, first we tried to get a job together, but we didn’t get much of a one. It was a family of seven, and we did all the work, and Dolph didn’t like it at all; so when spring came he decided to take a position as gardener on Long Island at Oyster Bay, where they wanted a single man to sleep in the garage. We fixed it up so that I was to take a job at Locust Valley as chambermaid, and we’d spend Sundays together, and evenings, too, sometimes. It looked like a pretty good plan, the way things were going, and it didn’t work out so bad until I got that letter.”

“You haven’t told us about any letter, Mrs. Platz.”

“No, sir, I haven’t, that’s a fact. Do you want that I should tell you now?”

“Well, I don’t want you to get ahead of your story. Before you go on, I’d like to clear up one thing. What was the date on which your husband took this position?”

“It was the first of April, 1926. I didn’t get mine till about two weeks later.”

“Did you consider that he had left you for good at that time—deserted you, I mean?”

“I certainly didn’t understand any such a thing.” A spark shone in Mrs. Platz’s mild eye. “He came to see me every Sunday of his life just like clockwork, and about once a week besides.”

“He had talked of leaving you?”

“He certainly didn’t, except once in a while when both of us was mad and didn’t mean anything we said—like he’d say if I didn’t quit nagging he’d walk out and leave me cold, and I’d say nothing would give me any more pleasure—you know, like married people do sometimes.”

Mr. Lambert permitted himself a wintry smile.

“Quite. Divorce was not contemplated by either of you?”

“No, sir, we couldn’t contemplate anything like that. Divorces cost something dreadful; and besides, we hadn’t been married no more than a year about.” Mrs. Platz blinked valiantly through the straw-coloured lashes, her mouth screwed to a small, watery smile.

“So, at the time you were speaking of, your relations with your husband were amiable enough, were they?”

“Yes, sir; I don’t have any complaints to make. Everything was nicer than it had been since the fall before.”

“What changed your relations?”

Mrs. Platz, the painful flush mounting once more, fixed her eyes resolutely on the little patch of floor between her and Mr. Lambert.

“It was that——”

“Just a little louder, please. We all want to hear you, you know.”

“It was that waitress of Mrs. Ives’. She sent for him to come back.”

“How do you know that?”

“Well, I’ll tell you how I know it.” Mrs. Platz leaned forward confidentially. It was good, said her quick, eager voice—after all these weary months of silence, it was good to find a friend to listen to this ugly story. “This was the way: Sunday evening came around and he hadn’t never turned up at all.”

“Sunday of what date?”

“Sunday, June twentieth, sir. I didn’t know what in the world to make of it, but Tuesday morning, what do I get but a letter from Dolph saying that——”

“Have you still got that letter?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Have you got it with you?”

“Yes, sir.” Mrs. Platz dipped resourcefully into her shiny black leather bag and produced a soiled bit of blue notepaper.

“This is the original document?”

“Oh, yes, sir.”

“In your husband’s handwriting?”

“Yes.”

“Your Honour, I ask to have this note marked for identification, after which I offer it in evidence.”

“Just one moment, Your Honour. May I ask on what grounds the correspondence of the Platz family is being introduced into this case?”

“If Your Honour will permit me, I’ll explain why these documents are being introduced,” remarked Mr. Lambert briskly. “They are being introduced in order to attack the credibility of one of the prosecutor’s star witnesses; they are being introduced in order to prove conclusively and specifically that Miss Melanie Cordier is a liar, a perjurer, and a despoiler of homes. I again offer this letter in evidence—I shall have another one to offer later.”

Judge Carver eyed the blue scrap in Mr. Lambert’s fingers with an expression of deep distaste. “You say that this proves that the witness was guilty of perjury?”

“I do, Your Honour.”

“Very well, it may be admitted.”

Mr. Farr permitted himself a gesture of profound annoyance, hastily buried under a resigned shrug. “Very well, Your Honour, no objection.”

“The envelope containing this letter is postmarked Atlantic City, June 20, 1926,” remarked Mr. Lambert with unction. “It says:

“Dear Frieda:“Well, you will be surprised to get this, I guess, and none too pleased either, which I am not blaming you for. The fact is that I have decided that we had better not see anything more of each other, because Melanie and I, we have decided that we can’t get along any longer without each other and so she has come to me and I have got to look after her.“The reason that I did not come to see you this week-end was that I went out to Rosemont to see her and she had got in wrong with Mrs. Ives and she was in a dreadful state about this Mrs. Bellamy being killed, and she is very delicate, so I am going to see that she gets a good rest.“I hope that you will not feel too bad, as this is the best way. Melanie does not know that I am writing, as she is of a very jealous nature and does not want me writing any letters to you, so no more after this one, but I want everything to be square and aboveboard, because that is how I am. It won’t do you any good to look for me, so you can save yourself the trouble, because no matter how often you found me, I wouldn’t come back, as Melanie is very delicate and needs me. Hoping that you have no hard feelings toward me, as I haven’t any toward you,“Yours truly,“Adolph Platz.”

“Dear Frieda:

“Well, you will be surprised to get this, I guess, and none too pleased either, which I am not blaming you for. The fact is that I have decided that we had better not see anything more of each other, because Melanie and I, we have decided that we can’t get along any longer without each other and so she has come to me and I have got to look after her.

“The reason that I did not come to see you this week-end was that I went out to Rosemont to see her and she had got in wrong with Mrs. Ives and she was in a dreadful state about this Mrs. Bellamy being killed, and she is very delicate, so I am going to see that she gets a good rest.

“I hope that you will not feel too bad, as this is the best way. Melanie does not know that I am writing, as she is of a very jealous nature and does not want me writing any letters to you, so no more after this one, but I want everything to be square and aboveboard, because that is how I am. It won’t do you any good to look for me, so you can save yourself the trouble, because no matter how often you found me, I wouldn’t come back, as Melanie is very delicate and needs me. Hoping that you have no hard feelings toward me, as I haven’t any toward you,

“Yours truly,

“Adolph Platz.”

Adolph Platz’s wife sat listening to this ingenuous document with an inscrutable expression on her small, colourless face. It was impossible to tell whether, in spite of the amiable injunctions of the surprising Mr. Platz, she yielded to the indulgence of hard feelings or not.

“Have you ever seen Mr. Platz since the receipt of this letter, Mrs. Platz?”

“No, sir.”

“Did you ever try to find him?”

“No, sir, I didn’t; but my brother Gus did. He was set on finding him, and he spent all his holidays looking in Atlantic City. He said that he hadn’t any hard feelings against him, but it certainly would be a real treat to break every bone in his body.”

“And did he?”

“Oh, no, sir, I don’t believe that he broke any bones—not actually broke them.”

“I mean—did he find him?”

“Oh, yes, sir, he found him in a very nice boarding house called Sunrise Lodge.”

“Yes, exactly. Was Miss Cordier with him?”

The colourless face burned suddenly, painfully. “Yes, sir, she was.”

“Now did you ever hear from this husband of yours again, Mrs. Platz?”

“Yes.”

“When?”

“In September—over a month ago.”

“Have you got the letter with you?”

“I have, sir—right here.”

“I offer this in evidence too.”

“No objection,” said Mr. Farr bitterly. “I should appreciate the opportunity of inspecting these letters after Court adjourns, however.”

“Oh, gladly, gladly,” cried Mr. Lambert, sonorously jocose. “More than happy to afford you the opportunity. Now the envelope of this letter is postmarked New York, September 21, 1926. It says:

“Dear Frieda:“Well, this is to say that by the time you get this I will be on my way to Canada. I have a first-class opportunity to get into a trucking business up there that has all kinds of possibilities, if you get what I mean, and I think it is better for all concerned if I start in on a new life, as you might say, as the old one was not so good. Melanie thinks so, too, as she is very sensitive about all these things that have happened, and she thinks that it would be much nicer to start a new life too. She will join me when she is through being subpœnaed for this Bellamy trial, which is all pretty fierce, wouldn’t you say so too. She doesn’t know that I am writing you, because she is still jealous, but I thought I would like you to know for the sake of old times, as you might say, and also so that you can let Gus know that it won’t do him any good to go looking for me any more. He will probably see that if you explain how I am starting this new life in Canada. Hoping that this finds you as it leaves me,“Yours truly,“Adolph Platz.”

“Dear Frieda:

“Well, this is to say that by the time you get this I will be on my way to Canada. I have a first-class opportunity to get into a trucking business up there that has all kinds of possibilities, if you get what I mean, and I think it is better for all concerned if I start in on a new life, as you might say, as the old one was not so good. Melanie thinks so, too, as she is very sensitive about all these things that have happened, and she thinks that it would be much nicer to start a new life too. She will join me when she is through being subpœnaed for this Bellamy trial, which is all pretty fierce, wouldn’t you say so too. She doesn’t know that I am writing you, because she is still jealous, but I thought I would like you to know for the sake of old times, as you might say, and also so that you can let Gus know that it won’t do him any good to go looking for me any more. He will probably see that if you explain how I am starting this new life in Canada. Hoping that this finds you as it leaves me,

“Yours truly,

“Adolph Platz.”

“Have you ever heard from your husband since you received this letter, Mrs. Platz?”

“No, sir.”

“Ever heard of him?”

“No, sir.”

“Thank you, that will be all. Cross-examine.”

“No questions,” said Mr. Farr indifferently, and the small, unhappy shadow that had been Adolph Platz’s wife was gone.

“Well,” said the reporter judicially to the red-headed girl, “you have to grant him one thing. He knows when to leave bad enough alone.”

“Call Mrs. Shea.”

“Mrs. Timothy Shea!”

Mrs. Timothy Shea advanced belligerently toward the witness box, her forbidding countenance inappropriately decorated with a large lace turban enhanced with obese violets and a jet butterfly. She seated herself solidly, thumped a black beaded bag on to the rail before her and breathed audibly through an impressive nose.

“Mrs. Shea, what is your occupation?”

“I keep a boarding house in Atlantic City—known far and wide as the decentest in that place or in any other, as well as the most genteel and the best table.”

“Yes. Just answer the question, please. Never mind the rest. Were you——”

“I’ll thank you to let me be after telling the truth,” said Mrs. Shea, raising her voice to an unexpected volume. “It’s the truth I swore to tell and the truth I’m after telling. The decentest and the——”

“Yes, undoubtedly,” said Mr. Lambert hastily. “But what I wanted to know was whether you were in court at the time that Miss Cordier was testifying?”

“I was there. It will be a long day before I forget that day, and you may well say so.”

“Had you seen her before?”

“Had I seen her before?” inquired Mrs. Shea with a loud and melodramatic laugh. “Every day of my life for close on three months, mincing around with her eyes on the ground and her nose in the air as fine as you please, more shame to her.”

“Did you know her as Miss Cordier?”

“I did not.”

“Under what name did you know her?”

“Under the name she gave me and every other living soul in the place—the name of Mrs. Adolph Platz, that ought to have burned the skin off her tongue to use it.”

“She and Mr. Platz lived with you as man and wife?”

“Well, I ought to have lived in this world long enough to know that no man and his wife would go on forever playing the love-sick fools like those two,” remarked Mrs. Shea grimly. “But I thought they were new wed and would soon be over it.”

“Was Mr. Platz staying with you regularly?”

“Seven days and nights of the week.”

“Did he pay you regularly?”

“He did that!”

“Did he seem to have a regular profession?”

“Well, that’s all whether you’d call bootlegging a regular profession.”

“Now, Your Honour,” remonstrated Mr. Farr, who had been following this absorbing recital with an air of possibly fictitious boredom, “I don’t want to indulge in any legal hairsplitting, but surely a line should be drawn somewhere when it comes to this type of baseless slander and innuendo.”

“Do I understand that you have evidence of Mr. Platz’s activities?” inquired Judge Carver severely.

“The evidence of two eyes and two ears and a nose,” remarked Mrs. Shea with spirit. “Goings and comings and doings such as——”

“That will do, Mrs. Shea. The question hardly seems material. It is excluded. You may take your exception, Mr. Lambert.”

Mr. Lambert, thus prematurely adjured, stared indignantly about him and returned somewhat uncertainly to his task.

“Is it a fact that Mr. Platz’s relationship with Miss Cordier during their sojourn under your roof was simply that of a friend?”

“Fact!” Mrs. Shea snorted derisively. “ ’Tis a black-hearted lie off a black-hearted baggage. Friend, indeed!”

“That will do, Mrs. Shea,” said Judge Carver ominously. “Mr. Lambert, I request you to keep your witness in hand.”

“It is my endeavour to do so,” replied Mr. Lambert with some sincerity and much dignity. “I will be greatly obliged, Mrs. Shea, if you omit any comments or characterizations from your replies. Will you be good enough to give us the day when you first discovered that Mrs. Cordier and Mr. Platz were not married?”

“September seventeenth.”

“Have you any way of fixing the date?”

“You may well say so. Wasn’t it six years since Tim Shea died, and didn’t that big tall Swede come roaring down there saying that the two of them was no more married than Jackie Coogan and the Queen of Spain, and that he was going to beat the life out of his dear brother-in-law, Mr. Adolph Platz? And didn’t he go and do it, without so much as by your leave or saving your presence, and in the decentest and——”

“Madam!” Judge Carver’s tone would have daunted Boadicea.

“And are those what you call comments and characterizations?” inquired Mrs. Shea indignantly. “Well, God save us all!”

“That will be all, thank you, Mrs. Shea,” said Mr. Lambert hastily. “Cross-examine.”

“No questions,” said Mr. Farr with simple fervour. Mrs. Shea, looking baffled but menacing, moved forward with a majestic stride, leaving the courtroom in a state of freely expressed delight. Across the hum of their voices boomed Mr. Lambert’s suddenly impressive summons.

“Mr. Bellamy, will you be good enough to take the stand?”

Very quietly he came, the man who had been sitting there so motionless for so many days for them to gape their fill at, moving forward now to afford them better fare. Dark-eyed, low-voiced, courteous, and grave, he advanced toward the place of trial with an unhurried tread. In the lift of his head there was something curiously and effortlessly noble, thought the red-headed girl. Murderers should not hold their heads like that.

“Mr. Bellamy, where were you on the night of June nineteenth at nine-thirty o’clock?”

The proverbial dropped pin would have made a prodigious clatter in the silence that hovered over the waiting courtroom.

“I was in my car on the River Road, about a mile or so from Lakedale.”

“You were not in the neighbourhood of the Thorne estate, Orchards?”

“Not within ten miles—twelve, perhaps, would be more accurate?”

“Was anyone with you?”

“Yes; Mrs. Patrick Ives was with me.”

“You have a way of fixing the time?”

“I have.”

“I will ask you to do so later. Will you tell us now at what time you left the Rosemont Country Club?”

“At a little before six, I think. We dined at quarter to seven, and my wife always dressed before dinner.”

“Had you noticed Mr. Farwell in conversation with Mrs. Ives before you left?”

“Yes; my wife had called my attention to the fact that they seemed deeply absorbed in a conversation on the club steps.”

“Just how did she call your attention to it?”

“She said, ‘Oh, look, El’s got another girl!’ ”

“Did you make any comment on that?”

“Yes; I said, ‘That’s clear gain for you, darling’——” He caught himself up, olive skin a tone paler, teeth deep in his lip. “I said, ‘That’s clear gain for you, but a bit hard on Sue.’ ”

“You were aware of Mr. Farwell’s devotion to your wife?”

Behind Stephen Bellamy’s tragic eyes someone smiled, charming, tolerant, ironic—and was gone.

“It was impossible to be unaware of it. Mr. Farwell was candour itself on the subject, even with those who would have been more grateful for reticence.”

“Your wife made no attempt to conceal it?”

“To conceal it? Oh, no. There was nothing whatever to conceal; his infatuation for Mimi was common property. She laughed about it, though I think that sometimes it annoyed her.”

“Did she ever mention getting a divorce in order to marry Farwell?”

“A divorce? Mimi?” His eyes, blankly incredulous, met Mr. Lambert’s inquiring gaze. After a moment, he said, slowly and evenly, “No, she never mentioned a divorce.”

“If she had asked for one, would you have granted it to her?”

“I would have granted her anything that she asked for.”

“But you would have been surprised?”

Stephen Bellamy smiled with white lips. “ ‘Surprised’ is rather an inadequate word.” He sought for one more adequate—failed—and dismissed it with an eloquent motion of his hands. “I should have been more—well, astounded than it is possible for me to say.”

“So you had no inkling that your wife was contemplating any such action?”

“Not the faintest, not the——” Once more he pulled himself up, and after a moment’s pause, he leaned forward. “That, too, sounds ridiculously inadequate. I should like to make myself quite clear; apparently I haven’t succeeded in doing so. I believed my wife to be completely happy. You see, I believed that she loved me.”

He was pale enough now to gratify the most exigent reporter of emotions, but his pleasant, leisurely voice did not falter, and it was the ruddy Lambert, not he, who seemed embarrassed.

“Yes, quite so—naturally. I wished simply to establish the fact that you were not in her confidence as to her—er—attitude toward Mr. Ives. Now, Mr. Bellamy, I am going to ask you to tell us as directly and concisely as possible just what happened from the time that you and Mrs. Bellamy finished dinner that evening up to the time that you retired for the night.”

“I did not retire for the night.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“I said that I did not retire for the night. Sleep was entirely out of the question, and I didn’t care to go up to our—to my room.”

“Naturally—quite so. I will reframe my question. Will you be good enough to tell us what occurred on the evening of June nineteenth from the conclusion of dinner to, say, eleven o’clock?”

“I will do my best. I’m afraid that I haven’t an especially good memory for details. Mimi had said on the way home from the club that she had told the Conroys that she would join them after dinner at the movies in Rosemont. Quite a party were going, and I asked if they were going to stop by for her. She said no; that she had arranged to meet them at the theatre, as there was no room in their car. I suggested that I drive her over, and she said not to bother, as I’d have to walk back, because she wanted to keep the car; but I told her that I didn’t mind the walk and that I wanted to pick up some tobacco and a paper in the village.

“After dinner we went out to the garage together; the self-starter hadn’t been working very well, and just as I got it started, Mimi called my attention to the fact that one of the rear tires was flat. She asked what time it was, and when I told her that it was five minutes to eight, she said that there wouldn’t be time to change the tire, but that if she hurried she could catch the Conroys and make them give her a lift, even if they were crowded. They lived only about five minutes from us.”

“North of you or south of you, Mr. Bellamy?”

“North of us—away from the village, toward the club. I wanted to go with her, but she said that it would be awkward for me to get away if I turned up there, and it was only a five-minute walk in broad daylight. So then I let her go.”

He sat silent, staring after that light swift figure, slipping farther away from him—farther—farther still.

“You did not accompany her to the gate?”

Stephen Bellamy jerked back those wandering eyes. “I beg your pardon?”

“You didn’t accompany her to the gate?”

“No. I was looking over the tire to see whether I could locate the damage; I was particularly anxious to get it in shape if I could, because we were planning to motor over next day to a nursery in Lakedale to get some things for the garden—some little lilacs and flowering almonds and some privet for a hedge that we——” He broke off abruptly, and after a moment said gently, “I beg your pardon; that’s got absolutely nothing to do with it, of course. What I was trying to explain was that I was endeavouring to locate the tire trouble. In a minute or so I did.”

“You ascertained its nature?”

“Yes; there was a cut in it—a small, sharp cut about half an inch long.”

“Is that a usual tire injury?”

“I am not a tire expert, but it seemed to me highly unusual. I didn’t give it much thought, however, except to wonder what in the world I’d gone over to cause a thing like that. I was in a hurry to get it fixed, as I said, and I remembered that I’d seen Orsini standing by the gate as we went by to the garage. I went out to ask him to get me a hand, but he’d started down the road toward Rosemont. I could see him quite a bit off, hurrying along, and I remembered that we’d given him the evening off. So I went back to the garage, took my coat off and got to work myself. I’d just got the shoe off when I heard——”

“Just a minute, Mr. Bellamy. Did you see Mrs. Bellamy again when you went to the gate?”

“Oh, no; she’d been gone several minutes; and in any case there is a jog in the road two or three hundred feet north of our house that would have concealed her completely.”

“She was headed in the general direction of Orchards?”

“In the direction of Orchards—yes.”

“It was along this route that the Perrytown bus passed?”

“Yes.”

“Please continue.”

“As I was saying, I had succeeded in getting the shoe off when I heard the telephone ringing in the library of our house. I dropped everything and went in to answer it, as there was no one else in the house.”

“Who was on the telephone, Mr. Bellamy?”

“It was Sue—Mrs. Ives. She wanted to know if Mimi was at home.”

“Will you give us the conversation, to the best of your recollection?”

“Yes. I said that she was not; that she had gone to the movies in Rosemont with the Conroys. Mrs. Ives asked how long she had been gone. I told her possibly ten or fifteen minutes. She asked me if I was sure that she had gone there, and I said perfectly sure, and asked her what in the world she was talking about. She said that it was essential to see me at once, and asked if I could get there in ten minutes. I said not quite as soon as that, as I was changing a tire, but that I thought that I could make it in fifteen or twenty. She asked me to meet her at the back road, and then—yes, then she asked me if Elliot had said anything to me. I said, ‘Sue, for God’s sake, what’s all this about?’ And she said never mind, to hurry, or something like that, and rang off before I could say anything more.”

“What did you do next, Mr. Bellamy?”

“Well, for a minute I didn’t know what to do—I was too absolutely dumfounded by the entire performance. And then, quite suddenly, I had a horrible conviction that something had happened to Mimi, and that Sue was trying to break it to me. I felt absolutely mad with terror, and then I thought that if I could get Mrs. Conroy on the telephone there was just a chance that they mightn’t have left yet, or that maybe some of the servants might have seen Mimi come in and could tell me that she was all right.

“Anyway, I rang up, and Nell Conroy answered the ’phone, and said no, that Mimi hadn’t turned up; and that anyway they had told her not to meet them till eight-thirty, because the feature film didn’t go on till then. I said that Mimi must have made a mistake—that she’d probably gone to the theatre—something—anything—I don’t remember. All that I do remember is that I rang off somehow and stood there literally sweating with terror, trying to think what to do next. I remember putting my hand up to loosen my collar and finding it drenched; I’d forgotten all about Sue. All I could remember was that something must have happened to Mimi, and that she might need me, and that I didn’t know where she was. And then I remembered that Sue had told me to hurry and that she could explain everything. I tore out to the garage and went at the new tire like a maniac; it didn’t take me more than about eight minutes to get it on, and not more than three or four more to get over to the back road where I was to meet Sue. I didn’t pay much attention to speed limits.”

“Just where is this road, Mr. Bellamy?”

“Well, I don’t know whether I can make it clear. It’s a connecting road out of Rosemont between the main highway—the Perrytown Road, you know—and a parallel road about five miles west, called the River Road, that leads to Lakedale. It runs by about a quarter mile back of the Ives’ house.”

“Did you arrive at this back road before Mrs. Ives?”

“No. Mrs. Ives was waiting for me when I got there. I asked her whether she had been there long, and she said only a minute or two. I asked her then whether anything had happened to Mimi. She said, ‘What do you mean—happened to her?’ I said an accident of any kind, and added that I’d been practically off my head ever since she had telephoned, as I had called up the Conroys and discovered that she wasn’t there. Sue said, ‘So Elliot was right!’ She had been standing by the side of the car, talking, but when she said that, she looked around her quickly and stepped into the seat beside me. She said, ‘I’d rather not have anyone see us just now. Let’s drive over to the River Road. Mimi hasn’t been hurt, Steve. She’s gone to meet Pat at Orchards.’ I was so thunderstruck, and so immensely, so incalculably, relieved that Mimi wasn’t hurt that I laughed out loud. That sounds ridiculous, but it’s true. I laughed, and Sue said, ‘Don’t laugh, Steve; Mimi’s having an affair with Pat—she’s been having one for weeks. They don’t love us—they love each other.’ I said, ‘That’s a damned silly lie. Who told it to you—Elliot Farwell?’ ”

“Were you driving at the time that this conversation took place?”

“Oh, yes, we were well up the back road. I’d started the minute she asked me to. Shall I go on?”

“Please.”

“Do you want the whole conversation?”

“Everything that was said as to the relations of Mrs. Bellamy and Mr. Ives.”

“Very well. She told me that unfortunately it was no lie; that for several weeks they had been using the gardener’s cottage at Orchards for a place of rendezvous, and that Farwell had even seen them going there. I said that it made no difference to me whatever what Farwell had seen—that I wouldn’t believe it if I had seen it myself. I asked her if Farwell hadn’t been drinking when he told her this, and she said yes—that unless he had been he wouldn’t have told her. I asked her if she didn’t know that Elliot Farwell was an abject idiot about Mimi, and she said, ‘Oh, Stephen, not so abject an idiot as you—you who won’t even listen to the truth that you don’t want to hear.’ I said ‘I’ll listen to anything that you want to tell me, but truth isn’t what you hear—it’s what you believe. I don’t believe that Mimi doesn’t love me.’

“She said, ‘Where is she now, Steve?’ And I said, ‘At the movies. She probably met someone on the road who gave her a lift; or else she decided to walk straight there, as she knew that the Conroys’ car would be crowded.’ She said, ‘She’s not at the movies. She’s waiting for Pat in the gardener’s cottage.’ I said, ‘And has Pat gone to meet her?’ And she said, ‘No, this time he hasn’t gone to meet her.’ I said, ‘What makes you think that?’ Sue said, ‘I don’t think it; I know it.’ I said, ‘Oh, yes, he was going to Dallases to play poker, wasn’t he?’ And after a moment she said, ‘Yes, that’s where he said he was going. I happened to know that there’s been a slip in their plan to meet to-night.’

“Then she told me that she believed they were planning to run away, and that the reason she had wanted to see me was to tell me that she would never give Pat a divorce as long as she lived, and she thought if I told Mimi that before it was too late it might stop her.

“We’d reached the River Road by this time, and were well on our way to Lakedale, and I said, ‘Sue, we’ve talked enough nonsense for to-night; I’ll tell you what we’ll do. We’re running low on gas, and when we get to Lakedale we’ll get some, turn around and head back for Rosemont. We can see whether the movies are out as we go through the village, and if they aren’t, you can come back to our house and wait for a minute or so until Mimi gets there. Then you can put the whole thing up to her and take your punishment like a lady when you find what a goose you’ve been. Is that a bargain?’ And she said, ‘All right, that’s a bargain.’

“We’d been driving pretty slowly, so that it was after nine when we got into Lakedale; there were two or three people ahead of us at the gas station—Saturday night, you know—and Sue was very thirsty, so we asked the man at the gas pump if he could get her some water, and he did. I noticed him particularly, because he had the reddest hair that I’ve ever seen on a human being. We were at the station about ten minutes, and I looked at my watch just as we left. It said twenty minutes past nine.”

“Was your watch correct, Mr. Bellamy?”

“Absolutely! I check it every day at the station.”

“How long a drive is it from Lakedale to Rosemont?”

“Under half an hour—it’s around nine miles.”

“And to Orchards from Lakedale?”

“It’s close to twelve—Orchards is about three miles north of Rosemont.”

“Quite so. Now will you be good enough to continue with your story?”

“We hardly talked at all on our way back to Rosemont. I remember that Sue asked whether we wouldn’t get there before the film was over, and I said, ‘Probably.’ But as a matter of fact, we didn’t. We got to Rosemont at about five minutes to ten, and the theatre was dark. There were no cars in front of it and the doors were locked. I said, ‘She’ll probably be at the house,’ and Sue said, ‘If she isn’t, I think that it will look decidedly queer to have me dropping in there at this time of night.’ I said, ‘There’ll be no one there to see you; Nellie’s gone home to her mother and Orsini went to New York at eight-fifteen.’

“It takes only three or four minutes from the theatre to the house, and just as we started to turn in at the gate Sue said, ‘You’re wrong; there’s a light in the garage.’ I looked up quickly, and there wasn’t a sign of a light. I laughed and said, ‘Don’t let things get on your nerves, Sue; I tell you that I saw him going to the train.’ And I helped her out of the car. There was a light in the hall, and as I opened the door I called ‘Mimi!’ No one answered, and then I remembered that I’d left it burning when I went out. I said, ‘Come in. She must be over at the Conroys’. I’ll call up and get her over.’ ”

“So far so good,” said the reporter contentedly. “If Mr. Stephen Bellamy isn’t telling the truth, he’s as fertile and resourceful a liar as has crossed my trail in these many moons. Do you feel better?”

“Better than best,” the red-headed girl assured him fervently. “Only I wish that Bellamy girl had died a long time ago.”

“Do you indeed?”

“Yes, I do indeed—about twenty years ago, before she got out of socks and hair ribbons and started in breaking men’s hearts. Elliot Farwell and Patrick Ives and Stephen Bellamy—even that little bus driver looked bewitched. Of course I ought to be sorry she’s dead—but truly she wasn’t good for very much, was she?”

“Not very much. The ones who are good for very much aren’t generally particularly heartbreaking.”

“You’d probably be as bad as any of them,” said the red-headed girl darkly, and relapsed into silence.

“I’m universally rated rather high on susceptibility,” admitted the reporter with modest pride. “Did you sleep better last night?”

“Not any better at all.”

“Look here, are you telling me that after reducing me to a state of apprehension that resulted in my spending six dollars and thirty-five cents, and two hours and twenty minutes of invaluable time in a hired flivver in order to cure you of insomnia, you went back to that gas log of yours and worked half the night and had it again? Didn’t you solemnly swear——”

“I’m not ever solemn when I swear. I didn’t work after twelve. If you paid six thousand dollars for it, it was a tremendous bargain. It was the nicest ride I ever took. That was why I didn’t sleep.”

“Mollifying though mendacious,” said the reporter critically. “Are you by any chance a flirt?”

The red-headed girl eyed him thoughtfully. After quite a lengthy period of contemplation she seemed to arrive at a decision. “No,” she said gravely, “I’m not a flirt.”

“In that case,” said the reporter quite as gravely, “I’m going to get you some lunch. And if Sue Ives decides to confess to the entire newspaper fraternity that it really was she who did it, after all, I’m not going to be there—I’m going to be bringing your lunch back to you because you’re not a flirt. Do I make myself clear?”

“Yes, thank you,” said the red-headed girl.

She sat staring after him with round bright eyes that she was finding increasingly difficult to keep open. What was it that she had said that first day—that day that seemed so many, many days ago? Something about a murder story and a love story being the most enthralling combination in the world? Well—— The red-headed girl looked around her guiltily, wondering if she looked as pink as she felt. It was frightful to be so sleepy. It was frightful and ridiculous not to be able to sleep any more because of the troubles and passions of half a dozen people that you’d never laid eyes on in your life, and didn’t really know from Adam and Eve—or Cain and Abel were better, perhaps. What’s he to Hecuba or Hecuba to him? What indeed? She yawned despairingly.

No, but that wasn’t true—you did know them—a hundred times—a thousand times better than people that lived next to you all the days of their lives. That was what gave a trial its mysterious and terrible charm; curiosity is a hunger in everyone alive, and here the sides of the houses were lifted off and you saw them moving about as though they were alone. You knew—oh, you knew everything! You knew that little Pat Ives had sold papers in the streets and that he carved ships, and that once he had played the ukulele and had taken Mimi Dawson riding on spring nights.

You knew that Sue Ives had gone to church in little cotton gloves when she was six years old, and that she had a coat of cream-coloured flannel, and poor relations in Arizona, and a rose garden beyond the study window. You knew that Stephen Bellamy dined at quarter to seven and had a small car, and flowering almonds in his garden, and a wife who was more beautiful than a dream, with silver slippers and sapphire-and-diamond rings. You knew that Laura Roberts turned down the beds on the chambermaid’s night out and had a gentleman friend in the village and that—and that——

“Wake up!” said the reporter’s voice urgently. “Here are the sandwiches. I broke both legs trying to get back through that crowd. . . . Oh, Lord, here’s the Court! Too late—hide ’em!”

The red-headed girl hid them with a glance of unfeigned reluctance.

“Mr. Bellamy,” inquired Mr. Lambert happily, “you were telling us that you went into your house. What occurred next?”

“I went straight to the telephone and called up Mrs. Conroy. She answered the telephone herself, and I said, ‘Can I speak to Mimi for a moment, Nell?’ She said, ‘Why, Steve, Mimi isn’t here. The show got out early and we waited for about five minutes to make sure that she wasn’t there. I thought that she must have decided not to come.’ I said, ‘Yes, that’s what she must have decided.’ And I rang off. That same terror had me again; I felt cold to my bones. I said. ‘She’s not there. I was right the first time—something’s happened to her.’ Sue said, ‘Of course she’s not there. She went to the cottage.’ I said, ‘But you say that Pat didn’t go. She’d never wait there two hours for him. Maybe we’d better call up Dallas and make sure he’s there.’ ”

The even voice hesitated—was silent. Mr. Lambert moved forward energetically. “And what did Mrs. Ives say to that?”

“She said—she said, ‘No, that’s no good. He’s not at the Dallases’; he’s home.’ I said, ‘Then let’s call him up there.’ Sue said, ‘No, I’d rather not do that. I don’t want him to know about this until I decide what to do next. I give you my word of honour that he’s there. Isn’t that enough?’ I said all right, then, I’d call up the police court and the hospital to see if any accidents had been reported. I remember that Sue said something about its being premature, but none of her business. Neither the station nor the hospital had any information.”

“Did you give your name?”

“Naturally. I asked them to communicate with me at once if they heard anything.”

“And then what, Mr. Bellamy?”

“Then—then, after that, I don’t remember much. All the rest of it was sheer nightmare. I do remember Sue saying that we might retrace the route that Mimi started over toward the Conroys, on the bare chance that she had had some kind of collapse at the roadside. But that was no good, of course. And finally we decided that there was nothing more to do till morning, and that I’d better get Sue home. I drove her back to the house——”

“To your house?”

“No, no; the Ives’ house. I dropped her at the front gate. I didn’t drive in. I asked her to let me know if Pat was there, and she said that if he were she’d turn on the light in the study twice. I waited outside by the car for what seemed a hundred years, and after a long time the light in the study went on once, and off, and on again and off, and I got in the car and drove away.”

“What time was that, Mr. Bellamy?”

“I’m not sure—about quarter to eleven, perhaps. Mrs. Ives had asked me what time it was when we stopped at the gate. It was shortly after ten-thirty.”

“Did you go straight home?”

“Not directly—no. I drove around for quite a bit, but I couldn’t possibly tell you for how long. It’s like trying to remember things in a delirium.”

“But it was only after you heard that Mrs. Bellamy had not been at the movies that you were reduced to this condition—before that everything is quite clear?”

“Oh, quite.”

“And you are entirely clear that at the time fixed for the murder you and Mrs. Ives were a good ten miles away from the gardener’s cottage at Orchards?”

“Nearer twelve miles, I believe.”

“Thank you, Mr. Bellamy; that will be all. Cross-examine.”

Mr. Farr arrived in the center of the arena where sat his victim, pale and patient, with a motion so sudden that it suggested a leap. Not once had he lifted his voice during that long, laboriously retrieved narration. Now the courtroom was once more filled with its metallic clang, arresting and disturbing.

“Mr. Bellamy, you’ve told us that the tools in the garage belonged to Orsini. They were perfectly accessible to anyone else, weren’t they?”

“Perfectly.”

“Was Mrs. Bellamy in the garage at any time before you left?”

“Why, yes, I believe that she was. I remember meeting her as she came into the house just as I came downstairs to dinner—I’d gone up to wash my hands. She said she’d been out to the garage to see whether she’d left a package with some aspirin and other things from the drug store in the car. They weren’t there, and she asked me to call up the club the next day to see whether she had left them there.”

“So that she would have been perfectly able to have made that incision of that tire herself?”

“I should think so.”

“She did not at any time suggest that you accompany her either to the movies or the Conroys, did she?”

“Oh, no.”

“She countered such suggestions on your part, did she not, by saying that you would have to walk back, that it would be awkward for you to get away, and other excuses of that nature?”

“Yes. My wife knew that the pictures hurt my eyes, and she never urged me to——”

“No, never mind that, Mr. Bellamy. Please confine yourself to yes or no, whenever it is possible. It will simplify things for both of us. It would have been entirely possible for your wife to injure that tire in order to keep you from accompanying her, wouldn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“Now, Mr. Bellamy, I want to get this perfectly correctly. You claim that at nine-thirty you were on the River Road twelve miles from Orchards. Do you mean twelve miles by way of the back road, Rosemont and the Perrytown Road?”

“Yes.”

“Retracing your way over the route that you had previously taken?”

“Yes.”

“But surely you know that there is another and shorter route from Lakedale to Orchards, Mr. Bellamy?”

“I know that there is another route—yes. I was not aware that it was much shorter.”

“Well, for your information I may state that it is some three miles shorter. Can you describe this route to us?”

“Not very well, I’m afraid. I’m not at all familiar with it. I believe that it is the road that Mr. Thorne was speaking of having taken that night, leading into the back of Orchards.”

“Your supposition is entirely correct. Now, will you tell us just how you get there?”

“As I said, I’m not sure that I can. I believe that you continue on down the River Road until you turn off down a rather narrow, rough little road that leads directly to the back gates of Orchards. It’s practically a private road, I believe, ending at the estate.”

“What is its name?”

“I’m not sure, but I believe that it’s something like Thorne Path, or Road, or Lane—I’m pretty clear that it has the name Thorne in it.”

“Oh, you’re clear about that, are you, in spite of the fact that you’ve never been near it?”

“You misunderstood me evidently. I never said that I had never been near it. As a matter of fact, I have been over it several times—two or three anyway.”

“And yet you wish us to believe that you have no idea of either the name or the distance?”

“Certainly. It’s been a great many years since I’ve used it—ten, perhaps. It was at a time that I was going frequently to Orchards, when Mr. Thorne, Senior, was alive.”

“And you have never used it since?”

“No. It’s not a road that anyone would use unless he were going to Orchards. It’s practically a blind alley.”

“Again I must ask you to refrain from qualifications and elaborations. ‘No’ is a reply to that question. The fact remains, doesn’t it, that here was an unobtrusive short cut to Orchards that you haven’t seen fit to tell us about?”

Stephen Bellamy smiled slightly—that gracious and ironic smile, so oddly detached as to be disconcerting. “I’m afraid that I can’t answer that either yes or no—either would be misleading. I had completely forgotten that there was such a road.”

“Completely forgotten it, had you? Had Mrs. Ives forgotten it too?”

“I’m sure that I don’t know.”

“Mr. Bellamy, is not this road, known as Thorne Lane, the one that you and Mrs. Ives took to reach Orchards the night of the murder?”

Mr. Bellamy frowned faintly in concentration. “I beg your pardon?”

“Did you not use Thorne Lane to reach Orchards on the night of the murder?”

The frown vanished; for a moment, Mr. Bellamy looked frankly diverted. Were these, inquired his lifted brows, the terrors of cross-examination? “We certainly did nothing of the kind. I thought that I’d already explained that I hadn’t been over that road in ten years.”

“I heard your explanation. Now, will you kindly explain to us why you didn’t use it?”

“Why?” inquired Stephen Bellamy blankly.

“Why, consumed with anxiety as you were for the safety of your wife, didn’t it occur to you to go to this gardener’s cottage, where you were assured that she was having a rendezvous with another man?”

“I was not assured of any such thing. I was most positively assured that Mr. Ives had not gone there to meet her. Nor was I in anxiety at all about my wife during my drive with Mrs. Ives. I believed that she had gone to the movies.”

“Very well, when you found out that she wasn’t at the movies, why didn’t you go then to the cottage?”

“Mrs. Ives gave me her word of honour that Mr. Ives was at home. It seemed incredible to both of us that she would have waited there for over two hours.”

“Incredible to both of you that she could have waited? I thought you wished us to believe that you had such entire confidence in her love for you that you were perfectly convinced that she had never been near the cottage.”

“I”—the whitened lips tightened resolutely—“I did not believe that she had been. It was simply a hypothesis that I accepted in desperation—a vain attempt to believe that she might be safe, after all.”

“It would have consoled you to know that she was safe in the gardener’s cottage with Patrick Ives?”

“I would have given ten years of my life to have believed that she was safe and happy anywhere in the world.”

“Your honour meant nothing to you?”

“My honour? What had my honour to do with it?”

“Do you not consider that when a man’s wife has betrayed him, his honour is involved and should be avenged?”

“I believe nothing of the kind. My honour is involved only by my own actions, not by those of others.”

“You would have let her go to her lover with your blessing?”

Something flared in the dark eyes turned to the prosecutor’s mocking blue ones, and died. “I did not say that,” said Stephen Bellamy evenly.

Judge Carver leaned forward abruptly, “Mr. Bellamy is entirely correct,” he said sternly. “He said nothing of the kind.”

“I regret that I seem to have misunderstood him,” said the prosecutor with ominous meekness.

“You would have prevented her?”

“I would have begged her to try to find happiness with me.”

“And if that had not succeeded, you would have prevented her?”

“How could I have prevented her?”

The prosecutor took a step forward and lowered his voice to that strange pitch that carried farther than a battle cry. “Quite simply, Mr. Bellamy. As simply as the person who drove that knife to Madeleine Bellamy’s heart prevented her joining her lover—as simply as that.”

Judge Carver’s gavel fell with a crash. “Let that remark be stricken from the record!”

Stephen Bellamy’s head jerked back, and from somewhere an arm flashed out to catch him. He motioned it away, steadying himself carefully with an iron grip on the witness box. His eyes, the only things alive in his frozen face, met his enemy’s unswervingly.

“I did not drive that knife to her heart.” His voice was as ominously distinct as the prosecutor’s.

“But you did not raise a hand to prevent it from striking?”

“I could not raise a hand—I was not there.”

“You did not raise a hand?”

“Your Honour!”

Bellamy’s eyes swung steadily to the clamorous and distracted Lambert. “Please—I’d rather answer. I have told you already that I was not there, Mr. Farr. If I had been I would have given my life—gladly, believe me—to have prevented what happened.”

Farr turned a hotly incredulous countenance to Judge Carver’s impassive one. “Your Honour, I ask to have that stricken from the record as deliberately unresponsive.”

“It is not strictly responsive,” conceded His Honour dispassionately. “However, the Court feels that you had already received a responsive answer, so were apparently pressing for an elaboration. It may remain.”

“I defer to Your Honour’s opinion,” said Mr. Farr in a tone so far from deferential that His Honour regarded him somewhat fixedly. “Mr. Bellamy, what reason did Mrs. Ives give you for believing that Mr. Ives was at home?”

“She did not give me a reason; she gave me her word of honour.”

“You did not press her for one?”

“No; I considered her word better than any assurance that she——”

“Your Honour, I have repeatedly requested the witness to confine himself to yes and no. I ask with all deference to have the Court add its instructions to that effect.”

“Confine yourself to a direct answer whenever possible, Mr. Bellamy. You are not permitted to enter into explanations.”

“Very well, Your Honour.”

“Nothing was said about an intercepted note, Mr. Bellamy?”

“No.”

“You were perfectly satisfied that she had some mysterious way of ascertaining that he had not gone out at all that evening?”

“Yes.”

“But at some time during the evening that assurance on your part evaporated?”

“I don’t follow you.”

“I’ll be clearer. By the time you reached Mrs. Ives’s home—I believe that you’ve told us that that was at about ten-thirty—your confidence in her infallibility had so diminished that you suggested that she signal to you if Mr. Ives were actually there?”

“I believe that that was her suggestion.”

“Her suggestion? After she had given you her word of honour that he was there?”

“Yes.”

“You wish that to be your final statement on that subject?”

“Wait a moment.” He looked suddenly exhausted, as though he had been running for a long time. “I told you that things were very confused from the time that I found that Mimi hadn’t gone to the movies. I’m trying to get it as straight as possible. It was some time after we had left my house—after ten, I mean—and before we got to hers, that I suggested there was just a chance that she was mistaken and that Pat had gone to meet her after all. Sue said she couldn’t be mistaken, and that, anyway, they’d never dare stay at the cottage so late—it wouldn’t fit in with the movie story. I suggested then that possibly she had been right in her idea that they had been planning to run away together. Possibly that was what they had done to-night. She said, ‘Steve, you sound as though you wish they had.’ I said, ‘I wish to God they had.’ Then she said, ‘I know that Pat hasn’t been out, but I’ll let you know definitely when we go home.’ It was then that she suggested the lights.”

“It all comes back very clearly now, doesn’t it, Mr. Bellamy?”

“Yes.”

“Very convenient, remembering all those noble bits about how you wished to God that they’d eloped, isn’t it?”

“I don’t know that it’s particularly noble or convenient. It’s the truth.”

“Oh, undoubtedly. Mr. Bellamy, at what time——”

“Your Honour, I protest these sneers and jeers that Mr. Farr is indulging in constantly. I——”

“I simply remarked that Mr. Bellamy was undoubtedly telling the truth,” said Mr. Farr in dangerously meek tones. “Do you regard that as necessarily sarcastic?”

“I regard your tone as sheerly outrageous. I protest——”

“It might be just as well to make no comments on the witness’s replies, of either a flattering or an unflattering nature,” remarked Judge Carver drily. “Is there a question before the witness?”

“No, Your Honour. I was not permitted to complete my question.”

“It may be completed.” There was a hint of acerbity in the fine voice.

“Mr. Bellamy, at what time, after you left Mrs. Ives at her house, did you return to your own?”

“I don’t know.” The voice was weary to the point of indifference.

“You don’t know?”

“No; the whole thing’s like a nightmare. Time doesn’t mean much in a nightmare.”

“Well, did this nightmare condition permit you to ascertain whether it was after twelve?”

“I believe that it was later.”

“After one?”

“Later.”

“How do you know that it was later?”

“I don’t know—because the sky was getting lighter, I suppose.”

“You mean that dawn was breaking?”

“I suppose so.”

“You are telling us that you drove about until dawn?”

“I am telling you that I don’t remember what I did; it was all a nightmare.”

“Mr. Bellamy, why didn’t you go home to see whether your wife had returned?”

For the first time the eyes fixed on the prosecutor wavered. “What?”

“You heard me, I believe.”

“You want to know why I didn’t go back to my house?”

“Exactly.”

“I don’t know—because I was more or less out of my head, I suppose.”

“You were anxious to know what had become of her, weren’t you?”

“Anxious!” The stiff lips wrenched themselves into something dreadfully like a smile.

“Yet from eleven o’clock on you never went near your house to ascertain whether she had come home or been brought home?”

“No.”

“You didn’t call up the police?”

“I told you I’d already called them up.”

“Nor the hospital?”

“I’d called them too.”

“Where were they to notify you in case they had news to report?”

“At my house.”

“How were you to receive this information—this vital information—if you were roaming the country in an automobile?”

“I don’t know.”

“Weren’t you interested to know whether she was dead or alive?”

“Yes.”

“Then why didn’t you go home?”

“I have told you—I don’t know.”

“That’s your best answer?”

“Yes.”

“Let’s see whether I can’t help you to a better one. Isn’t the reason that you didn’t go home or call up the police or the hospital because you knew perfectly well that any information that anyone in the world could give you would be superfluous?”

Stephen Bellamy focussed his weary eyes intently on the sardonic face only a few inches from his. “I’m sorry—I don’t understand what you mean.”

“Don’t you? I’ll try to make it clearer. Wasn’t the reason that you didn’t go home the perfectly simple one that you knew that your wife was lying three miles away in a deserted cottage, soaked in blood and dead as a doornail?”

“Oh, for God’s sake!” At the low, despairing violence of that cry some in the courtroom winced and turned away their faces from the ugly triumph flushing the prosecutor’s cold face. “I don’t know, I tell you, I don’t know. I was half crazy; I wasn’t thinking of reasons, I wasn’t thinking of anything except that Mimi was gone.”

“Is that your best answer.”

“Yes.”

“At what time the next morning did you hear of the murder of your wife, Mr. Bellamy?”

Slowly, carefully, fighting inch by inch back to the narrow plank of self-control that lay between him and destruction, Stephen Bellamy lifted his tired voice, his tired eyes. “I believe that it was about eleven o’clock.”

“Who notified you?”

“A trooper, I think, from the police station.”

“Please tell us what he said.”

“He said that Mrs. Bellamy’s body had been found in an empty cottage on the old Thorne estate, and that while it had already been identified, headquarters thought I had better go over and confirm it. I said that I would come at once.”

“And did so?”

“Yes.”

“You saw the body?”

“Yes.”

“Identified it?”

“Yes.”

“It was clothed?”

“Yes.”

“In these garments, Mr. Bellamy?”

And there, incredibly, it was again, that streaked and stiffened gown with its once airy ruffles, dangling over the witness box in reach of Stephen Bellamy’s fine long-fingered hand. After the first convulsive movement he sat motionless, his eyes dilated strangely under his level brows. “Yes.”

“These shoes?”

Lightly as butterflies they settled on the dark rim of the box, so small, so gay, so preposterous, shining silver, shining buckles. The man in the box bent those strange eyes on them. After a moment, his hand moved forward, slowly, hesitantly; the fingers touched their rusted silver, light as a caress, and curved about them, a shelter and a defense.

“These shoes,” said Stephen Bellamy.

Somewhere in the back of the hall a woman sobbed loudly and hysterically, but he did not lift his eyes.

The prosecutor asked in a voice curiously gentle: “Mr. Bellamy, when you went into the room, was the body to the right or the left of the piano?”

“To the left.”

“You’re quite sure?”

“Absolutely.”

“Oh, God!” whispered the reporter frantically. “Oh, God, they’ve got him!”

“It’s strange that you should be so sure, Mr. Bellamy,” said the prosecutor more gently still. “Because there was no piano in the room to which you were taken to see the body.”

“What?” The bent head jerked back as though a whip had flicked.

“There was no piano in the dining room to which they had removed the body, Mr. Bellamy. The piano was in the parlour across the hall, where the body was first discovered.”

“If that is so I must have seen it when I came in and confused it somehow.”

“You couldn’t very well have seen it when you came in, I’m afraid. The door to the parlour was closed and locked so that the contents of the room would not be disturbed.”

“Well, then—then I must remember it from some previous occasion.”

“A previous occasion? When you were never in the cottage before?”

“No, no, I never said that. I never said anything like that.” The desperate voice rose slightly in its intensity. “I couldn’t have; it isn’t true. I’ve been there often—years ago, when I used to go over to play with Doug Thorne when we were kids. There was a playhouse just a few hundred feet from the cottage, and we used to run over to the cottage and get bread and jam and cookies from the old German gardener. I remember it absolutely; that’s probably what twisted me.”

“But the old German gardener didn’t have any piano, Mr. Bellamy,” explained the prosecutor patiently. “Don’t you remember that Orsini particularly told us how the Italian gardener had just purchased it for his daughter before they went off on their vacation? It couldn’t have been the old German gardener.”

The red-headed girl was weeping noiselessly into a highly inadequate handkerchief. “Horrid, smirking, disgusting beast!” she intoned in a small fierce whisper. “Horrid——”

“No? Well, then,” said the dreadful, hunted voice, “probably Mimi told me about it. She——”

“Mrs. Bellamy?” There was the slightest inflection of reproach in the soothing voice. “Mrs. Bellamy told you that her body was lying to the left of the piano as you entered the room? It isn’t just the piano, you see—I’m afraid that you’re getting a little confused. It’s the position of the body in relation to the piano. You’re quite correct about the position, of course—quite. But won’t you tell us how you were so sure of it?”

“Wait, please,” said Stephen Bellamy very clearly and distinctly. “You’re quite right about the fact that I’m confused. I can see perfectly that I’m making an absolute mess of this. It’s principally because I haven’t had any sleep since God knows when, and when you don’t sleep, you——”

“Mr. Bellamy, I’m sorry that I can’t let you go into that. Will you answer my question?”

“I can’t answer your question. But I can tell you this, Mr. Farr—I can tell you that as God is my witness, Susan Ives and I had nothing more to do with this murder than you had. I——”

“Your Honour! Your Honour!”

“Be silent, sir!” Judge Carver’s voice was more imperious than his gavel. “You are completely forgetting yourself. Let that entire remark be stricken from the record. Mr. Lambert, be good enough to keep your witness in hand. I regard this entire performance as highly improper.”

Mr. Lambert, a pale ghost of his rubicund self, advanced haltingly from where he had sat transfixed during the last interminable minutes. “I ask the Court’s indulgence for the witness, Your Honour. He took the stand to-day against the express advice of his physicians, who informed him that he was on the verge of a nervous breakdown. As it is now almost four, I ask that the court adjourn until to-morrow, when Mr. Bellamy will again take the stand if the prosecutor wishes to continue the cross-examination.”

Judge Carver leaned forward, frowning.

“If it please Your Honour,” said the prosecutor, briskly magnanimous, “that won’t be necessary. I’ve finished with Mr. Bellamy, and unless my friend wishes to ask him anything on redirect——”

“Nothing on redirect,” said Mr. Lambert hollowly, his eyes on the exhausted despair of the face before him. “That will be all, Mr. Bellamy.”

Slowly, stiffly, as though his very limbs had been wrenched by torture, Stephen Bellamy moved down the steps from the box, where there still rested Mimi Bellamy’s lace dress and silver slippers. When he stood a foot or so from his chair, he stopped for a moment, stared about him wildly, turning on the girl seated a little space away a look of dreadful inquiry. There she sat, slim and straight, with colour warm on her cheeks and bright in her lips, smiling that gay, friendly smile that was always waiting just behind the serene indifference of her eyes. And painfully, carefully, Stephen Bellamy twisted his stiffened lips to greet it, turned his face away and sat down. Even those across the courtroom could watch the ripple in his cheeks as his teeth clenched, unclenched, clenched.

“If Your Honour has no objection,” the prosecutor was saying in that smooth new voice, “the witness that I spoke of yesterday is now in the court. He is still under his doctor’s orders, but he had an unusually good night, and is quite able to take the stand; he is anxious to do so, in fact, as he is supposed to get off for a rest as soon as possible. His testimony won’t take more than a few moments.”

“Very well, let him take the stand.”

“Call Dr. Barretti.”

“Dr. Gabriel Barretti.”

Dr. Barretti, looking much more like a distinguished diplomat than most distinguished diplomats ever look, mounted the stand with the caution of one newly risen from a hospital cot and settled himself comfortably in the uncomfortable chair. A small, close-clipped gray moustache, a fine sleek head of graying hair, a not displeasing touch of hospital pallor, brilliant eyes behind pince-nez on the most inobtrusive of black cords, and the tiny flame of the Legion of Honour ribbon lurking discreetly in his buttonhole—Dr. Barretti was far from suggesting the family physician. He turned toward the prosecutor with an air of gravely courteous interest.

“Dr. Barretti, what is your profession?”

“I believe that I might describe myself, without too much presumption, as a finger-print expert.”

There was no trace of accent in Dr. Barretti’s finely modulated voice, and only the neatest touch of humourous deprecation.

“The greatest authority in the world to-day, aren’t you, Doctor?”

“It would ill become me to say so, sir, and I might find an unflattering number to disagree with me.”

“Still, it’s an undisputed fact. How long has finger-printing been your occupation?”

“It has been both my occupation and my hobby for about thirty-two years.”

“You started to make a study of it then?”

“A little before that. I studied at the time, however, with Sir Francis Galton in England and Bertillon in France. I also did considerable experimental work in Germany.”

“Sir Francis Galton and Bertillon were the pioneers in the use of finger prints for identification, were they not?”

“Hardly that. Finger prints for the purpose of identification were used in the Far East before history was invented to record it.”

Mr. Farr frowned impatiently. “They were its foremost modern exponents as a means of criminal identification?”

“Perfectly true. They were pioneers and very distinguished authorities.”

“Shortly before his death in 1911, did Sir Francis Galton write a monograph on some recent developments in finger-print classification?”

“He did.”

“Did the dedication read ‘To Gabriel Barretti, My Pupil and My Master’?”

“Yes. Sir Francis was more than generous.”

“Are you officially associated with any organization at present?”

“Oh, yes. I am very closely associated with the work of the Central Bureau of Identification in New York, and with the work of the Army and Navy Bureau in Washington.”

“You are the court of final appeal in both places, are you not?”

“I believe so. I am also an official consultant of both Scotland Yard and the Paris Sûreté.”

“Exactly. Is there any opportunity of error in identification by means of finger prints?”

“Granted a moderately clear impression and an able and honest expert to read it, there is not the remotest possibility of error.”

“The prints would be identical?”

“Oh, no; no two prints are ever identical. The pressure of the finger and the temperature of the body cause infinite minute variations.”

“But they do not interfere with identification?”

“No more than the fact that you raise or lower your voice alters the fact that it is your voice.”

“Precisely. Now, Dr. Barretti, I ask you to identify these two photographs and to tell us what they represent.”

Dr. Barretti took the two huge cardboard squares with their sinister black splotches and inspected them gravely. The jury, abruptly and violently agog with interest, hunched rapidly forward to the edges of their chairs.

From over Mr. Farr’s shoulder came an old, shaken voice—the voice of Dudley Lambert, empty of its erstwhile resonance as a pricked drum: “One moment—one moment! Do I understand that you are offering these in evidence?”

“I don’t know whether you understand it or not,” remarked Mr. Farr irritably. “It’s certainly what I intend to do as soon as I get them marked for identification. Now, Dr. Barretti——”

“Your Honour, I object to this—I object!”

“On what grounds?” inquired Judge Carver somewhat peremptorily, his own eyes fixed with undisguised interest on the large squares.

“On the grounds that this entire performance is utterly irregular. I was not told that the witness held back by the prosecutor was a finger-print expert, nor that——”

“You did not make any inquiries to that effect,” the judge reminded him unsympathetically.

“I consider the entire performance nothing more or less than a trap, Your Honour. I know nothing about this man. I know nothing about finger prints. I am not a police-court lawyer, but a——”

“Do you desire further to qualify Dr. Barretti as an expert by cross-examination?” inquired His Honour with more than his usual hint of acerbity.

“I do not, Your Honour; as I stated, I am totally unable to cross-examine on the subject.”

“I am sure that Dr. Barretti will hold himself at your disposal until you have had the time to consult or produce finger-print experts of your own,” said Judge Carver, bending inquiring eyes on that urbane gentleman and the restive prosecutor.

“Oh, by all means,” said Mr. Farr. “One day—two days—three days—we willingly waive cross-examination until my distinguished adversary is completely prepared. May I proceed, Your Honour?”

“You may.”

“They represent two greatly enlarged sets of finger prints, enlarged some fifty to sixty times—both the photographs and the initialled enlargements are in the lower left-hand corners—by my photographer and myself.”

“Both made at the same time?”

“The photographs were made at the same time—yes.”

“No, no—were the finger prints themselves?”

“Oh, no, at quite different times. The set at the right is a photograph of official prints—prints made especially for our file; the one at the left, sometimes known as a casual print, was obtained from a surface at another date entirely.”

“A clear impression?”

“A remarkably clear impression. I believe that I may say without exaggeration—a beautiful impression.”

“Each shows five fingers?”

“The official one shows five fingers, the casual print shows four fingers distinctly—the fifth, the little finger, is considerably blurred, as apparently no pressure was exerted by it.”

“Only one finger print is necessary in order to establish identity?”

“A section of a finger print, if it is sufficiently large, will establish identity.”

“These prints are from the same hand?”

“From the same hand.”

“It should be obvious even to the layman in comparing them that the same hand made them?”

“I should think that it would be inescapable.”

“No two people in the world have ever been discovered to have the same arrangement of whorls or loops or arches that constitute a finger print?”

“No two in the world.”

“How many finger prints have been taken?”

“Oh, millions of them—the number increases so rapidly that it would be folly to guess at it.”

“I’m going to ask you to give these prints to the jury, Dr. Barretti, so that they may be able to compare them at their leisure. Will you pass them on, Mr. Foreman, after you have inspected them? . . . Thanks.”

The foreman of the jury fell upon them with a barely restrained pounce, the very glasses on his nose quivering with excitement. Finger prints! Things that you read about all your life, that you wondered and speculated and marvelled over—and here they were, right in your lucky hands. The rest of the jury crowded forward enviously.

“Dr. Barretti, on what surface were these so-called casual prints found?”

Through the courtroom there ran a stir—a murmur—that strange soaring hum with which humanity eases itself of the intolerable burden of suspense. Even the rapt jury lifted its head to catch it.

“From the surface of a brass lamp—the lamp found in the gardener’s cottage on the Thorne estate known as Orchards.”

“Will you tell us why it was possible to obtain so sharply defined a print from this lamp?”

“Certainly. The hand that clasped the lamp was apparently quite moist, either from natural conditions of temperature or from some emotion. It had clasped the base, which was about six inches in diameter before it swelled into the portion that served as reservoir, quite firmly. The surface of the lamp had been lacquered in order to obviate polishing, making an excellent retaining surface. Furthermore, the impression was developed within twenty-four hours of the time of the murder, and the surface was at no time tampered with. The kerosene that had flowed from it freely flowed away from the base, and, in any case, the prints were on the upper portion of the base. All these circumstances united in making it possible to obtain an unusually fine print.”

“One that leaves not the remotest possibility of error in comparison and identification?”

“Not the remotest.”

“Whose hand made those two sets of impressions, Dr. Barretti?”

“The hand in both cases,” said Dr. Barretti, gravely and pleasantly, “was that of Mrs. Patrick Ives.”

After a long time Mr. Farr said softly, “That is all, Dr. Barretti. Cross-examine.”

And as though it had travelled a great distance and were very tired, the old strange voice that Mr. Lambert had found in the courtroom that afternoon said wearily, “No questions now. Later, perhaps—later—not now.”

The fifth day of the Bellamy trial was over.

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