The Bellamy Trial
by Frances Noyes Hart
Garden City, New York
Doubleday, Page & Company
Copyright, 1927, Frances Noyes Hart
To my favourite lawyer
Edward Henry Hart
THE BELLAMY TRIAL
The Judge
Anthony Bristed Carver
The Prosecutor
Daniel Farr
Counsel for the Defense
Dudley Lambert
The Defendants
Susan Ives
Stephen Bellamy
First Day
Opening speech for the prosecution
Second Day
Mr. Herbert Conroy, _real estate agent_
Dr. Paul Stanley, _physician_
Miss Kathleen Page, _governess_
Third Day
Mr. Douglas Thorne, _Susan Ives’s brother_
Miss Flora Biggs, _Mimi Bellamy’s schoolmate_
Mrs. Daniel Ives, _Susan Ives’s mother-in-law_
Mr. Elliot Farwell, _Mimi Bellamy’s ex-fiancé_
Mr. George Dallas, _Mr. Farwell’s friend_
Fourth Day
Miss Melanie Cordier, _waitress_
Miss Laura Roberts, _lady’s maid_
Mr. Luigi Orsini, _handy man_
Mr. Joseph Turner, _bus driver_
Sergeant Hendrick Johnson, _state trooper_
Fifth Day
Opening speech for defence
Mrs. Adolph Platz, _wife of chauffeur_
Mrs. Timothy Shea, _landlady_
Mr. Stephen Bellamy
Dr. Gabriel Barretti, _finger-print expert_
Sixth Day
Mr. Leo Fox, _mechanician_
Mr. Patrick Ives, _Susan Ives’s husband_
Susan Ives
Seventh Day
Susan Ives—conclusion
Stephen Bellamy—recalled
Closing speech for the defence
Closing speech for prosecution
Eighth Day
Mr. Randolph Phipps, _high-school principal_
Miss Sally Dunne, _high-school pupil_
The judge’s charge
The verdict
CHAPTER I
The red-headed girl sank into the seat in the middle of the first row
with a gasp of relief. Sixth seat from the aisle—yes, that was right;
the label on the arm of the golden-oak chair stared up at her
reassuringly. Row A, seat 15, Philadelphia _Planet_. The ones on
either side of her were empty. Well, it was a relief to know that
there were four feet of space left unoccupied in Redfield, even if
only temporarily. She was still shaken into breathless stupor by the
pandemonium in the corridors outside—the rattling of regiments of
typewriters, of armies of tickers, the shouts of infuriated denizens
of telephone booths, the hurrying, frantic faces of officials, the
scurrying and scampering of dozens of rusty-haired freckled-faced
insubordinate small boys, whose olive-drab messenger uniforms alone
saved them from extermination; the newspaper men—you could spot them
at once, looking exhausted and alert and elaborately bored; the
newspaper women, keen and purposeful and diverted; and above and
around and below all these licensed inhabitants, the crowd—a vast,
jostling, lunging beast, with one supreme motive galvanizing it to
action—an immense, a devouring curiosity that sent it surging time and
time again against the closed glass doors with their blue-coated
guardians, fragile barriers between it and the consummation of its
desire. For just beyond those doors lay the arena where the beast
might slake its hunger at will, and it was not taking its frustration
of that privilege amiably.
The red-headed girl set her little black-feathered hat straight with
unsteady fingers. She wasn’t going to forget that crowd in a hurry. It
had growled at her—actually growled—when she’d fought her way through
it, armed with the magic of the little blue ticket that spelled open
sesame as well as press section. Who could have believed that even
curiosity would turn nice old gray-headed ladies and mild-looking
gentlemen with brown moustaches and fat matrons with leather bags and
thin flappers with batik scarfs into one huge ravenous beast? She
panted again, reminiscently, at the thought of the way they’d shoved
and squashed and kneaded—and then settled down to gratified
inspection.
So this was a courtroom!
Not a very large or very impressive room, looked at from any angle. It
might hold three hundred people at a pinch, and there were,
conservatively, about three thousand crowding the corridors and
walking the streets of Redfield in their efforts to expand its limits.
Fan-shaped, with nine rows of the golden-oak seats packed with grimly
triumphant humanity, the first three neatly tagged with the little
white labels that metamorphosed them into the press section.
Golden-oak panelling half-way up the walls, and then whitewashed
plaster—rather dingy, smoky plaster, its defects relentlessly revealed
by the pale autumnal sunshine flooding in through the great windows
and the dome of many-coloured glass, lavish and heartening enough to
compensate for much of the grimness and the grime.
Near enough for the red-headed girl to touch was a low rail, and
beyond that rail a little empty space, like a stage—empty of actors,
but cluttered with chairs and tables. At the back was a small platform
with a great high-backed black leather chair, and a still smaller
platform on a slightly lower level, with a rail about it and a much
more uncomfortable-looking chair. The judge’s seat, the witness
box—she gave a little sigh of pure uncontrollable excitement, and a
voice next to her said affably:
“Hi! Greetings, stranger, or hail, friend, as the case may be. Can I
get by you into the next seat without damaging you and those feet of
yours materially?”
The red-headed girl scrambled guiltily to the offending feet,
unobtrusive enough in themselves, but most obtrusively extended across
the narrow passage, and turned a flushed and anxious countenance on
her cheerful critic, now engaged in folding himself competently into
the exiguous space provided by the golden-oak chair. A tall lanky
young man, with a straight nose, mouse-coloured hair, shrewd gray
eyes, and an expression that was intended to be that of a hard-boiled
cynic, and that worked all right unless he grinned. He wore a shabby
tweed suit, a polka-dotted tie, had three very sharp pencils, and a
good-sized stack of telegraph blanks clasped to his heart. Obviously a
reporter—a real reporter. The red-headed girl attempted to conceal her
gold pencil and leather-bound notebook, smiling tentatively and
ingratiatingly.
“Covering it for a New York paper?” inquired the Olympian one
graciously.
“No,” said the red-headed girl humbly; “a Philadelphia one—the
Philadelphia _Planet_. Is yours New York?”
“M’m—h’m—_Sphere_. Doing colour stuff?”
“Oh, I hope so,” replied the red-headed girl so fervently that the
reporter looked somewhat startled. “You see, I don’t know whether it
will have colour or not. I’m not exactly a regular reporter.”
“Oh, you aren’t, aren’t you? Well, if it’s no secret, just exactly
what are you? A finger-print expert?”
“I’m a—a writer,” said the red-headed girl, looking unusually small
and dignified. “This is my first as—assignment.” It was frightful to
stammer just when you particularly wanted not to.
The real reporter eyed her severely. “A writer, hey? A real,
honest-to-goodness, walking-around writer, with a fountain pen and a
great big vocabulary and a world of promise and everything? Well, I’ll
bet you a hot dog to a soup plate of fresh caviar that about four days
from now you’ll be parading through these marble halls telling the
cockeyed world that you’re a journalist.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t dare. Do all of you call yourselves journalists?”
The reporter looked as though he were about to suffocate. “Get this,”
he said impressively: “The day that you hear me call myself a
journalist you have my full and free permission to call me a —— Well,
no, on second thought, a lady couldn’t. But if you ever call me a
journalist, smile. And if you solemnly swear never to call yourself
one I’ll show you the ropes a bit, because you’re a poor ignorant
little writing critter that doesn’t know any better than to come to a
murder trial—and besides that you have red hair. Want to know
anything?”
“Oh,” cried the red-headed girl, “I didn’t know that anyone so horrid
could be so nice. I want to know everything. Let’s begin at the
beginning.”
“Well, in case you don’t know where you are, this is the courtroom of
Redfield, county seat of Bellechester, twenty-five miles from the
great metropolis of New York. And in case you’d like to know what it’s
all about, it’s the greatest murder trial of the century—about every
two years another one of ’em comes along. This particular one is the
trial of the People versus Susan Ives and Stephen Bellamy for the
wilful, deliberate, and malicious murder of Madeleine Bellamy.”
“A murder trial,” said the red-headed girl softly. “Well, I should
think that ought to be about the most tremendous thing in the world.”
“Oh, you do, do you?” remarked the reporter, and for a moment it was
no effort at all for him to look cynical. “Well, I’ll have you called
at about seven to-morrow morning, though it’s a pity ever to wake
anyone up that can have such beautiful dreams as that. The most
tremendous thing in the world, says she. Well, well, well!”
The red-headed girl eyed him belligerently. “Well, yourself! Perhaps
you’ll be good enough to tell me what’s more tremendous than murder.”
“Oh, you tell me!” urged the reporter persuasively.
“All right, I’ll tell you that the only story that you’re going to be
able to interest every human being in, from the President of the
United States to the gentleman who takes away the ashes, is a good
murder story. It’s the one universal solvent. The old lady from
Dubuque will be at it the first thing in the morning, and the young
lady from Park Avenue will be at it the last thing at night. And if
it’s a love story too, you’re lucky, because then you’ve got the
combination that every really great writer that ever lived has picked
out to wring hearts and freeze the marrow in posterity’s bones.”
“Oh, come! Aren’t you getting just a dash over-wrought? Every great
writer? What about Wordsworth?”
“Oh, pooh!” said the red-headed girl fiercely. “Wordsworth! What about
Sophocles and Euripides and Shakespeare and Browning? Do you know what
‘The Ring and the Book’ is? It’s a murder trial! What’s ‘Othello’ but
a murder story? What’s ‘Hamlet’ but five murder stories? What’s
‘Macbeth’? Or ‘The Cenci’? Or ‘Lamia’? Or ‘Crime and Punishment’? Or
‘Carmen’? Or——”
“I give up,” said the reporter firmly—“or, no, wait a moment—can it be
that they are murder stories? Quite a little reader in your quiet way,
aren’t you?”
The red-headed girl ignored him sternly. “And do you want me to tell
you why it’s the most enthralling and absorbing theme in the world? Do
you?”
“No,” replied the reporter hastily. “Yes—or how shall I put it? Yes
and no, let’s say.”
“It’s because it’s real,” said the red-headed girl, with a sudden
startling gravity. “It’s the only thing that’s absolutely real in the
world, I think. Something that makes you reckless enough not to care a
tinker’s dam for your own life or another’s—that’s something to think
about, isn’t it?”
“Well, yes,” said the reporter slowly. “Now that you put it that way,
that’s something to think about.”
“It’s good for us, too,” said the girl, “We’re all so everlastingly
canny and competent and sophisticated these days, going mechanically
through a mechanical world, sharpening up our little emotions, tuning
up our little sensations—and suddenly there’s a cry of ‘Murder!’ in
the streets, and we stop and look back, shuddering, over our
shoulder—and across us falls the shadow of a savage with a
bloodstained club, and we know that it’s good and dangerous and
beautiful to be alive.”
“I rather get you,” said the reporter thoughtfully. “And, strangely
enough, there’s just a dash in what you say. It’s the same nice,
creepy, luxurious feeling that you get when you pull up closer to a
good roaring fire with carpet slippers on your feet and a glass of
something hot and sweet in your hand and listen to the wind yowling
outside and see the rain on the black windowpanes. Nothing in the
world to make you feel warm and safe and sheltered and cozy like a
good storm or a good murder—what?”
“Nothing in the world,” agreed the red-headed girl; and she added
pensively, “It’s always interested me more than anything else.”
“Has it indeed? Well, don’t let it get you. I’d just keep it as a
hobby if I were you. At your present gait you’re going to make some
fellow an awfully happy widow one of these days. Are you a good
marksman?”
“You think that murder’s frightfully amusing, don’t you?” The
red-headed girl’s soft voice had a sudden edge to it.
The real reporter’s face changed abruptly. “No, I don’t,” he said
shortly. “I think it’s rotten—a dirty, bloody, beastly business that
used to keep me awake nights until I grew a shell over my skin and
acquired a fairly workable sense of humour to use on all these clowns
called human beings. Of course, I’m one of them myself, but I don’t
boast about it. And if you’re suffering from the illusion that nothing
shocks me, I’ll tell you right now that it shocks me any amount that a
scrap of a thing like you, with all that perfectly good red hair and a
rather nice arrangement in dimples, should be practically climbing
over that rail in your frenzy to find out what it’s all about.”
“I think that men are the most amusing race in the world,” murmured
the red-headed girl. “And I think that it’s awfully appealing of you
to be shocked. But, you see, my grandfather—who was as stern and
Scotch and hidebound as anyone that ever breathed—told me when I was
fourteen years old that a great murder trial was the most superbly
dramatic spectacle that the world afforded. And he ought to have known
what he was talking about—he was one of the greatest judges that ever
lived.”
“Well, maybe they were in his day. And you said Scotch, didn’t you?
Oh, well, they do it better over there. England, too—bunches of
flowers on the clerks’ tables and wigs on the judges’ heads, and
plenty of scarlet and gold, and all the great lawyers in the land
taking a whack at it, and never a cross word out of one of them——”
“He used to say that is was like a hunt,” interrupted the red-headed
girl firmly, “with the judge as master of the hounds and the lawyers
as the hounds, baying as they ran hot on the scent, and all the rest
of us galloping hard at their heels—jury, spectators, public.”
“Sure,” said the reporter grimly. “With the quarry waiting, bound and
shackled and gagged till they catch up with him and tear him to
pieces—it’s a great hunt all right, all right!”
“It’s not a human being that they’re hunting, idiot—it’s truth.”
“Truth!” The reporter’s laugh was loud and long and free enough to
cause a dozen heads to turn. “Oh, what you’re going to learn before
you get out of here! A hunt for truth, is it? Well, now, you get this
straight: If that’s what you’re expecting to find here, you’ll save
yourself a whole lot of bad minutes by taking the next train back to
Philadelphia. Truth! I’m not running down murder trials from the point
of view of interest, you understand. A really good one furnishes all
the best points of a first-class dog fight and a highly superior
cross-word puzzle, and that ought to be enough excitement for anyone.
But if you think that the opposing counsel are honestly in pursuit of
enlightenment——”
A clear high voice cut through the rustle and clatter like a knife.
“His Honour! His Honour the Court!” There was a mighty rustle of
upheaval.
“Who’s that?” inquired a breathless voice at the reporter’s shoulder.
“That’s the tallest and nicest court crier in the United States of
America. Name’s Ben Potts. Best falsetto voice outside the Russian
Orthodox Church. Kindly notice the central hair part and spit curls.
And here we have none other than His Honour himself, Judge Anthony
Bristed Carver.”
“Hear ye! Hear ye! Hear ye!” chanted the court crier. “All those
having business before this honourable court draw near, give your
attention and you shall be heard!”
The tall figure in flowing black moved deliberately toward the chair
on the dais, which immediately assumed the aspect of a throne. Judge
Carver’s sleek iron-gray head and aquiline face were an adornment to
any courtroom. He swept a pair of brilliant deep-set eyes over the
room, seated himself, and reached for the gavel in one motion.
“And he’ll use it, too, believe you me,” murmured the reporter with
conviction. “Sternest old guy on the bench.”
“Where are the prisoners—where do they come from?”
“The defendants, as they whimsically prefer to be called for the time
being, come through that little door to the left of the judge’s room;
that enormous red-faced, sandy-haired old duffer talking to the thin
young man in the tortoise-shell glasses is Mrs. Ives’s counsel, Mr.
Dudley Lambert; the begoggled one is Mr. Bellamy’s counsel, Harrison
Clark.”
“Where’s the prosecutor?”
“Oh, well, Mr. Farr is liable to appear almost anywhere, like
Mephistopheles in _Faust_ or that baby that so obligingly came out of
the everywhere into the here. He’s all for the unexpected— Ah, what
did I tell you? There he is now, conferring with the judge and the
defense counsel.”
The red-headed girl leaned forward eagerly. The slender individual,
leaning with rather studied ease against the railing that hedged in
the majesty of the law, suggested a curious cross between a promising
light of Tammany Hall and the youngest and handsomest of the Spanish
Inquisitioners. Black hair that deserved the qualification of raven, a
pale regular face that missed distinction by a destructive quarter of
an inch, narrow blue eyes back of which stirred some restless fire,
long slim hands—what was there about him that wasn’t just right?
Perhaps that dark coat fitted him just a shade too well, or that
heavily brocaded tie in peacock blue— Well, at any rate, his slim
elegance certainly made Lambert look like an awkward, cross, red-faced
baby, for all his thatch of graying hair.
“Here they come!” Even the reporter’s level, mocking voice was a
trifle tense.
The little door to the left of the judge opened and two people came
in, as leisurely and tranquilly as though they were advancing toward
easy chairs and a tea table before an open fire. A slight figure in a
tan tweed suit, with a soft copper silk handkerchief at her throat and
a little felt hat of the same colour pulled down over two wings of
pale gold hair, level hazel eyes under level dark brows, and a
beautiful mouth, steady-lipped, generous, sensitive—the most beautiful
mouth, thought the red-headed girl, that she had ever seen. She
crossed the short distance between the door and the chair beside which
stood Mr. Lambert with a light, boyish swing. She looked rather like a
boy—a gallant, proud little boy, striding forward to receive the
victor’s laurels. Did murderesses walk like that?
Behind her came Stephen Bellamy, the crape band on his dark coat
appallingly conspicuous; only a few inches taller than Sue Ives, with
dark hair lightly silvered, and a charming, sensitive, olive-skinned
face. As they seated themselves, he flashed the briefest of smiles at
his companion—a grave, consoling smile, singularly sweet—then turned
an attentive countenance to the judge. Did a murderer smile like that?
The red-headed girl sat staring at them blankly.
“Oh, Lord!” moaned the reporter at her side. “Why did that old jackass
Lambert let her come in here in that rig? If he had the sense that God
gives a dead duck he’d know that she ought to be wearing something
black and frilly and pitiful instead of stamping around in brown
leather Oxfords as though she were headed straight for the first tee
instead of the electric chair.”
“Oh, don’t!” The red-headed girl’s voice was passionate in its
protest. “You don’t know what you’re talking about. Look, what are
they doing now? What’s that wheel?”
“That’s for choosing the jury; it looks as though they were going to
start right now. Yes, they’re off; that’s the sheriff spinning the
wheel. He calls the names——”
“Timothy Forbes!”
A stocky man with a small shrewd eye and a reddish moustache wormed
his way forward.
“Number 1! Take your seat in the box.”
“Will it take long?” asked the red-headed girl.
“Alexander Petty!”
“Not at this rate,” replied the reporter, watching the progress toward
the jury box of a tow-headed little man with steel-bowed spectacles
and a suit a little shiny at the elbows.
“This is going to be just as rapid as the law allows, I understand.
Both sides are rarin’ to go, and they’re not liable to touch their
peremptory challenges; and they’re not likely to challenge for cause,
either, unless it’s a darned good cause.”
“Eliphalet Slocum!”
A keen-faced elderly man with a mouth like a steel trap joined the men
in the box.
“It’s a special panel that they’re choosing from,” explained the
reporter, lowering his voice cautiously as Judge Carver glanced
ominously in his direction. “Redfield’s pretty up and coming for a
place of its size. All the obviously undesirables are weeded out, so
it saves an enormous amount of time.”
“Cæsar Smith!”
Mr. Smith advanced at a trot, his round, amiable countenance beamingly
exposing three gold teeth to the pleased spectators.
“Robert Angostini.”
A dark and dapper individual with a silky black moustache slipped
quietly by Mr. Smith.
“Number 5, take your place in the box. . . . George Hobart.”
An amiable-looking youth in a brown Norfolk jacket advanced briskly.
“Who’s that coming in now?” inquired the red-headed girl in a stealthy
whisper.
“Where?”
“In the witnesses’ seats—over in the corner by the window. The tall
man with the darling little old lady.”
The reporter turned his head, his boredom lit by a transient gleam of
interest. “That? That’s Pat Ives and his mother. She’s been subpœnaed
by the state as a witness—God knows what for.”
“I love them when they wear bonnets,” said the red-headed girl.
“What’s he like?”
“Pat? Well, take a good look at him; that’s what he’s like.”
The red-headed girl obediently took a good look. Black hair, blue
eyes, black with pain, set in a haggard, beautiful young face that
looked white to the bone, a reckless mouth set in a line of
desperation.
“He doesn’t look very contented,” she commented mildly.
“And his looks don’t belie him,” the reporter assured her drily.
“Young Mr. Ives belongs to the romantic school—you know—the guardsman,
the troubadour, the rover, and the lover; the duel by candlelight, the
rose in the moonlight, the dice, the devil and boots, saddle, to horse
and away. The type that muffs it when he’s thrown into a show that
deals in the crude realism of spilled kerosene and bloody rags and an
Italian labourer’s stuffy little front parlour. Mix him up with that
and he gets shadows under his eyes and three degrees of fever and bad
dreams. Also, he gets a little irritable with reporters.”
“Did you interview him?” inquired the red-headed girl in awe-stricken
tones.
“Well, that’s a nice way of putting it,” said the reporter
thoughtfully. “I went around to the Ives’ house with one or two other
scientific spirits on the night after Sue Ives and Bellamy were
arrested—June twenty-first, if my memory serves me. We rang the
doorbell none too optimistically, and the door opened so suddenly that
we practically fell flat on our faces in the front hall. There stood
the debonair Mr. Ives, in his shirt sleeves, with as unattractive a
look on his face as I’ve ever seen in my life.
“‘Come right in, gentlemen,’ says he, and he made that sound
unattractive too. ‘I’m not mistaken, am I? It’s the gentlemen of the
press that I’m addressing?’ We allowed without too much enthusiasm
that such was indeed the case, and in we came. ‘Let’s get right down
to business,’ he said. ‘None of this absurd delicacy that uses up all
your energy,’ says he. ‘What you gentlemen want to know, I’m sure, is
whether I was Madeleine Bellamy’s lover and whether my wife was her
murderess. That’s about it, isn’t it?’
“It was just about it, but somehow, the way he put it, it sounded not
so good. ‘Well,’ said Ives, ‘I’ll give you a good straight answer to a
good straight question. Get to hell out of here!’ says he, and he
yanks the front door open so wide that it would have let out an army.
“Just as I was thinking of something really bright to come back with,
a nice soft little voice in the back of the hall said, ‘Oh, Pat
darling, do be careful. You’ll wake up the babies. I’m sure that these
gentlemen will come back another time.’ And Mrs. Daniel Ives trotted
up and put one hand on his arm and smiled a nice, worried, polite
little smile at us.
“And Pat darling smiled, too, not so everlastingly politely, and said,
‘I’m sure they will—I’m sure of it. Four o’clock in the morning’s a
good time too.’ And we decided that was as good a time as any and we
went away from there. And here we are. And if you don’t look sharp
they’ll have a jury before you understand why I know that Mr. Ives is
the romantic type that lets realism get on his nerves. What number is
that heading for the box now?”
“Otto Schultz!”
A cozy white-headed cherub trotted energetically up.
“Number 10, take your place in the box!”
“Josiah Morgan!”
“Gosh, they’ll get the whole panel in under an hour!” exulted the
reporter. “Look at the fine hatchet face on Morgan, will you? I bet
the fellow that tries to sell Josh a lame horse will live to rue the
day.”
“Charles Stuyvesant!”
Charles Stuyvesant smiled pleasantly at the sheriff, his fine
iron-gray head and trim shoulders standing out sharply against his
overgroomed and undergroomed comrades in the box.
“Number 12, take your place in the box! You and each of you do
solemnly swear that you will well and truly try Stephen Bellamy and
Susan Ives, and a true verdict give according to the law and evidence,
so help you God?”
Above the grave answering murmur the red-headed girl begged nervously,
“What happens now?”
“I don’t know—recess, maybe—wait, the judge is addressing the jury.”
Judge Carver’s deep voice rang out impressively in the still
courtroom:
“Gentlemen of the jury, you will now be given the usual
admonition—that you are not to discuss this case amongst yourselves,
or allow anybody else to discuss it with you, outside your own body.
You are not to form or express any opinion about the merits of the
controversy. You are to refrain from speaking of it to anybody, or
from allowing anybody to speak to you with respect to any aspect of
this case. If this occurs you will communicate it to the Court at
once. You are to keep your judgment open until the defendants have had
their side of the case heard, and, lastly, you are to make up your
judgment solely on the law, which is the last thing that you will hear
from the Court in its charge. Until then, you will not be able to
render a verdict in accordance with the law, and therefore you must
suspend judgment until that time. The Court is dismissed for the noon
recess. We will reconvene at one o’clock.”
The red-headed girl turned eyes round as saucers on the reporter.
“Don’t they come back till one?”
“They do not.”
“What do we do until then?”
“We eat. There’s a fair place on the next corner.”
The red-headed girl waved it away. “Oh, I couldn’t possibly eat—not
possibly. It’s like the first time I went to the theatre; I was only
seven, but I remember it perfectly. I sat spang in the middle of the
front row, just like this, and I made my governess take me three
quarters of an hour too early, and I sat there getting sicker and
sicker from pure excitement, wondering what kind of a new world was
behind that curtain—what kind of a strange, beautiful, terrible world.
I sat there feeling more frightful every second, and all of a sudden
the curtain went up with a jerk and I let out a shriek that made
everyone in the theatre and on the stage jump three feet in the air. I
feel exactly like that now.”
“Well, get hold of yourself. Shrieking isn’t popular around here. If
you sit right there like a good quiet child I may bring you back an
apple. I don’t promise anything, but I may.”
She was still sitting there when he came back with the apple, crunched
up in her chair, staring at the jury box with eyes rounder than ever.
“Isn’t it nearly time?” She eyed the apple ungratefully.
“It is. Come on now, eat it, and I’ll show you what I’ve got in my
pocket.”
“Show?”
“The jury list—names, addresses, ages, professions and all. Two of
them are under thirty, three under forty, four under fifty, two under
sixty, one sixty-two. Three merchants, two clerks, two farmers, an
insurance man, an accountant, a radio expert, a jeweller and a banker.
Not a bad list at all, if you ask me. Charles Stuyvesant’s the only
one that won’t have a good clubby time of it. He’s one of the richest
bankers in New York.”
“He looked it,” said the red-headed girl. “What will they do when they
come back?”
“Well, if they’re good, the prosecutor’s going to make them a nice
little speech.”
“Who is the prosecutor? Is he well known?”
“Mr. Daniel Farr is a promising young lad of about forty who is
extremely well known in these parts, and if you asked him his own
unbiassed opinion of his abilities, he would undoubtedly tell you that
with a bit of luck he ought to be President of these United States in
the next ten years.”
“And what do you think of him?”
“Well, I think that he may be, at that, and I add in passing that I
consider that no tribute to the judgment of these United States. He’s
about as shrewd as they make ’em, but I’m not convinced that he’s a
very good lawyer. He goes in too much for purple patches and hitting
about three inches below the belt for my simple tastes. And he works
on the theory that the jury is not quite all there, which may be amply
justified but is a little trying for the innocent bystander. He goes
in for poetry, too—oh, not Amy Lowell or Ezra Pound, but something
along the lines of ‘I could not love thee, dear, so much, loved I not
honour more,’ and ‘How dear to my heart are the scenes of my
childhood’—you know the kind of thing—deep stuff.”
“Is he successful?”
“Oh, by all manner of means. Twenty years ago he was caddie master at
the Rosemont Country Club; five years before that he was a caddie
there. America, my child, is the land of opportunity. He’s magnificent
when he gets started on the idle rich; it’s all right to be rich if
you’re not idle—or well born. If you’re one of those well born society
devils, you might just as well go and jump in the lake, if you ask Mr.
Farr.”
“Does he still live in Rosemont?”
“No, hasn’t lived there for nineteen years; but I don’t believe that
he’s forgotten one single snub or tip that he got in the good old
days. Every now and then you can see him stop and turn them over in
his mind.”
“What’s Mr. Lambert like?”
“Ah, there is a horse of a different colour—a cart horse of a
different colour, if I may go so far. Mr. Dudley Lambert is a lawyer
who knows everything that there is to know about wills and trusts and
estates, and not another blessed thing in the world. If he’s as good
now as he was when I heard him in a case two years ago, he’s terrible.
I can’t wait to hear him.”
The red-headed girl looked pale. “Oh, then, why did she get him?”
“Ah, thereby hangs a tale. Mr. Lambert was a side kick of old Curtiss
Thorne—handled his estate and everything—and being a crusty old
bachelor from the age of thirty on, he idolized the Thorne children.
Sue was his pet. She still calls him Uncle Dudley, and when the split
came between Sue and her father he stuck to Sue. So I suppose that it
was fairly natural that she turned to him when this thing burst; he’s
always handled all her affairs, and he’s probably told her that he’s
the best lawyer this side of the Rocky Mountains. He believes it.”
“How old is he?”
“Sixty-three—plenty old enough to know better. You might take
everything that I say about these guys with a handful of salt; it’s
only fair to inform you that they are anything but popular with the
Fourth Estate. The only person that talks less in this world than
Dudley Lambert is Daniel Farr; either of them would make a closed
steel trap seem like a chatterbox. Stephen Bellamy’s counsel is
Lambert’s junior partner and under both his thumbs; he’d be a nice
chap if he didn’t have lockjaw.”
“Don’t they tell you anything at all?” inquired the red-headed girl
sympathetically.
“They tell us that there’s been a murder,” replied the reporter
gloomily. “And I’m telling you that it’s the only murder that ever
took place in the United States of America where the press has been
treated like an orphan child by everyone that knows one earthly thing
about it. Not one word of the hearing before the grand jury has leaked
out to anyone; we haven’t been given the name of one witness, and
whatever the state’s case against Stephen Bellamy and Susan Ives may
be, it’s a carefully guarded secret between Mr. Daniel Farr and Mr.
Daniel Farr. The defense is just as expansive. So don’t believe all
you hear from me. I’d boil the lot of ’em in oil. Here comes Ben
Potts. To be continued in our next.”
The red-headed girl wasn’t listening to him; she was watching the dark
figure of the prosecutor, moving leisurely forward toward the little
space where twelve men were seating themselves quietly and
unostentatiously in their stiff, uncomfortable chairs. Twelve
men—twelve everyday, ordinary, average men—— She drew a sharp breath
and turned her face away for a minute. The curtain was going up.
“May it please Your Honour”—the prosecutor’s voice was very low, but
as penetrating as though he were a hand-breadth away—“may it please
Your Honour and gentlemen of the jury: On the night of the nineteenth
of June, 1926, a little less than four months ago, a singularly cruel
and ruthless murder took place not ten miles from the spot in which we
have met to try the two who are accused of perpetrating it. On that
summer night, which was made for youth and love and beauty, a girl who
was young and beautiful and most desperately in love came out through
the starlight to meet her lover. She had no right to meet him. She was
another man’s wife, he was another woman’s husband. But love had made
her reckless, and she came, with a black cloak flung over her white
lace dress, and silver slippers that were made for dancing on feet
that were made to dance—and that had danced for the last time. She was
bound for the gardener’s cottage on one of the largest and oldest
estates in the neighbourhood, known as Orchards. At the time of the
murder, it was not occupied, and the house was for sale. She was
hurrying, because she feared that she was late and that her lover
might be waiting. But it was not love that waited for her in the
little sitting room of the gardener’s cottage.
“If you men who sit here in judgment of her murderers think harshly of
that pretty, flushed, enchanted girl hurrying through the night to her
tryst, remember that that tryst was with death, not with love, and be
gentle with her, even in your thoughts. She has paid more dearly for
the crime of loving not wisely but too well than many of her righteous
sisters.
“Next morning, at about nine o’clock, Mr. Herbert Conroy, a
real-estate agent, arrived at the gardener’s cottage with a
prospective client for the estate who wished to inspect the property.
As he came up on the little porch he was surprised to see that the
front door was slightly ajar, and thinking that sneak thieves might
have broken in, he pushed it farther open and went in.
“The first floor at the right of the narrow hall was the sitting
room—what was known by the people who had formerly used it as the
front parlour. Mr. Conroy stepped across its threshold, and his eyes
fell on a truly appalling sight. Stretched out on the floor before him
was a young woman in a white lace evening gown. A table was overturned
beside her. Either there had been a struggle or the table had been
upset as she fell. At her feet were the fragments of a shattered lamp
chimney and china shade and a brass lamp.
“The girl’s white frock was stained with blood from throat to hem; her
silk stockings were clotted with it; even her silver slippers were
ruinously stained. She was known to have been wearing a string of
pearls, her wedding ring, and three sapphire-and-diamond rings when
she left home. These jewels were missing. The girl on the floor—the
girl who had been wilfully and cruelly stabbed to death—the girl whose
pretty frock had been turned into a ghastly mockery, was Madeleine
Bellamy, of whose murder the two defendants before you are jointly
accused.
“The man on trial is Stephen Bellamy the husband of the murdered girl.
The woman who sits beside him is Susan Ives, the wife of Patrick Ives,
who was the lover of Madeleine Bellamy and to whom she was going on
that ill-starred night in June.
“Murder, gentlemen, is an ugly and repellent thing; but this murder, I
think that you will agree, is a peculiarly ugly and repellent one. It
is repellent because it is the State’s contention that it was
committed by a woman of birth, breeding, and refinement, to whose
every instinct the very thought should have been abhorrent—because
this lady was driven to this crime by a motive singularly
sordid—because at her side stood a devoted husband, changed by
jealousy to a beast to whom the death of his wife had become more
precious than her life. It is peculiarly repellent because we propose
to show that these two, with her blood still on their hands, were
cool, collected, and deliberate enough to remove the jewels that she
wore from her dead body in order to make this murder seem to involve
robbery as a motive.
“In order to be able fully to grasp the significance of the evidence
that we propose to present to you, it is necessary that you should
know something of the background against which these actors played
their tragic parts. As briefly as possible, then, I will sketch it for
you.
“Bellechester County—your county, gentlemen, and thank God, my
county—contains as many beautiful homes and delightful communities as
any county in this state—or in any other state, for that matter—and no
more delightful one exists than that of Rosemont, a small village
about ten miles south of this courthouse. The village itself is a
flourishing little place, but the real centre of attraction is the
country club, about two miles from the village limits. About this
centre cluster some charming homes, and in one of the most charming of
them, a low, rambling, remodelled farmhouse, lived Patrick Ives and
his wife. Patrick Ives is a man of about thirty-two who has made a
surprising place for himself as a partner in one of the most
conservative and successful investment banking houses in New York. I
say surprising advisedly, for everyone was greatly surprised when
about seven years ago he married Susan Thorne and settled down to
serious work for the first time in his life. Up till that time, with
the exception of two years at the front establishing a brilliant war
record, he seems to have spent most of his time perfecting his golf
game and his fox-trotting abilities and devoting the small portion of
time that remained at his disposal to an anæmic real-estate business.
According to all reports, he was—and is—likable, charming and
immensely popular.”
“Just one moment, Mr. Farr,” Judge Carver’s deep tones cut abruptly
across the prosecutor’s clear, urgent voice. “Do you propose to prove
all these statements?”
“Certainly, Your Honour.”
“I do not wish in any way to hamper you, but some of this seems a
little far afield.”
“I can assure Your Honour that the State proposes to connect all these
facts with its case.”
“Very well, you may proceed.”
“At the time of the murder Mr. Ives’s household consisted of his wife,
Susan Thorne Ives; his two children, Peter and Polly, aged five and
six; his mother, Mrs. Daniel Ives, to whom he has always been an
unusually devoted son; a nursery governess, Miss Kathleen Page; and
some six or seven servants. The only member of the household who
concerns us immediately is Susan, or, as she is known to her friends,
Sue Ives.
“Mrs. Ives is a most unusual woman. The youngest child and only
daughter of the immensely wealthy Curtiss Thorne, she grew up on the
old Thorne estate, Orchards, the idol of her father and her two
brothers. Her mother died shortly after she was born. There was no
luxury, no indulgence to which she was not accustomed from her
earliest childhood. She was brilliantly intellectual and excelled at
every type of athletics. Society, apparently, interested her very
little; but there was not a trophy that she did not promptly capture
at either golf or tennis. She was not particularly attractive to men,
according to local gossip, in spite of being witty, accomplished, and
charming—perhaps she was too witty and too accomplished for their
peace of mind. At any rate, she set the entire community by the ears
about seven years ago by running off with the handsome and impecunious
Patrick Ives, just back from the war.
“Old Curtiss Thorne, who detested Patrick Ives and had other plans for
her, cut her off without a cent—and died two years later without a
cent himself, ruined by the collapse of his business during the
deflation of 1921. Just what happened to Patrick and Susan Ives during
the three years after the elopement, no one knows. They disappeared
into the maelstrom of New York. Mrs. Daniel Ives joined them, and
somehow they must have managed to keep from starving to death. Two
children were born to Susan Ives, and finally Patrick persuaded this
investment house to try him out as a bond salesman. It developed that
he had a positive genius for the business, and his rise has been
spectacular in the extreme. He is considered to-day one of the most
promising young men in the Street.
“At the end of four years, the Iveses and their babies returned to
Rosemont. They bought an old farmhouse with some seven or eight acres
about a mile from the club, remodelled it, landscaped it, put in a
tennis court, and became the most sought-after young couple in
Rosemont. On the surface, they seemed ideally happy. Two charming
children, a charming home, plenty of money, congenial enough
tastes—such things should go far to create a paradise, shouldn’t they?
Well, down this smooth, easy, flower-strewn, and garlanded path
Patrick and Susan Ives were hurrying straight toward hell. In order to
understand why this was true, you must know something of two other
people and their lives.
“About a mile and a half from the Ives house was another farmhouse, on
the outskirts of the village, but this one had not been remodelled. It
was small, shabby, in poor repair—no tennis court, no gardens, a cheap
portable garage, a meagre half acre of land inadequately surrounded by
a rickety fence. Everything is comparative in this world. To the
dwellers in tenements and slums, that house would have been a little
palace. To the dweller in the stone palaces that line the Hudson, it
would be a slum. To Madeleine Bellamy, whose home it was, it was
undoubtedly a constant humiliation and irritation.
“Mimi Bellamy—in all likelihood no one in Rosemont had heard her
called Madeleine since the day that she was christened—Mimi Bellamy
was an amazingly beautiful creature. ‘Beauty’ is a much cheapened and
battered word; in murder trials it is loosely applied to either the
victim or the murderess if either of them happened to be under fifty
and not actually deformed. I am not referring to that type of beauty.
Mimi Bellamy’s beauty was of the type that in Trojan days launched a
thousand ships and in these days launches a musical comedy. Hers was
beauty that is a disastrous gift—not the common-place prettiness of a
small-town belle, though such, it seems, was the rôle in which fate
had cast her.
“I am showing you her picture, cut from the local paper—crudely taken,
crudely printed, many times enlarged, yet even all these factors
cannot dim her radiance. It was taken shortly before she died—not two
months before, as a matter of fact. It cannot give the flowerlike
beauty of her colouring, the red-gold hair, the sea-blue eyes, the
exquisite flush of exultant youth that played about her like an
enchantment; but perhaps even this cold, black-and-white shadow of a
laughing girl in a flowered frock will give you enough of a suggestion
of her warm enchantment to make the incredible disaster that resulted
from that enchantment more credible. It is for that purpose that I am
showing it to you now, and to remind you, if you feel pity for another
woman, that never more again in all this world will that girl’s
laughter be heard, young and careless and joyous. I ask you most
solemnly to remember that.
“Mimi Dawson Bellamy was the daughter of the village dressmaker, who
had married Frederick Dawson, a man considerably above her socially,
as he was a moderately successful real-estate broker in the village of
Rosemont. He was by no manner of means a member of the local smart
set, however, and was not even a member of the country club. They
lived in a comfortable, unpretentious house a little off the main
street, and in the boarding house next to them lived Mrs. Daniel Ives
and her son Patrick.
“Mrs. Ives, a widow, was very highly regarded in the village, to which
she had come many years previously, and was extremely industrious in
her efforts to supplement their meagre income. She gave music lessons,
did mending, looked after small children whose mothers were at the
movies, and did everything in her power to assist her son, whose
principal contribution to their welfare up to the time that he was
twenty-one seemed to be a genuine devotion to his mother. At that age
Mr. Dawson took him in to work with him in the real-estate business,
hoping that his charm and engaging manners would make up for his lack
of experience and industry. To a certain extent they did, but they
created considerably more havoc with Mr. Dawson’s beautiful daughter
than they did with his clients. A boy-and-girl affair immediately
sprang up between these two—the exquisite, precocious child of
seventeen and the handsome boy of twenty-two were seen everywhere
together, and it was a thoroughly understood thing that Mimi Dawson
and Pat Ives were going together, and that one of these days they
would go as far as the altar.
“A year later war was declared. Patrick Ives enlisted at once, and was
among the first to reach France. The whole village believed that if he
came back alive he would marry Mimi. But they were counting without
Mimi.
“War, gentlemen, changed more things than the map of Europe. It
changed the entire social map in many an American community; it
changed, drastically and surprisingly, the social map of the community
of Rosemont in the county of Bellechester. For the first time since
the country club was built and many of the residents of New York
discovered that it was possible to live in the country and work in
the city, the barrier between the villagers and the country club
members was lowered, and over this lowered barrier stepped Mimi
Dawson, straight into the charmed sewing circles, knitting circles,
Red Cross circles, bandage-making circles that had sprung up
over-night—straight, moreover, into the charmed circle of society,
about whose edges she had wistfully hovered—and straight, moreover,
into the life of Elliot Farwell.
“Elliot Farwell was the younger brother of Mrs. George Dallas, at
whose house met the Red Cross Circle of which Mrs. Dallas was
president. Many of the village girls were asked to join her class in
bandage making—after all, we were fighting this war to make the world
safe for democracy, so why not be democratic? A pair of hands from the
village was just as good as a pair of hands from the club—possibly
better. So little Mimi Dawson found herself sitting next to the great
Miss Thorne, wrapping wisps of cotton about bits of wood and going
home to the village with rapidly increasing regularity in Mr. Elliot
Farwell’s new automobile, quite without the knowledge or sanction of
Mr. Farwell’s sister, whose democracy might not have stood the strain.
“Elliot Farwell was one of the two or three young men left in
Rosemont. His eyes made it impossible for him to get into any branch
of the service, so he remained peaceably at home, attending to a
somewhat perfunctory business in the city as a promoter. He would have
had to be blind enough to require the services of a dog and a tin cup
not to have noted Mimi Dawson’s beauty, however; as a matter of fact,
he noted it so intently that three months after peace was declared and
three weeks before Patrick Ives returned from the war, Mr. and Mrs.
Frederick Dawson announced the engagement of their daughter Madeleine
to Mr. Elliot Farwell—and a startled world. Not the least startled
member of this world, possibly, was Susan Thorne, to whom young
Farwell had been moderately attentive for several years.
“Such was the state of affairs when the tide of exodus to Europe
turned, and back on the very crest of the incoming waves rode Major
Patrick Ives, booted, spurred, belted, and decorated—straight over the
still-lowered barrier into the very heart of the country-club set. He
was, not unnaturally, charmed with his surroundings, and apparently
the fact that he found Mimi Dawson already installed there with a
fiancé did not dampen his spirits in the slightest. From the day that
he first went around the golf course with Susan Thorne, he was as
invariably at her side as her shadow. Mr. Curtiss Thorne’s open and
violent disapproval left them unchastened and inseparable. Apparently
they found the world well lost, as did Farwell and his fiancée. And
into the midst of this idyllic scene, a month or so later, wanders the
last of our actors, Stephen Bellamy.
“Stephen Bellamy was older than these others—seven years older than
Susan Thorne or Patrick Ives, twelve years older than the radiant
Mimi. He was the best friend of Susan’s elder brother Douglas, and a
junior partner of Curtiss Thorne. He had done well in the war, as he
had in his business, and he was generally supposed to be the best
masculine catch in Rosemont—intelligent, distinguished, and thoroughly
substantial. It was everybody’s secret that Curtiss Thorne wanted him
for his son-in-law, and he and Elliot Farwell were the nearest
approaches to beaus that Susan Thorne had had before the war.
“Within a week of their respective returns, she had lost both of them.
The sober, reserved, conservative Stephen Bellamy fell even more
violently and abjectly a victim to Mimi Dawson’s charms than had
Elliot Farwell. The fact that she was engaged to another man who had
been at least a pleasant acquaintance of his did not seem to deter Mr.
Bellamy for a second. At any rate, the third week in June in 1919
brought three shocks to the conservative community of Rosemont that
left it rocking for many moons to come. On Monday, after a violent and
public quarrel with Farwell, Mimi Dawson broke her engagement to him;
on Wednesday Sue Thorne eloped with Patrick Ives, and on Thursday Miss
Dawson and Mr. Bellamy were married by the justice of the peace in
this very courthouse.
“It is a long stride from that amazing week in June to another June,
but I ask you to make it with me. In the seven years that have passed,
the seeds that were sown in those far-off days—seeds of discord, of
heartbreak, of envy and malice—have waxed and grown into a mighty
vine, heavy with bitter fruit; and the day of harvest is at hand—and
the hands of the harvesters shall be red. But on this peaceful sunny
summer afternoon of the nineteenth of June, 1926, those who are
sitting in the vine’s shadow seem to find it a tranquil and a pleasant
place.
“It is five o’clock at the Rosemont Country Club, and the people that
I have brought before you in the brief time at my disposal are
gathered on the lawn in front of the club; the golfers are just coming
in; it is the prettiest and gayest hour of the day. Mimi Bellamy is
there, waiting for her husband. She has driven over in their little
car to take him home for supper; it is parked just now beside Sue
Ives’s sleek and shining car with its sleek and shining chauffeur, and
possibly Mimi Bellamy is wondering what strange fate makes one man a
failure in the world of business and another a success. For the
industrious and intelligent Stephen Bellamy has never recovered from
the setback that he received when Curtiss Thorne’s business crashed;
he is still struggling valiantly to keep a roof over his wife’s
enchanting head—he can do little more. True, they have a maid of all
work and a man of all work; but Sue Ives, who married the village
ne’er-do-well, has eight servants and three cars and the prettiest
gardens in Rosemont. So does fate make fools of the shrewdest of us!
“Gathered about in little groups are the George Dallases, Elliot
Farwell, and Richard Burgoyne, the man with whom he keeps bachelor
hall in a small bungalow near the village; the Ned Conroys and Sue
Ives, whose husband has been cheated out of golf by a business
engagement in the city, in spite of the fact that it is Saturday
afternoon. She has, however, found another cavalier. Seated on the
club steps, a little apart from the others, she is deep in
conversation with Elliot Farwell, who is consuming his third highball
in rapid succession. Gentlemen, if I could let you eavesdrop on the
seemingly casual and actually momentous discussion that is going on
behind those amiable masks, much that is dark to you now would be
clear as day. I ask your patient and intelligent interest until that
moment arrives. It will arrive, I promise you.
“For here, on this sunlit lawn, I propose to leave them for the
present. Others will tell you what happened from that sunlit moment
until the dark and dreadful one in the gardener’s little cottage, when
a knife rose and fell. I have not gone thus exhaustively into the
shadowy past from which these figures sprang in order to retail to you
the careless chatter of a country club and a country village. I have
gone into it because I have felt it entirely imperative that you
should know the essential facts in the light of which you will be able
to read more clearly the evidence that I am about to submit to you. It
is inevitable that each one of you must say to himself as you sit
there: ‘How is it possible that this young woman seated before our
eyes, charming, well bred, sheltered, controlled, intelligent—how is
it possible that this woman can have wilfully, brutally, and
deliberately murdered another woman? How is it possible that the man
seated beside her, a gentleman born and bred, irreproachable in every
phase of his past life, can have aided and abetted her in her
project?’
“How are these things possible, you ask? Gentleman, I say to you that
we expect to prove that these things are not possible—we expect to
prove that these things are certain. I am speaking neither rashly nor
lightly when I assure you that the state believes that it can
demonstrate their certainty beyond the shadow of a possible doubt. I
am not seeking a conviction; I am no bloodhound baying for a victim.
If you can find it in your hearts when I have done with this case to
hold these two guiltless, you will, indeed, be fortunate—and I can
find in my heart no desire to deprive you of that good fortune. It is
my most painful duty, however, to place the facts before you and to
let them speak for themselves.
“I ask you, gentlemen, to bear these things in mind. Susan Ives is a
woman accustomed to luxury and security; she has once before been
roughly deprived of it. What dreadful scars those three years in New
York left on the gallant and spirited girl who went so recklessly to
face them we can only surmise. But perhaps it is sufficient to say
that the scars seared so deep that they sealed her lips forever. I
have not been able to discover that she has mentioned them to one
solitary soul, and I have questioned many. She was threatened with a
hideous repetition of this nightmare. Her religious principles, as you
will learn, prevented her from ever accepting or seeking a divorce,
and she was too intelligent not to be fully aware that if Patrick Ives
ran away with Mimi Bellamy, he would inevitably have lost his position
in the ultra-conservative house in which he was a partner, and thus be
absolutely precluded from providing for her or her children, even if
he had so desired.
“The position of a young woman thrown entirely on her own resources,
with two small children on her hands, is a desperate one, and it is
our contention that Susan Ives turned to desperate remedies. Added to
this terror was what must have been a truly appalling hatred for the
girl who was about to turn her sunny and sheltered existence into a
nightmare. Cupidity, love, revenge—every murder in this world that is
not the result of a drunken blow springs from one of these motives.
Gentlemen, the state contends that Susan Ives was moved by all three.
“As for Stephen Bellamy, his idolatry of his young and beautiful wife
was his life—a drab and colourless life save for the light and colour
that she brought to it. When he discovered that she had turned that
idolatry to mockery, madness descended on him—the madness that sent
Othello staggering to his wife’s bed with death in his hands; the
madness that has caused that wretched catch phrase ‘the unwritten law’
to become almost as potent as our written code—to our shame, be it
said. Do not be deceived by the memory of that phrase, gentlemen.
There was another law, written centuries ago in letters of flame on
the peaks of a mountain—‘Thou shalt not kill.’ Remember that law
written in flame and forget the one that has been traced only in the
blood of its victims. These two before you stand accused of breaking
that law, written on Sinai—that sacred law on which hangs all the
security of the society that we have so laboriously wrought out of
chaos and horror—and we are now about to show you why they are thus
accused.
“From the first step that each took toward the dark way that was to
lead them to the room in the gardener’s cottage, we will trace them—to
its very threshold—across its threshold. There I will leave them, my
duty will have been done. Yours, gentlemen, will be yet to do, and I
am entirely convinced that, however painful, however hateful, however
dreadful, it may seem to you, you will not shrink from performing that
duty.”
The compelling voice with its curious ring fell abruptly to silence—a
silence that lingered, deepened, and then abruptly broke into
irrepressible and incautious clamour.
“Silence! Silence!”
Ben Potts’s voice and Judge Carver’s gavel thundered down the voices.
“Once and for all, this courtroom is not a place for conversation.
Kindly remain silent while you are in it. Court is dismissed for the
day. It will convene again at ten to-morrow.”
The red-headed girl dragged stiffly to her feet. The first day of the
Bellamy trial was over.