“Oh, I knew I would be—I knew it!” moaned the red-headed girl crawling
abjectly over three irritated and unhelpful members of the Fourth
Estate, dropping her pencil, dropping her notebook, dropping a pair of
gray gloves and a squirrel scarf, and lifting a stricken face to the
menacing countenance of Ben Potts, king of court criers. “I’ve been
late for every single thing that’s happened since I got to this
wretched town. It’s like Alice in Wonderland—you have to run like mad
to keep in the same place. Who’s talking? What’s happened?”
“Well, you seem to be doing most of the talking,” replied the real
reporter unkindly. “And about all that’s happened has been fifteen
minutes of as hot legal brimstone and sulphur as you’d want to hear in
a thousand years, emitted by the Mephistophelean Farr, who thinks it
would be nice to have a jackknife in evidence, and the inflammable
Lambert, who thinks it would be horrid. Mr. Lambert was mistaken, the
knife is in, and they’re just opening a few windows to clear the air.
Outside of that, everything’s lovely. Not a soul’s confessed, the day
is young, and Mr. Douglas Thorne is just taking the stand. Carry on!”
The red-headed girl watched the lean, bronzed gentleman with sandy
hair and a look of effortless distinction with approval. Nice eyes,
nice hands.
“Mr. Thorne, what is your occupation?”
Nice voice: “I am a member of the New York Stock Exchange.”
“Are you a relative of the defendant, Susan Ives?”
“Her elder brother, I’m proud to say.”
His pleasant eyes smiled down at the slight figure in the familiar
tweed suit, and for the first since she had come to court Sue Ives
smiled back freely and spontaneously— a friendly, joyous smile,
brilliant as a banner.
The prosecutor lifted a warning hand. “Please stick to the issue, Mr.
Thorne, and we’ll take your affection for your sister for granted. Are
you the proprietor of the old Thorne estate, Orchards?”
“Yes.”
“The sole proprietor?”
“The sole proprietor.”
“Why did your sister not share in that estate, Mr. Thorne?”
“My father no longer regarded my sister as his heir after she married
Patrick Ives. He took a violent dislike to Mr. Ives from the first,
and it was distinctly against his wishes that Sue married him.”
“Did you share this dislike?”
“For Patrick? Oh, no. At the time I hardly knew him, and later I
became extremely fond of him.”
“You still are?”
The pleasant gray eyes, suddenly grave, looked back unswervingly into
the hot blue fire of the prosecutor’s. “That is a difficult question
to answer categorically. Perhaps the most accurate reply that I can
give is that at present I am reserving an opinion on my brother-in-law
and his conduct.”
“That’s hardly a satisfactory reply, Mr. Thorne.”
“I regret it; it is an honest one.”
“Well, let’s put it this way: You are devoted to your sister, aren’t
you, Mr. Thorne?”
“Very deeply devoted.”
“You admit that her happiness is dear to you?”
“I don’t particularly care for the word ‘admit’; I state willingly
that her happiness is very dear to me.”
“And you would do anything to secure it?”
“I would do a great deal.”
“Anything?”
Douglas Thorne leaned forward over the witness box, his face suddenly
stern. “If by ‘anything,’ Mr. Farr, you mean would I commit murder, my
reply is no.”
Judge Carver’s gavel fell with a crash. “That is an entirely uncalled
for conclusion, Mr. Thorne. It may be stricken from the record.”
“Kindly reply to my question, Mr. Thorne. Would you not do anything in
order to secure your sister’s happiness?”
“No.”
Once more Sue Ives’s smile flew like a banner.
“Mr. Thorne, did your sister ever speak to you about her first two or
three years in New York?”
“I have a vague general impression that we discussed certain aspects
of it, such as living conditions there at the time, and——”
“Vague general impressions aren’t what we want. You have no specific
knowledge of where they were or what they were doing at the time?”
“I can recall nothing at the moment.”
“Your sister, to whom you are so devoted, never once communicated with
you during that time?”
“I received a letter from her about a week after she left Rosemont,
stating that she thought that for the time being it would be better to
sever all connections with Rosemont, but that her affection for all of
us was unchanged.”
“I haven’t asked you for the contents of the letter. Is that the only
communication that you received from her during those years in New
York?”
“With the exception of Christmas cards, I heard nothing more for a
little over two years. Then she began to write fairly regularly.”
“Mr. Thorne, were you on the estate of Orchards at any time on June
19, 1926?”
“I was.”
There was a sudden stir and ripple throughout the court room. “Now!”
said the ripple. “Now! At last!”
“At what time?”
“I couldn’t state the exact time at which I arrived, but I believe
that it must have been shortly after nine in the evening.”
The ripples broke into little waves. Nine o’clock—nine——
“And at what time did you leave?”
“That I can tell you exactly. I left the main house at Orchards at
exactly ten minutes to ten.”
The ripples broke into little waves. Ten o’clock—ten——
“Silence!” banged Judge Carver’s gavel.
“Silence!” sang Ben Potts.
“Please tell us what you were doing at Orchards during that hour.”
“It was considerably less than an hour. Mr. Conroy had telephoned me
shortly before dinner, asking me to leave the keys at the cottage,
which I gladly agreed to do, as I had been intending for some time to
get some old account books I had left in my desk at the main house. I
didn’t notice the exact time at which I left Lakedale, but it must
have been about half-past eight, as we dine at half-past seven, and I
smoked a cigar before I started. I drove over at a fair rate of
speed—around thirty-five miles an hour, say—and went straight to the
main house.”
“You did not stop at the gardener’s cottage?”
“No; I——”
“Yet you pass it on your way from the lodge to the house, don’t you?”
“No, coming from Lakedale I use the River Road; the first entrance off
the road leads straight from the back of the place to the main house;
the lodge gates are at the opposite end of the place on the main road
from Rosemont. Shall I go on?”
“Certainly.”
“It was just beginning to get dark when I arrived, and the electricity
was shut off, so I didn’t linger in the house—just procured the papers
and cleared out. When I got back to the car, I decided to leave it
there and walk over to the cottage and back. It was only a ten-minute
walk each way, and it was a fine evening. I started off——”
“You say that it was dark at the time?”
“It was fairly dark when I started, and quite dark as I approached the
cottage.”
“Was there a moon?”
“I don’t think so; I remember noticing the stars on the way home, but
I am quite sure that there was no moon at that time.”
“You met no one on your way to the cottage?”
“No one at all.”
“You saw nothing to attract your attention?”
“No.”
“And heard nothing?”
“Yes,” said Douglas Thorne, as quietly and unemphatically as he had
said no.
The prosecutor took a quick step forward. “You say you heard
something? What did you hear?”
“I heard a woman scream.”
“Nothing else?”
“Yes, a second or so afterward I heard a man laugh.”
“A man laugh?” the prosecutor’s voice was rough with incredulity.
“What kind of a laugh?”
“I don’t know how to characterize it,” said Mr. Thorne simply. “It was
an ordinary enough laugh, in a rather deep masculine voice. It didn’t
strike me as in any way extraordinary.”
“It didn’t strike you as extraordinary to hear a woman scream and a
man laugh in a deserted place at that hour of the night?”
“No, frankly, it didn’t. My first reaction was that the caretaker and
his wife had returned from their vacation earlier than we had expected
them; or if not, that possibly some of the young people from the
village were indulging in some romantic trespassing—that’s not
unknown, I may state.”
“You heard no words? No voices?”
“Oh, no; I was about three hundred feet from the cottage at the time
that I heard the scream.”
“You did not consider that that sound was the voice of a woman raised
in mortal terror?”
“No,” said Douglas Thorne. “Naturally, if I had, I should have done
something to investigate. I was somewhat startled when I first heard
it, but the laugh following so promptly completely reassured me. A
scream of terror, a scream of pain, a scream of surprise, a scream of
more or less perfunctory protest—I doubt whether anyone could
distinguish between them at three hundred feet. I certainly couldn’t.”
The prosecutor shook his head irritably; he seemed hardly to be
listening to this lucid exposition. “You’re quite sure about the
laugh—you heard it distinctly?”
“Oh, perfectly distinctly.”
“Could you see the cottage from where you stood at the time?”
“No; the bend in the road and the high shrubbery hide it completely
until you are almost on top of it.”
“Then you don’t know whether it was lighted when you heard the
scream?”
“No; I only know that it was dark when I reached it a moment or so
later.”
“What did you do when you reached the cottage?”
“I noticed that it was dark as I ran up the steps, but on the off
chance that it might have been the gardener that I had heard, I rang
the bell half mechanically and tried the door, as I wanted to explain
to him about Mr. Conroy’s visit in the morning. The door was locked.”
“You had the key on the ring, hadn’t you?”
“Yes; but I had no reason in the world for going in if the gardener
wasn’t there.”
“You heard no sound from within?”
“Not a sound.”
“And nothing from without?”
“Everything was perfectly quiet.”
“No one could have passed you at any time?”
“Oh, certainly not.”
“Mr. Thorne, would it have been possible for anyone in the cottage to
have heard you approaching?”
“I think that it might have been possible. The night was very still,
and the main drive down which I was walking is of crushed gravel. The
little drive off it that circles the house is of dirt; I don’t know
how clear footsteps would be on that, but of course anyone would have
heard me going up the steps. I have a vague impression, too, that I
was whistling.”
“Could anyone have been concealed in the shrubbery about the house?”
“Oh, quite easily. The shrubbery is very high all about it.”
“But you noticed no one?”
“No one.”
“What did you do after you had decided that the house was empty?”
“I put the keys under the mat, as had been agreed, and returned to the
main house. As I got into my roadster, I looked at my wrist watch by
one of the headlights. It was exactly ten minutes to ten.”
“What caused you to consult your watch?”
“I’d had a vague notion that I might run over to see my sister for a
few minutes, as I was in the neighbourhood, but when I discovered that
it was nearly ten, I changed my mind and went straight back to
Lakedale.”
“Mr. Thorne, you must have been perfectly aware when the news of the
murder came out the next morning that you had information in your
possession that would have been of great value to the state. Why did
you not communicate it at once?”
Douglas Thorne met the prosecutor’s gaze steadily, with a countenance
free of either defiance or concern. “Because, frankly, I had no desire
whatever to be involved, however remotely, in a murder case. I was
still debating my duty in the matter two days later, when my sister
and Mr. Bellamy were arrested, and the papers announced that the state
had positive information that the murder was committed between quarter
to nine and quarter to ten on the night of the nineteenth. That seemed
to render my meagre observations quite valueless, and I accordingly
kept them to myself.”
“And I suppose you fully realize now that you have put yourself in a
highly equivocal position by doing so?”
“Why, no, Mr. Farr; I may be unduly obtuse, but I assure you that I
realize nothing of the kind.”
“Let me endeavour to enlighten you. According to your own story, you
must have heard that scream between nine-thirty and twenty-five
minutes to ten, granting that you spent three or four minutes on the
cottage porch and took ten minutes to walk back to the house.
According to you, you arrived at the scene of action within three
minutes of that scream, to find everything dark, silent and orderly.
It is the state’s contention that somewhere in that orderly darkness,
practically within reach of your outstretched hand, stood your
idolized sister. Quite a coincidence, isn’t it?”
“It is quite a coincidence that that should be your contention,”
remarked Douglas Thorne, a dangerous glint in his eye. “But I know of
no scandal attached to coincidence.”
“Well, this particular type of coincidence has landed more than one
man in jail as accessory after the fact,” remarked the prosecutor
grimly. “What time did you get back to Lakedale that night?”
“At ten-thirty.”
“Did anyone see you?”
“My wife was on the porch when I arrived.”
“Anyone else?”
“No.”
“That’s all, Mr. Thorne. Cross-examine.”
Mr. Lambert approached the witness box at almost a prance, his broad
countenance smouldering with ill-concealed excitement. “Mr. Thorne,
I’ll trouble you with only two questions. My distinguished adversary
has asked you whether you noticed anything unusual in the
neighbourhood of the cottage. I ask you whether in that vicinity you
saw at any time a car—an automobile?”
“I saw no sign of a car.”
“No sign of a small Chevrolet, for instance—of Mr. Bellamy’s, for
instance?”
“No sign of any car at all.”
“Thank you, Mr. Thorne. That will be all.”
Over Mr. Lambert’s exultant carol rose a soft tumult of whispers.
“There goes the state’s story!” “Score 100 for the defense!” “Oh, boy,
did you get that? He’s fixed the time of the murder and run Sue and
Steve off the scene all in one move.” “The hand is quicker than the
eye.” “Look at Farr’s face; that boy’s got a mean eye——”
“Silence!” sang Ben Potts.
The prosecutor advanced to within six inches of the witness box, his
eyes contracted to pin points. “You assure us that you saw no car, Mr.
Thorne?”
“I do.”
“But you are not able to assure us that no car was there?”
“Obviously, if a car was there, I should have seen it.”
“Oh, no, believe me, that’s far from obvious! If a car had been parked
to the rear of the cottage on the little circular road, would you have
seen it?”
“I should have seen its lights.”
“And if its lights had been turned out?”
“Then,” said Douglas Thorne slowly, “I should probably not have seen
it.”
“You were not in the rear of the cottage at any time, were you?”
“No.”
“Then it is certain that you would not have seen it, isn’t it?”
“I have told you that under those circumstances I do not believe I
should have seen it.”
“If a car had been parked on the main driveway between the lodge gates
and the cottage, with its lights out, you would not have seen that
either, would you, Mr. Thorne?”
“Possibly not.”
“And you don’t for a moment expect to have twelve level-headed,
intelligent men believe that a pair of murderers would park their car
in a clearly visible position, with all its lights burning for any
passer-by to remark, while they accomplished their purpose?”
“I object to that question!” panted Mr. Lambert. “I object! It calls
for a conclusion, Your Honour, and is highly——”
“The question is overruled.”
“Very well, Mr. Thorne; that will be all.”
Mr. Lambert, who had been following these proceedings with a woebegone
countenance from which the recent traces of elation had been washed as
though by a bucket of unusually cold water, pulled himself together
valiantly. “Just one moment, Mr. Thorne; the fact is that you didn’t
see a car there, isn’t it?”
“That is most certainly the fact.”
“Thank you; that will be all.”
“And the fact is,” remarked the grimly smiling prosecutor, “that it
might perfectly well have been there without your seeing it, isn’t
it?”
“Yes, that also is the fact.”
“That will be all. Call Miss Flora Biggs.”
The prosecutor’s grim little smile still lingered.
“Miss Flora Biggs!”
Flora Biggs might have been a pretty girl ten years ago, before that
fatal heaviness had crept from sleazy silk ankles to the round chin
above the imitation pearls. Everything about Miss Biggs was
imitation—an imitation fluff of something that was meant to be fur on
the plush coat that was meant to be another kind of fur; an imitation
rose of a washed-out magenta trying to hide itself in the masquerading
collar; pearls the size of large bone buttons peeping out from too
golden hair; an arrow of false diamonds catching the folds of the
purple velvet toque that was not quite velvet; nervous fingers in
suède gloves that were rather a bad grade of cotton clutching at a
snakeskin bag of stenciled cloth—a poor, cheap, shoddy imitation of
what the well-dressed woman will wear. And yet in those small
insignificant features that should have belonged to a pretty girl, in
those round china-blue eyes, staring forlornly out of reddened rims,
there was something candid and touching and appealing. For out of
those reddened eyes peered the good shy little girl in the starched
white dress brought down to entertain the company—the good, shy little
girl whose name had been Florrie Biggs. And little Florrie Biggs had
been crying.
“Where do you live, Miss Biggs?”
“At 21 Maple Street, Rosemont.” The voice was hardly more than a
whisper.
“Just a trifle louder, please; we all want to hear you. Did you know
Madeleine Bellamy, Miss Biggs?”
The tears that had been lurking behind the round blue eyes welled over
abruptly, leaving little paths behind them down the heavily powdered
cheeks. “Yes, sir, I did.”
“Intimately?”
“Yes, sir. I guess so. Ever since I was ten. We went to school and
high school together; she was quite a little younger than me, but we
were best friends.”
The tears rained down quietly and Miss Biggs brushed them impatiently
away with the clumsy gloved fingers.
“You were fond of her?”
“Yes, sir, I was awful fond of her.”
“Did you see much of her during the years of 1916 and ’17?”
“Yes, sir; I just lived three houses down the block. I used to see her
every day.”
“Did you know Patrick Ives too?”
“Yes, sir; I knew him pretty well.”
“Was there much comment on his attention to your friend Madeleine
during the year 1916?”
“Everyone knew they had a terrible case on each other,” said Miss
Biggs simply.
“Were they supposed to be engaged?”
“No, sir, I don’t know as they were; but everyone sort of thought they
would be.”
“Their relations were freely discussed amongst their friends?”
“They surely were.”
“Did you ever discuss the affair with either Mr. Ives or Mrs.
Bellamy?”
“Not ever with Pat, I didn’t, but Mimi used to talk about it quite a
lot.”
“Do you remember what she said during the first conversation?”
“Well, I think that the first time was when we had a terrible fight
about it.” At memory of that far-off quarrel Florrie’s blue eyes
flooded and brimmed over again. “We’d been on a picnic and Pat and
Mimi got separated from the rest of us, and by and by we went home
without them; and it was awfully late that night when they got back,
and I told Mimi that she ought to be carefuller how she went around
with a fellow like Pat Ives, and she got terrible mad and told me that
she knew what she was doing and she could look after herself, and that
I was just jealous and to mind my own business. Oh, she talked to me
something fierce.”
Miss Biggs’s voice broke on a great sob, and suddenly the crowded
courtroom faded. . . . It was a hot July night in a village street and
the shrill, angry voices of the two girls filled the air. Once more
Mimi Dawson, insolent in her young beauty, was telling little Florrie
Biggs to keep her small snub nose out of other people’s affairs. All
the injured woe of that far-off night was in her sob.
“Did she speak of him again?”
“Oh, yes, sir, she certainly did. She used to speak of him most of the
time—after we made it up again, that is.”
“Did she tell you whether they were expecting to be married?”
“Not in just so many words, she didn’t, but she used to sort of
discuss it a lot, like whether it would be a good thing to do, and if
they’d be happy in Rosemont or whether New York wouldn’t work
better—you know, just kind of thinking it over.”
Mr. Farr looked gravely sympathetic. “Exactly. Nothing more definite
than that?”
“Well, I remember once she said that she’d do it in a minute if she
were sure that Pat had it in him to make good.”
“And did you gather from that and other remarks of hers that it was
she who was holding back and Mr. Ives who was urging marriage?”
“Oh, yes, sir,” said Miss Biggs, and added earnestly, “I think she
meant me to gather that.”
There was a warm, friendly little ripple of amusement, at which she
lifted startled blue eyes.
“Quite so. Now when Mr. Ives went to France, Miss Biggs, what did your
circle consider the state of affairs between them to be?”
“We all thought they was sure to get married,” said Miss Biggs, and
added in a low voice, “Some of us thought maybe they was married
already.”
“And just what made you think that?”
Miss Biggs moved restlessly in her chair. “Oh, nothing special, I
guess; only they seemed so awfully gone on each other, and Pat was
always hiring flivvers to take her off to Redfield and—and places.
They never went much with the crowd any more, and lots of people were
getting married then—you know, war marriages——” The soft, hesitant
voice trailed off into silence.
“I see. Just what was Mr. Ives’s reputation with your crowd, Miss
Biggs? Was he a steady, hard-working young man?”
“He wasn’t so awfully hard-working, I guess.”
The distressed murmur was not too low to reach Patrick Ives’s ears,
evidently; for a brief moment his white face was lit with the gayest
of smiles, impish and endearing. It faded, and the eyes that had been
suddenly blue faded, too, back to their frozen gray.
“Was he popular?”
“Oh, everyone liked him fine,” said Miss Biggs eagerly. “He was the
most popular fellow in Rosemont, I guess. He was a swell dancer, and
he certainly could play on the ukulele and skate and do perfectly
killing imitations and—and everything.”
“Then why did you warn your friend against consorting with this
paragon, Miss Biggs?”
“Sir?”
“Why did you tell Mimi Dawson that she shouldn’t play around too much
with Pat Ives?”
“Oh—oh, well, I guess, like she said, I was just foolish and it wasn’t
none of my business.”
“You said, a ‘fellow like Pat Ives,’ Miss Biggs. What kind of a fellow
did you mean? The kind of a fellow who played the ukulele? Or did he
play something else?”
“Well—well, he played cards some—poker, you know, and red dog
and—well, billiards, you know.”
“He gambled, didn’t he?”
“Now, Your Honour,” remarked Mr. Lambert heavily, “is this to be
permitted to go on indefinitely? I have deliberately refrained from
objecting to a most amazing line of questions——”
“The Court is inclined to agree with you, Mr. Lambert. Is it in any
way relevant to the state’s case whether Mr. Ives played the ukulele
or the organ, Mr. Farr?”
“It is quite essential to the state’s case to prove that Mr. Ives has
a reckless streak in his character that led directly to the murder of
Madeleine Bellamy, Your Honour. We contend that just as in those
months before the war in the village of Rosemont, so in the year of
1926, he was gambling with his own safety and happiness and honour,
and as in those days, with the happiness and honour and safety of a
woman as well—with the same woman with whom he was renewing the affair
broken off by a trick of fate nine years before. We contend——”
“Yes. Well, the Court contends that your questioning along these lines
has been quite exhaustive enough, and that furthermore it doubts its
relevance to the present issue. You may proceed.”
“Very well, Your Honour. . . . When Mr. Ives returned in 1919, were
you still seeing much of Miss Dawson?”
“No, sir,” said Miss Biggs in a low voice. “Not any hardly.”
“Why was that?”
“Well, mostly it was because she was starting to go with another
crowd—the country-club crowd, you know. She was all the time with Mr.
Farwell.”
“Exactly. Did you renew your intimacy at any later period?”
“No, sir, not ever.”
Once more the cotton fingers were busy with the treacherous tears,
falling for Mimi, lost so many years ago—lost again, most horribly,
after those unhappy years.
“Thank you, Miss Biggs. That will be all. Cross-examine.”
Mr. Lambert’s heavy face, turned to those drowned and terrified eyes,
was almost paternal. “You say that for many years there was no
intimacy between you and Mrs. Bellamy, Miss Biggs?”
“No, sir, there wasn’t—not any.”
“Mrs. Bellamy never took you into her confidence as to her feelings
toward Mr. Ives after her marriage?”
“She never took me into her confidence about anything at all—no, sir.”
“You never saw her after her marriage?”
“Oh, yes, I did see her. I went there two or three times for tea.”
“Everything was pleasant?”
“She was very polite and pleasant—yes, sir.”
“But there was no tendency to confide in you?”
“I didn’t ask her to confide in me,” said Miss Biggs. “I didn’t ask
her for anything at all—not anything.”
“But if there had been anything to confide, it would have been quite
natural to confide in you—girls generally confide in their best
friend, don’t they?”
“I guess so.”
“And as far as you know, there were no guilty relations between Mrs.
Bellamy and Mr. Ives at the time of her death?”
“I didn’t know even whether she saw Mr. Ives,” said Florrie Biggs.
Mr. Lambert beamed gratefully. “Thank you, Miss Biggs. That’s all.”
“Just one moment more, please.” The prosecutor, too, was looking as
paternal as was possible under the rather severe limitations of his
saturnine countenance. “Mr. Lambert was just asking you if it would
have been natural for her to confide in you, as girls generally
confide in their best friends. At the time of this murder, and for
many years previous, you weren’t Mrs. Bellamy’s best friend, were you,
Miss Biggs?”
“No, sir, I guess I wasn’t.”
“There was very little affection and intimacy between you, wasn’t
there?”
“I don’t know what you call between us,” said Miss. Biggs, and the
pretty, common, swollen face was suddenly invested with dignity and
beauty. “I loved her better than anyone I knew. She was the only best
friend I ever had—ever.”
And swept by the hunger in that quiet and humble voice, the courtroom
was suddenly empty of everyone but two little girls, warm cheeked,
bright eyed, gingham clad—a sleek pig-tailed head and a froth of
bright curls locked together over an inkstained desk. Best
friends—four scuffed feet flying down the twilight street on roller
skates—two mittened paws clutching each other under the shaggy robe of
the bell-hung sleigh—a slim arm around a chubby waist on the hay
cart—decorous, mischievous eyes meeting over the rims of the frosted
glasses of sarsaparilla while brown-stockinged legs swung free of the
tall drug-store stools—a shrill voice calling down the street in the
sweet-scented dusk, “Yoo-hoo, Mimi! Mimi, c’mon out and play.” Mimi,
Mimi, lying so still with red on your white lace dress, come on out
and——
“Thank you, Miss Biggs: that’s all.”
She stumbled a little on the step of the witness box, brushed once
more at her eyes with impatient fingers and was gone.
“Call Mrs. Daniel Ives.”
“Mrs. Daniel Ives!”
All through the Court went that quickening thrill of interest. A
little old lady was moving with delicate precision down the far aisle
to the witness box; the red-headed girl glanced quickly from her to
the corner where Patrick Ives was sitting. He had half risen from his
seat and was watching her progress with a passion of protest on his
haggard young face. Well, even the prosecutor said that this reckless
young man had been a good son, and it could hardly be a pleasant sight
for the worst of sons to see his mother moving steadily toward that
place of inquisition, and to realize that it was his folly that had
sent her there. He sat down abruptly, turning his face toward the blue
autumnal sky outside the window, against which the bare boughs of the
tree spread like black lace. The circles under his eyes looked darker
than ever.
As quietly as though it were a daily practice, Mrs. Ives was raising a
neat black-gloved hand to take the oath and setting a daintily shod
foot on the step of the witness box. She seated herself unhurriedly,
opened the black fur collar at her throat, folded her hands on the
edge of the box, and lifted a pair of dark blue eyes, bravely serene,
to the shrewd coolness of the prosecutor. There was just a glimpse of
silver hair under the old-fashioned black toque with its wisp of lace
and round jet pins; there was the faintest touch of pink in her cheeks
and a small smile on her lips, shy and gracious. The kind of mother,
decided the red-headed girl, that you would invent, if you were very
talented.
“Mrs. Ives, you are the mother of Patrick Ives, are you not?”
“I am.”
The gentle voice was as clear and true as a little bell.
“You heard Miss Biggs’s testimony?”
“Oh, yes; my hearing is still excellent.” The small smile deepened for
a moment to friendly amusement.
“Were you aware of the state of affairs between Madeleine Bellamy and
your son at the time that war broke out?”
“I was aware that he was paying her very marked attention, naturally,
but I was most certainly not aware that they were seriously
considering marriage. Both of them seemed absolute babies to me, of
course.”
“Had your son confided in you his intentions on the subject?”
“I believe that if he had had any such intentions he would have; but
no, he had not.”
“You were entirely in his confidence?”
“I hope so. I believe so.” The deep blue eyes hovered compassionately
over the averted face strained toward the window, and then moved
tranquilly back to meet the prosecutor’s.
“When this affair with Mrs. Bellamy was renewed in 1926, did he
confide it to you?”
“Oh, no.”
“Showing thereby that you were not entirely in his confidence, Mrs.
Ives?”
“Or showing perhaps that there was nothing to confide,” said Mrs.
Daniel Ives gently.
The prosecutor jerked his head irritably. “The state is in possession
of an abundance of material to prove that there was everything to
confide, I assure you, Mrs. Ives. However, it is not my intention to
make this any more difficult for you than is strictly necessary. How
long ago did you come to Rosemont?”
“About fifteen years ago.”
“You were a widow and obliged to support yourself?”
“No, that’s hardly accurate. I was not supporting myself entirely and
I was not a widow.” The pale roses deepened a little under the black
toque, but the voice was a trifle clearer than before.
“You mean that at the time you came to Rosemont your husband was still
living?” The prosecutor made no attempt to disguise the astonishment
in his voice.
“I do not know whether he was living or not. He had left me, you see,
almost seventeen years before I came to Rosemont. I learned three
years ago that he was dead, but not when he died.”
“Mrs. Ives, I do not wish to dwell on a subject that must be painful
to you, but I would like to get this straight. Were you divorced?”
“It is not at all painful to me,” said Patrick Ives’s mother gently,
her small gloved hands wrung tightly together on the edge of the
witness box. “It happened many years ago, and my life since has been
full of so many things. We were not divorced. My husband was younger
than I, and our marriage was not happy. He left me for a much younger
woman.”
“It was believed in Rosemont that you were a widow, was it not?”
“Everyone in Rosemont believed me to be a widow except Pat, who had
known the truth since he was quite a little boy. It was foolish of me
not to tell the truth, perhaps, but I had a great distaste for pity.”
She smiled again, graciously, at the prosecutor. “False pride was
about the only luxury that I indulged in, in those days.”
“You say that you were supporting both your son and yourself?”
“No. Pat was doing any little jobs that he could get, as he had done
since he sold papers on the corner when he was six years old.” For a
moment the smile faded and she eyed the prosecutor steadfastly, almost
sternly, as though daring him to challenge that statement, and for a
moment it looked as though he were about to do exactly that, when
abruptly he veered.
“Were you in the garden the night of the nineteenth of June, Mrs.
Ives?”
“In the rose garden—yes.”
“Did you see Miss Page on her way to the sand pile?”
“I believe that I did, although I have nothing that particularly fixes
it in my mind.”
“Did you see your daughter-in-law?”
“Yes.”
For a moment the faintest shadow passed over her face—a shadow of
doubt, of hesitancy. Her glance went past the prosecutor to the place
where her daughter-in-law was sitting, quietly attentive, and briefly,
profoundly, their eyes met. The shadow passed.
“Which way was she going?”
“She was going past the rose garden toward the back gate of the
house.”
“Just one moment, Mrs. Ives. What is the distance between Mr. Ives’s
house and Orchards?”
“Well, that depends on how you approach it. By road it must be almost
two miles, but if you use the little footpath that cuts across the
meadows north of the house, it can’t be less than a mile.”
“Do you know where that path comes out?”
“I believe that it comes out by a little summerhouse or playhouse on
the Thorne estate.”
“Far from the gardener’s cottage?”
“Oh, no—Miss Page said that it was quite near it, I think. She had
been using it to take the children over to the playhouse on several
occasions—and as it was quite without Mrs. Ives’s knowledge, I spoke
to my son about it.”
“Did other members of the household make use of this path?”
“Not to my knowledge.”
“Now, Mrs. Ives, when Mrs. Patrick Ives passed you in the garden, did
she speak to you?”
“Yes.”
“Just what did she say?”
“As nearly as I can remember, she said that she was going to the
movies with the Conroys, and that she wasn’t sure whether she would be
back before I got to bed. She added that Pat was going to play poker.”
“Nothing more?”
“That is all that I remember.”
“Did you see her again that night?”
“Yes.”
“Will you tell us when?”
“I saw her twice. Not more than two or three minutes after she passed
me in the rose garden, she came back and went toward the house, almost
running. I was at the far end of the garden by then, working on some
trellises, and I didn’t speak to her. She seemed in a great hurry, and
I thought that she had probably forgotten something—her bag or a scarf
for her hair, perhaps. She wasn’t wearing any hat. A minute or so
later she came out of the house and ran back down the path to the back
gate.”
“Was she wearing a scarf on her hair?”
“No.”
“Had she a bag?”
“I don’t remember seeing a bag, but she might well have had one.”
“She did not speak to you?”
“No.”
“And those were the two times that you refer to?”
“Oh, no,” corrected Mrs. Ives gently. “I thought of those occasions as
forming one time. I saw her again, a good deal later in the evening.”
Once more the courtroom was filled with that strange stir—the movement
of hundreds of bodies moving an inch nearer to the edges of chairs.
“Good Lord!” murmured the reporter devoutly. “She’s going to give the
girl an alibi! Look out, you old fox!”
The prosecutor, thus disrespectfully and inaudibly adjured, moved
boldly forward. “At what time did you see your daughter-in-law, Mrs.
Ives?”
“You’ve got to grant him nerve,” continued the reporter, unabashed.
“Or probably he’s betting that the old lady wouldn’t perjure herself
even to save her son’s wife. I’d rather bet it myself.”
Mrs. Ives, who had been sitting silently studying her linked fingers,
raised an untroubled countenance to the prosecutor’s, but for the
first time she spoke as though she were weighing her words: “It is
difficult for me to give you the exact time, as I did not look at a
clock. I had been in bed for quite a little while, however, and had
turned out the light. I should say, roughly, that it might have been
half-past ten. It was quite dark when I came into the house myself, I
remember, and I believe that it stayed light at that time until long
after nine.”
“It was your habit to work in the garden until it was dark?”
“Yes; gardening is both my recreation and occupation.” Mrs. Ives’s
tranquil eyes smiled at the prosecutor as though she expected to find
in him an understanding soul. “Those hours after dinner were a great
happiness to me, and often after it was too dark for any further work
I would prolong them by sitting on a bench in the rose arbour and
thinking over work well done. It was generally dark before I came in.”
“And was on the night of the nineteenth of June?”
“Oh, yes; it had been dark for some time.”
“Did you go straight to bed when you came in?”
“No; I stopped for a moment in the flower room to put away the basket
with my tools and to tidy up a bit. Gardening is a grubby business.”
Again that delicate, friendly smile. “Just as I was coming out I saw
Melanie, the waitress, turning out the lights in the living room, and
I remember thinking that it must be ten o’clock, as that was the time
that she usually did it if the family were not at home. Then I went on
up to bed. It wasn’t very long after I had turned out the light that I
heard the front door close and thought, ‘That must be Sue.’”
“It didn’t occur to you that it might be your son?”
“Oh, no; Pat never got in before twelve if he was playing cards.”
“You say that you saw Mrs. Ives. Did she come straight up to your
room?”
“No; about five minutes after I heard the door close, I imagine. My
room is in the left wing of the house, you understand, and I always
leave my door a little ajar. Sue came to the door and asked in a
whisper, ‘Are you awake, Mother?’ I said that I was and she came in,
saying, ‘I brought you your fruit; I’ll just put it on the stand.’”
“Was she in the habit of doing that?”
“No, not exactly in the habit—that was Pat’s task, but Sue is the most
thoughtful child alive, and she had remembered that Pat wasn’t there.”
Once more her eyes, loving and untroubled, smiled into Sue’s.
“Did you turn on the light, Mrs. Ives?”
“No.”
“Weren’t you going to take the fruit?”
“Oh, no; I am not a very good sleeper, and I saved the fruit for the
small hours of the morning.”
“You were not able to see Mrs. Ives clearly, in that case?”
“I could see her quite clearly; there was a very bright light in the
hall.”
“You noticed nothing extraordinary in her appearance?”
“Nothing whatever.”
“She was wearing the clothes that you had last seen her in?”
“She was wearing the dress, but she had taken off the coat, I
believe.”
“Ah-h!” sighed the courtroom under its breath.
“What kind of a coat, Mrs. Ives?”
“A little cream-coloured flannel coat.” Not by the flicker of an
eyelash did Mrs. Ives admit the sinister significance of that sigh.
“Did she say anything further?”
“Yes. I asked her whether she had enjoyed the movie, and she said that
she had not gone to Rosemont, as she had met Stephen Bellamy in his
car on her way to the Conroys’ and he had given her a lift. He told
her that the picture in Rosemont was an old one that they had both
seen, and suggested that they drive over by the River Road and see
what was running in Lakedale. When they got there they discovered that
they had seen that film, too, so they drove around a little longer and
then came home.”
“That was all that she said?”
“She wished me sweet dreams, I believe, and kissed me good-night.”
Under the gentle directness of her gaze, the prosecutor’s face
hardened. “Where was the fruit that you speak of usually kept, Mrs.
Ives?”
“I believe that it was kept in a small refrigerator in the pantry.”
“Was there a sink in that pantry?”
“Yes.”
The prosecutor advanced deliberately toward the witness box, lowering
his voice to a strangely menacing pitch: “Mrs. Ives, during the space
that elapsed between the closing of the front door and Mrs. Patrick
Ives’s appearance in your bedroom, there would have been ample time
for her to have washed her hands at that sink, would there not?”
“Oh, surely.”
There was not even a second’s hesitation in that swift reply, not a
second’s cloud over the lifted, slightly wondering face; but the
little cold wind moved again through the courtroom. Over the clear,
unfaltering syllables there was the sound of running water—of water
that ran red, as Sue, the thoughtful, cleansed the hands that were to
bear the fruit for the waiting mother.
“That will be all, Mrs. Ives,” said the prosecutor. “Cross-examine.”
She turned her face quietly toward Lambert’s ruddy one.
“I’ll keep you only a minute, Mrs. Ives.” The rotund voice was
softened to one of friendliest concern. “Mrs. Ives seemed quite
herself when she came into the room?”
“Absolutely herself.”
“No undue agitation?”
“She was not agitated in the slightest.”
“Mr. Farr has asked you whether your son ever confided to you that he
was having an affair with Mrs. Bellamy. I ask you whether he ever
intimated that he was unhappy?”
“Not ever.”
“Did Mrs. Ives?”
“Never.”
“What was your impression as to their relations?”
“I thought——” For the first time the clear voice faltered, broke. She
forced it back to steadiness relentlessly. “I thought that they were
the happiest people that ever lived,” said Patrick Ives’s mother.
“Thank you, Mrs. Ives,” said Mr. Lambert gently. “That will be all.”
“Want me to bring back a sandwich?” inquired the reporter hospitably,
gathering up his notes.
“Please,” said the red-headed girl meekly.
“Sure you don’t want to trail along? That drug store really isn’t half
bad.”
“I’m always afraid that something might happen to me and that I
mightn’t get back,” explained the red-headed girl. “Like getting run
over, or arrested or kidnapped or something. . . . One with lettuce in
it, please.”
She sat contemplating the remaining occupants of the press seats about
her with fascinated eyes. Evidently others were agitated by the same
fears that haunted her. At any rate, three or four dozen were still
clinging to their places, reading or writing or talking with impartial
animation. They looked much nicer and less impersonal scattered about
like that, but they still made her feel dreadfully shy and
incompetent. They all knew one another so well; they were so casual
and self-contained. Hurrying through the corridors, their ribald,
salty banter broke over her in waves, leaving her drowned and forlorn.
She liked them awfully—that lanky, middle-aged man with the shrewd,
sensitive face, jabbering away with the opulent-looking young creature
in the sealskin cap and cloak; that Louisville reporter with her thin
pretty face and little one-sided smile; that stocky youngster with the
white teeth and the enormous vocabulary and the plaid necklace; that
really beautiful girl who looked like an Italian opera singer and
swore like a pirate, and arrived every day exactly an hour late in a
flame-coloured blouse up to her chin and a little black helmet down to
her eyebrows.
“Here’s your sandwich,” said the reporter—“two of ’em, just to show my
heart’s in the right place. The poisonous-looking pink one is currant
jelly and the healthy-looking green one is lettuce. That’s what I call
a balanced ration! Fall to!”
The red-headed girl fell to obediently and gratefully.
“I do like the way newspaper people look,” she said when only a few
crumbs of the balanced ration remained.
“Ten thousand thanks,” said the newspaper man. “Myself, I do like the
way lady authoresses look.”
“I mean I like them because they look so—so awfully alive,” explained
the red-headed girl sedately, keeping her eyes on the girl in the
flame-coloured blouse lest the cocky young man beside her should read
the unladylike interest that he roused in her.
“Ah, well, in that case, not more than one thousand thanks,” said the
reporter—“and those somewhat tempered. Look alive, do we? There’s a
glowing tribute for you! I trust that you’ll be profoundly ashamed of
yourself when I inform you that I meant nothing of the kind when I
extolled the appearance of lady authoresses. Dead or alive, I like the
way their hair grows over their ears, and their discreet use of
dimples, and the useless length of their eyelashes. Meditate on that
for a while!”
The red-headed girl meditated, while both her colour and her dimples
deepened. At the end of her meditations she inquired politely, “Is it
true that Mr. Bellamy’s counsel broke his leg?”
“Couldn’t be truer. Fell down the Subway stairs at eleven-forty-five
last night and is safe in the hospital this morning. Lambert’s taking
over Bellamy’s defense; he and those two important, worried-looking
kids who sit beside him at the desk down there reading great
big enormous law books and are assistant counsel—whatever that
means. . . . Ah, here’s Ben Potts! Fine fellow, Ben. . . . We’re off!”
“Mr. Elliot Farwell!”
A thickset, broad-shouldered individual, with hair as slick as oiled
patent leather, puffy eyes, and overprominent blue jowls, moved
heavily toward the witness box. An overgaudy tie that looked as though
it came from the ten-cent store and had actually come from France, a
waistcoat that made you think vaguely of checks, though it was quite
guiltless of them; a handkerchief with an orange-and-green monogram
ramping across one corner—the stuff of which con men and race-track
touts and ham actors and men about town are made. The red-headed girl
eyed him severely. Thus she was wont to regard his little brother and
big brother at the night clubs, as they leaned conqueringly across
little tables, offering heavily engraved flasks to limp chits clad in
shoulder straps and chiffon handkerchiefs.
“Mr. Farwell, where were you on the afternoon of the nineteenth of
June at about five o’clock?”
“At the Rosemont Country Club.”
Not a pleasant voice at all, Mr. Farwell’s; a heavy, sullen voice,
thickened and coarsened with some disreputable alchemy.
“What were you doing?”
“I was just hanging around after golf, having a couple of drinks.”
“Did you see Mrs. Patrick Ives?”
“Yes.”
“Talk with her?”
“Yes.”
“Will you give us the substance of your conversation?”
Mr. Farwell shifted his bulk uneasily in his chair. “How do you
mean—the substance of it?”
“Just outline what you said to Mrs. Ives.”
“Well, I told her——” The heavy voice lumbered to silence. “Do I have
to answer that?”
“Certainly, Mr. Farwell.” Judge Carver’s voice was edged with
impatience.
“I told her that she’d better keep an eye on her husband,” blurted Mr.
Farwell desperately.
“Did you give her any reason for doing that?”
“Of course I gave her a reason.”
“Well, just give it to us, too, will you?”
“I told her that he was making a fool of himself with Mimi.”
“Nothing more specific than that?”
“Well, I told her that they were meeting each other secretly.”
“Where?”
“At the gardener’s cottage at Orchards.” Those who were near enough
could see the little beads of sweat on Mr. Farwell’s forehead.
“How did you know that?”
“Orsini told me.”
“And who is Orsini?”
“He’s the Bellamys’ man of all work—tends to the garden and furnace
and all that kind of thing.”
“Well, just how did Orsini come to tell you about this, Mr. Farwell?”
“Because I’d twice seen Mrs. Bellamy take the Perrytown bus, alone,
and I told Orsini that I’d give him ten dollars if he found out for me
where she was going. He said he didn’t need to find out—he knew.”
“Did he tell you how he knew?”
“Yes; he knew because it was he that loaned her the key to the
cottage. She’d found out that he had the key, and she told him some
cock-and-bull story about wanting to practise on the cottage piano
that the gardener had there, and he used to loan it to her whenever
she asked for it, and generally she’d forget to give it back to him
till the next day.”
“How did he happen to have it?”
“The Thornes’ gardener was a friend of his, and he left it with Orsini
when he went off on his vacation to Italy, because he’d left some kind
of homebrew down in the cellar, and he wanted Orsini to keep an eye on
it.”
“Did you know when she had last borrowed it?”
“Yes; she’d borrowed it round noon on the nineteenth. I went by her
house a little before one to see if she would take lunch with me at
the club, and Orsini was fixing up the gate in the picket fence. He
told me that Mimi had left about half an hour ago in their car, asking
for the key, as she said she wanted to go to the cottage to practise.
So I went after her.”
“To the gardener’s cottage?”
“Yes.”
“Was she there?”
“No.”
“How did you know that she wasn’t there, Mr. Farwell?”
“Because there wasn’t any car, nor any music either.”
There was a surly defiance in Farwell’s tone that the prosecutor
blandly ignored.
“Did you go into the cottage?”
“No; it was locked.”
“What did you do then?”
“It started to rain while I was standing on the porch and I stopped
and tossed up a coin as to whether to go on to the club, hoping it
would clear up enough for golf, or to go back to the bungalow. It came
tails, so I waited for a minute or so and went on to the club.”
“Whom did you find there?”
“Mrs. Bellamy, Dick Burgoyne, the Conroys, the Dallases, Sue Ives—all
the crowd. It cleared up after lunch, and most of us went off to the
links. Sue made up a foursome with the Conroys and Steve Bellamy, who
turned up on the two o’clock train. Mimi played a round with Burgoyne,
and I went with George Dallas. We all got round within a few minutes
of each other and sat around, getting drinks and gabbing.”
“Was it then that you told Mrs. Ives about this affair of her
husband’s?”
“It was around that time.”
“Was Mr. Ives there?”
“No; he’d telephoned that he couldn’t get out till dinner-time.”
“Just what made you tell Mrs. Ives this story, Mr. Farwell?”
Elliot Farwell’s heavy jowls became slightly more prominent. “Well,
I’d had a drink too many, I guess, and I was good and fed up with the
whole thing. I thought Sue was a peach, and it made me sick to see
what Ives was getting away with.”
“What did Mrs. Ives say?”
“She said that I was out of my head, and I told her that I’d bet her a
thousand dollars to five cents that Mimi and Pat would tell some fairy
stories about what they were doing that evening and meet at the
cottage. And I told her that I’d waited behind the bushes at the lodge
gates the week before when Sue was in New York, and seen both of them
go up the drive—Mimi on foot and Ives ten minutes later in the car.
That worried her; she wasn’t sure how sober I was, but she cut out
telling me I was crazy.”
He paused and the prosecutor lifted an impatient voice. “Then what,
Mr. Farwell?”
“Well, a little while after that George Dallas came over and said that
if Sue wanted him to, he’d stop on the way home and show her how to
make the new cocktail that he’d been telling her about, so that she
could surprise Pat with it at dinner. And she said all right, and we
all piled into our cars and headed for her place—all except Mimi and
Bellamy. They’d left a few minutes before, because they had dinner
early.”
“Did you have any further conversation with Mrs. Ives on the subject?”
“Not anything that you’d call conversation. There was a whole crew
jabbering around there at her place.”
“Well, did she mention it again?”
“Oh, well, she came up to me just when I was going—I was looking
around for my hat in the hall—and she said, ‘Elliot, don’t tell anyone
else that you’ve told me about this, will you?’ And I said, ‘All
right.’ And she said, ‘Promise. I don’t want it to get back to Pat
that I know until I decide what to do.’ And so I said sure I’d
promise. And then I cleared out.”
In the hushed courtroom his voice sounded ugly and defiant, but he
kept his face turned stubbornly away from Sue Ives’s clear attentive
eyes, which never once had left it, and which widened a little now,
gravely ironic, as the man who had promised not to tell sullenly broke
that promise.
“Oh,” whispered the red-headed girl fiercely—“oh, the cad! He’s trying
to make it look as though she did it—as though she meant to do it even
then.”
“Oh, come on, now!” remonstrated the reporter judicially. “Give the
poor devil his due! After all, he’s on oath, and the prosecutor’s
digging into him with a pickax and spade. Here, look out, or we’ll
miss something!”
“And after you and Mr. Burgoyne had dined, Mr. Farwell?”
“Well, I had a rotten headache, so I decided that I wouldn’t go over
to Dallases’ for the poker game after all, but that I’d turn in and
read a detective story that I’d brought out with me. I called up
George to ask if he’d have enough without me, and he said yes, so I
decided that I’d call it a night and went up to my bedroom.”
“Did you see Mr. Burgoyne before he left?”
“Yes, he stuck his head in the door just as I was putting on my
bathrobe and asked if there was anything he could do, and I said
nothing but tell George I was sorry.”
“Have you any idea what time that was?”
“It must have been round quarter to nine; the party was to start about
nine, and he was walking.”
“Did you read for long after he left?”
“Yes, I read right along; but about half-past nine I got up for a
cigarette, and I couldn’t find a match, so I started hunting through
the pockets of the golf suit I’d been wearing, for my lighter. It
wasn’t there. I remembered that I’d used it on the way over to the
cottage—I kept it in my pocket with my loose change—and all of a
sudden it came back to me that I’d pulled a handkerchief out of that
pocket when I was getting that coin to toss up on the porch and I’d
thought I heard something drop, and looked around a little, but I
didn’t pay much attention to it, because I thought probably it was
just some change that had rolled off the porch. I realized then that
it must have been the lighter, and I was sore as the devil.”
“Will you tell us why, Mr. Farwell?”
“Because I didn’t want anyone to know I’d been hanging round the
cottage, and the lighter was marked on the inside.”
“Marked with your name?”
“Marked with an inscription—Elliot, from Mimi, Christmas, 1918.”
The coarse voice was suddenly shaken, the coarse face suddenly
pale—Elliot from Mimi, Christmas, 1918.
“What did you do after you missed the lighter, Mr. Farwell?”
“Well, I cursed myself good and plenty and went on a hunt for matches
downstairs. There wasn’t one in the whole darned place, and I was too
lazy to get into my clothes again, so I called Dick at the Dallases’
and asked him to be sure to bring some home with him.”
“What time did you telephone?”
“I didn’t look at the time. It was half-past nine when I started to
look for the matches. Quarter to ten—ten minutes to, maybe.”
“Did you go back to bed?”
“Yes; but I went on reading for quite a while. I’d dozed off by the
time Dick came in, though the light was still burning.”
“What time was that?”
“A little after half-past eleven.”
The prosecutor stood eyeing the heavy countenance before him
speculatively for a moment, and then, with a quick shake of his
narrow, sleek, finely poised head, took his decision. “Mr. Farwell,
when did you first tell the story that you have been telling us?”
“On June twenty-first.”
“Where did you tell it?”
“In your office.”
“At whose request?”
“At——”
Mr. Lambert, who had been sitting twitching in his chair, emitted a
roar of protest as he bounded to his feet that effectually drowned out
any information Mr. Farwell was about to impart. “I object, Your
Honour! I object! What does it matter whether this witness told his
story in the prosecutor’s office or the Metropolitan Opera House? The
point is that he’s telling it here, and anything else is deliberately
beside the mark. I——”
“The Court is inclined to agree with you, Mr. Lambert. What is the
object of establishing when, where, and why Mr. Farwell told this
story, Mr. Farr?”
“Because, Your Honour, it is entirely owing to the insistence of the
state that Mr. Farwell is at present making a series of admissions
that if misinterpreted by the jury might be highly prejudicial to Mr.
Farwell. There is not one chance in a hundred that the defense would
have brought out under cross-examination the fact that Mr. Farwell was
at the gardener’s cottage on the nineteenth of June—a fact that I have
deliberately elicited in my zeal to set all the available facts before
the jury. But in common fairness to Mr. Farwell, I think that I should
be permitted to bring out the circumstances under which I obtained
this information.”
Judge Carver paraded his fine, keen old eyes meditatively from the
ruddy full moon of Mr. Lambert’s countenance to the black-and-white
etching of the prosecutor’s, cold as ice, for all the fever of
intensity behind it; on farther still to the bull-necked and
blue-jowled occupant of the witness box. There was a faint trace of
distaste in their depths as they returned to the prosecutor. Perhaps
it was that distaste that swung back the pendulum. Judge Carver had
the reputation of being as fair as he was hard.
“Very well, Mr. Farr. The Court sees no impropriety in having you
state those circumstances as briefly as possible.”
“May I have an objection to that, Your Honour?” Lambert’s face had
deepened to a fine claret.
“Certainly.”
“On the morning of the twenty-first of June,” said Mr. Farr, “I asked
Mr. Farwell to come to my office. When he arrived I told him that we
had information in our hands that definitely connected him with this
atrocious crime, and that I sincerely advised him to make a clean
breast of all his movements. He proceeded to do so promptly, and told
me exactly the same story that he has told you. It came, frankly, as a
surprise to me, but it in no way altered or modified the state’s case.
I therefore decided to put Mr. Farwell on the stand in order to let
you have all the facts.”
“Was the information that you possessed connecting Mr. Farwell with
the crime the cigarette lighter, Mr. Farr?” inquired Judge Carver
gravely.
“No, Your Honour; it was Mrs. Ives’s telephone conversation with
Stephen Bellamy, asking whether Elliot had not told him anything.
There was no other Elliot in Mrs. Ives’s circle of acquaintances.”
“Is the lighter in the possession of the state at present?”
“No, Your Honour,” remarked the prosecutor blandly. “The state’s case
would be considerably simplified if it were.”
His eye rested, fugitive but penetrating, on Mr. Lambert’s heated
countenance.
“That is all that you desire to state, Mr. Farr?”
“Yes, Your Honour. No further questions, Mr. Farwell. Cross-examine.”
“What kind of a cigarette lighter was this, Mr. Farwell?” There was an
ominous rumble in Lambert’s voice.
“A little black enamel and silver thing that you could light with one
hand. They brought a lot of them over from England in ’17 and ’18.”
“Had anyone ever suggested to you that this lighter might possibly
prove a dangerous weapon against you if it fell into the hands of the
defense?” inquired Mr. Lambert, in what were obviously intended to be
silken tones.
“No,” replied Mr. Farwell belligerently; “no one ever told me anything
of the kind.”
Mr. Farr permitted himself a fleeting and ironic smile in the
direction of his adversary before he turned a countenance lit with
splendid indignation in the direction of the jury.
“Mr. Farwell, you told the prosecutor that you had had a couple of
drinks before you confided this story about her husband to Mrs. Ives.
Was that accurate, or had you had more?”
“I’d had three or four, maybe—I don’t remember.”
“Three or four after you came off the links?”
“Well, what of it?” Farwell’s jaw was jutting dangerously.
“Be good enough to answer my question, Mr. Farwell.”
“All right, three or four after I came off the links.”
“And three or four before you started?”
“I don’t remember how many; we all had something at lunch.”
“You had had too many, hadn’t you, Mr. Farwell?”
“Too many for what?”
“Too many for Mimi Bellamy’s good, let us say.” Mr. Lambert caught a
menacing movement from the chair occupied by the prosecutor and
hurried on: “Would you have been quite so explicit to Mrs. Ives if you
had not had those drinks?”
“I don’t know whether I would or not.” The little beads of sweat on
the low forehead were suddenly larger. “I’d been thinking for quite a
while that she ought to know what was going on.”
“I see. And just what did you think was to be gained by her
knowledge?”
“I thought she’d put a stop to it.”
“Put a stop to it with a knife, Mr. Farwell?” inquired Mr. Lambert,
ferociously genial.
And suddenly there leaped from the dull eyes before him a flame of
such raw agony that Mr. Lambert took a hasty and prudent step
backward.
“What do you take me for? I thought she’d make him cut it out.”
“And it was absolutely essential to you that he should cut it out,
wasn’t it, Mr. Farwell?”
“What?”
“You were endeavoring to persuade Mrs. Bellamy to divorce Mr. Bellamy
and marry you, weren’t you, Mr. Farwell?”
Mr. Farwell sat glaring dumbly at his tormentor out of those strange
eyes.
“Weren’t you?”
“Yes.” As baldly as though Mr. Farwell were stating that he had tried
to get her to play a game of bridge.
“How long had it been since your affection for her had revived?”
“It hadn’t revived. My affection for her, if that’s what you want to
call it, hadn’t ever stopped.”
“Oh, I see. And at the time of the murder you were not convinced that
it was hopeless?”
“No.”
“I see. But you were a good deal disturbed over this affair with Mr.
Ives, weren’t you?”
“Yes.”
“And when you went home you had a few more drinks just to celebrate
the fact that you’d fixed everything up, didn’t you?”
“I had another drink or so.”
“And when you went up to bed with the detective story you took a full
bottle of whisky with you, didn’t you?”
“I guess so.”
“And it was three quarters empty the next morning, wasn’t it?”
“How do I know?”
“Wasn’t it found beside your bed almost empty next morning, Mr.
Farwell?”
“I don’t know. I’d taken a good deal of it.”
“Mr. Farwell, are you sure that you didn’t find that you had lost that
cigarette lighter before nine-thirty—at a little after nine, say?”
“No, I told you that it was nine-thirty.”
“What makes you so sure?”
“I looked at my watch.”
“And just why did you do that?”
“Because I wanted to know the time.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know—I just wanted to know.”
“It was very convenient that it happened to be just nine-thirty,
wasn’t it?”
“I don’t know what you mean; it wasn’t convenient at all, if it comes
to that.”
“You don’t? And you don’t see why it was convenient that you happened
to call up the Dallas house at about ten minutes to ten, assuring them
thereby that you were safe at home in your pajamas?”
“No, I don’t.”
“You have a Filipino boy who works for you, haven’t you, Mr. Farwell?”
“Yes.”
“Was he in the house after Mr. Burgoyne went on to the poker party?”
“No; he goes home after he finishes the dinner things—around half-past
eight usually.”
“So you were absolutely alone in the house?”
“Absolutely.”
“Your car was outside, wasn’t it?”
“It was in the garage.”
“It never entered your head when you missed that lighter, the loss of
which concerned you so deeply, to get into that automobile and take
the five- or ten-minute drive to Orchards to recover it?”
“It certainly didn’t.”
“You didn’t do anything of the kind?”
“Look here, I’ve already told you about twenty times that I didn’t,
haven’t I?” Mr. Farwell’s voice was straining perilously at the leash.
“I didn’t remember that I’d asked you that before. At what time did
you first hear of this tragedy, Mr. Farwell?”
“You mean the—murder?”
“Naturally.”
Once more the dull eyes were lit by that strange flare of stupefied
agony. “At about twelve o’clock Sunday morning, I guess—or half-past
eleven—I don’t know—sometime late that morning. George Dallas
telephoned me. I was still half asleep.”
“What did you do?”
“Do? I don’t know what I did. It knocked me cold.”
Mr. Lambert suddenly thrust his beaming countenance into the stolid
mask before him. “However cold it might have knocked you, Mr. Farwell,
don’t you remember that within three quarters of an hour of the time
that you received this news you locked yourself in the library and
tried to blow your brains out?”
“Yes,” said Elliot Farwell, “I remember that.”
“You didn’t succeed because your friend Richard Burgoyne had
previously emptied the pistol?”
“Correct.”
“And your Filipino boy, looking for you to announce lunch, noticed you
through the window and set up the alarm, didn’t he?”
“So I understand.”
“What did you say to Mr. Burgoyne when he forced his way into the
library, Mr. Farwell?”
“I don’t remember.”
“You don’t remember that you said, ‘Keep your hands off me, Dick;
after what I’ve done, there’s no way out but this’?”
“No, I don’t remember it, but I probably said it. I don’t remember
what I said.”
“What explanation do you offer for that remark, Mr. Farwell?”
“I’m not offering any explanations; if I said it, I said it. What
difference does it make what I meant?”
“It makes quite a difference, I assure you. You have no explanation to
offer?”
“No.”
“Mr. Farwell, for the last time I ask you whether you were not at the
gardener’s cottage at Orchards on the night of June nineteenth?”
“No.”
“At about nine-thirty?”
“No.”
Mr. Lambert, the ruddy moon of his countenance suddenly alive with
malice, shot his question viciously into the tortured mask: “It was
not your laugh that Mr. Thorne heard coming from the cottage, Mr.
Farwell?”
“You——”
Over the gasp of the courtroom rose the bellow of rage from the
witness box, the metallic ring of the prosecutor’s voice, the thunder
of Judge Carver’s gavel and Ben Potts’s chant.
“Silence! Silence!”
“Your Honour, I would like to ask one question. Is Mr. Farwell on
trial for his life here, or is this the case of the People versus
Bellamy and Ives?”
“This Court is not given to answering rhetorical questions, Mr. Farr.
Mr. Lambert, Mr. Farwell has already told you several times that he
was not at Orchards on the night of June nineteenth. The Court has
given you great latitude in your cross-examination, but it does not
propose to let you press it farther along those lines. If you have
other questions to put, you may proceed.”
“No further questions, Your Honour.” Mr. Lambert’s voice remained
buoyantly impervious to rebuke.
“One moment, Mr. Farwell.” The prosecutor moved swiftly forward. The
man in the witness box, who had lurched to his feet at that last
outrage from the exultant Lambert, turned smouldering eyes on him. On
the rim of the witness box, his hands were shaking visibly—thick, well
groomed, insensitive hands, with a heavy seal ring on one finger. “You
admit that you had been drinking heavily before you spoke to Mrs.
Ives, do you not?”
“Yes—yes—yes.”
“Did you regret that fact when you returned home that evening?”
“I knew I’d talked too much—yes.”
“Did you regret it still more deeply when you received the news of the
murder the following morning?”
“Yes.”
“Wasn’t that the reason for your attempted suicide?”
A long pause, and then once more the heavy tortured voice: “Yes.”
“Because you realized that harm had come to her through your
indiscretion?”
“Yes, I told you—yes.”
“Thanks, that’s all. Call Mr. Dallas.”
“Mr. George Dallas!”
A jaunty figure in blue serge, with a smart foulard tie and curly
blond hair just beginning to thin, moved briskly forward. Mr. Dallas
was obviously a good fellow; there was a hearty timbre to his rather
light voice, his lips parted constantly in an earnestly engaging smile
over even white teeth, and his brown eyes were the friendliest ever
seen out of a dog’s head. If he had not had thirty thousand dollars a
year, he would have been an Elk, a Rotarian, and the best salesman on
the force.
He cast an earnestly propitiatory smile at Sue Ives, who smiled back,
faintly and gravely, and an even more earnestly propitiatory one at
the prosecutor, who returned it somewhat perfunctorily.
“Mr. Dallas, you were giving a poker party on the night of the
nineteenth of June, were you not?”
“I was indeed.”
Mr. Dallas’s tone implied eloquently that it had been a highly
successful party, lacking only the prosecutor’s presence to make it
quite flawless.
“You were present when Mr. Farwell telephoned Mr. Burgoyne?”
“Oh, yes.”
“The telephone was in the room in which you were playing?”
“Yes, sir.”
“About what time did the call come in?”
“Well, now let’s see.” Mr. Dallas was all eager helpfulness. “It must
have been about quarter to ten, because every fifteen minutes we were
making a jack pot, and I remember that we’d had the first and another
was just about due when the ’phone rang and Dick held up the game for
a while.”
“Did you get Mr. Burgoyne’s end of the conversation?”
“Well, not all of it. We were all making a good deal of a racket—just
kidding along, you know—but I heard Dick say, ‘Oh, put on your clothes
and come over and we’ll give you enough of ’em to start a bonfire.’”
“Did Mr. Burgoyne make any comments after he came back?”
“He said, ‘Boys, don’t let me forget to take some matches when I go.
Farwell hasn’t got one in the house.’”
“What time did he leave?”
“Oh, around eleven-fifteen, I guess; we broke up earlier than usual.”
“Did you call Mr. Farwell up the following day around noon?”
“Yes, I did.” Mr. Dallas’s jaunty accents were suddenly tinged with
gravity.
“Can you remember that conversation?”
“Well, I remember that when Elliot answered he still sounded half
asleep and rather put out. He said, ‘What’s the idea, waking a guy up
at this time of day?’ And I said, ‘Listen, Elliot, something
terrible’s happened. I was afraid you’d see it in the papers. Mimi
Bellamy’s been murdered in the gardener’s cottage at Orchards.’ He
made a queer sort of noise and said, ‘Don’t, George! Don’t, George!’
Don’t—don’t—over and over again, as though he were wound up. I said,
‘Don’t what?’ But he’d hung up, I guess; anyway he didn’t answer.”
“He seemed startled?”
“Oh, rather—he seemed absolutely knocked cuckoo.” The voice hung
neatly between pity and regret, the sober eyes tempering the flippant
words.
“All right, Mr. Dallas—thanks. Cross-examine.”
As though loath to tear himself from this interesting and congenial
chatter, Mr. Dallas wrenched his expressive countenance from the
prosecutor and turned it, flatteringly intent, on the roseate Lambert.
“Did other people overhear Mr. Burgoyne’s remarks, Mr. Dallas?”
“Oh, I’m quite sure that they must have. We were all within a foot or
so of each other, you know.”
“Who was in the room?”
“Well, there was Burgoyne, and I had Martin and two fellows from New
York who were out for the week-end, and—let’s see——”
“Wasn’t Mr. Ives in the room at the time?”
“Well, no,” said Mr. Dallas, a curious, apprehensive shadow playing
over his sunny countenance. “No, he wasn’t.”
“I see. What time had he arrived, Mr. Dallas?”
“Mr. Ives?”
“Yes.”
Mr. Dallas cast a fleeting and despairing glance at the white-faced
figure in the corner by the window, and Patrick Ives returned it with
a steady, amused, indifferent air. “Oh—oh, well, he hadn’t.”
Mr. Lambert stopped, literally transfixed, his eyes bulging in his
head. “You mean that he hadn’t arrived at a quarter to ten?”
“No, he hadn’t.”
For the first time since the trial opened, Sue Ives stirred in her
seat. She leaned forward swiftly, her eyes, urgent and imperious, on
her stupefied counsel. Her lifted face, suddenly vivid with purpose,
her lifted hand, cried a warning to him clearer than words. But Mr.
Lambert was heeding no warnings.
“What time did he get there?”
“He—well, you see—he didn’t get there.”
Mr. Dallas again turned imploring eyes on the gentleman in the corner,
whose own eyes smiled back indulgently, a little more indifferent, a
little more amused.
“Had he let you know of this change of plans?”
“No,” said Mr. Dallas wretchedly. “No, he hadn’t—exactly.”
“He simply didn’t turn up?”
“That’s it—he just didn’t turn up.” Mr. Dallas’s voice made a feeble
effort to imply that nothing could possibly be of less consequence
between men of the world.
Mr. Lambert, stupor still rounding his eyes, made a vague gesture of
dismissal, his face carefully averted from Sue Ives’s sternly accusing
countenance.
“No further questions.”
Mr. Dallas scrambled hastily to his feet, his ingenuous gaze turned
hopefully on the prosecutor.
The expression on the prosecutor’s classic features, however, was not
calculated to reassure the most optimistic. Mr. Farr was contemplating
the amiable countenance of his late witness with much the look of
astounded displeasure which must have adorned Medusa’s first audience.
He, too, sketched a slight gesture of dismissal toward the door, and
Dallas, eager and docile, followed it.
The third day of the Bellamy trial was over.