“Well, this is the time you beat me to it,” commented the reporter
approvingly. “That’s the hat I like too. Want a pencil?”
“I always want a pencil,” said the red-headed girl. “And I beat
everybody to it. I’d rather get here at six o’clock than go through
that howling mob of maniacs one single time more. Besides, I’ve been
sleeping, so I might as well be here. Besides, I thought that if I got
here early you might tell me whether it was Mr. Ives or Mr. Farwell
who did it.”
“Who did what?”
“Who killed Mrs. Bellamy.”
“Oh, Lord!” groaned the reporter. “Why is it that every mortal soul at
a murder trial spends his life trying to pin the crime on to anyone in
the world but the people being tried for it. Talk about juries!”
“I’m not talking about juries,” said the red-headed girl firmly. “I’m
talking about Mr. Farwell, and Mr. Ives. Don’t you think that it was
funny that Mr. Farwell was there that day?”
“Oh, comical as all get out! Still and all, I believe that he was
there precisely when he said he was. That poor devil was telling the
truth.”
“How do you know?” inquired the red-headed girl respectfully.
“Oh, you get hunches at this game when you’ve been at it long enough.”
“That must be nice. Did you get a hunch about Mr. Ives?”
“About Pat Ives? I haven’t heard him yet.”
“What did it mean, his not being at that poker game?”
“Well, it might have meant anything in the world—or nothing. The only
thing that’s perfectly clear is that it meant that last night was
undoubtedly one of wassail and carouse for Uncle Dudley Lambert.”
“Why?”
“My dear child, didn’t you see the look of unholy glee that flooded
the old gentleman’s countenance when he realized that young Mr. Ives
hadn’t a shadow of an alibi for that eventful evening?”
“Well, but why?”
“Because the only thing that Uncle Dudley would as soon do as save his
angel goddaughter from the halter is to drape one around Pat Ives’s
neck. He’s hated Pat ever since he dared to subject his precious Sue
to a life of good healthy hardship in New York; he’s never forgiven
him for estranging her from her father; and since he found out that he
betrayed her with the Bellamy girl, he’s been simply imbecile with
rage. And now, through some heaven-sent fluke, he’s enabled to put his
life in jeopardy. He’s almost out of his head. He’d better go a bit
warily, however. If I can read the human countenance—and it may
interest you to know that I can read the human countenance—Mrs.
Patrick Ives is not entirely in favour of sending her unworthy spouse
to the gallows. She had a monitory look in her eye that bodes ill for
Uncle Dudley if she ever realizes what he’s doing.”
The red-headed girl heaved an unhappy sigh. “Well, I don’t believe
that anyone did it,” she remarked spaciously. “Not anyone here, I
mean. Burglars, probably, or one of those funny organizations, or——”
“Silence, silence! The Court!”
Mr. Farr had a new purple necktie, sombre and impressive; Mr. Lambert
was a trifle more frivolous, though the polka dots were discreet; Mrs.
Ives wore the same tweed suit, the same copper-coloured hat. Heavens,
it might as well be a uniform!
“Call Miss Cordier.”
“Miss Melanie Cordier!”
The slim elegance of the figure in the severely simple black coat and
black _cloche_ hat was especially startling when one remembered that
Miss Melanie Cordier was the waitress in the Ives household. It was a
trifle more comprehensible when one remembered that she was as Gallic
as her name implied. With her creamy skin, her long black eyes and
smooth black curves of hair, her lacquer-red mouth exactly matching
the lacquer-red camellia on her lapel, Miss Cordier bore a striking
resemblance to a fashion magazine’s cover designs. She mounted the
witness box with profound composure and seated herself, elaborately at
ease.
“Miss Cordier, what was your occupation on the nineteenth of June,
1926?”
“I was waitress in the employment of Mrs. Patrick Ives.” There was
only the faintest trace of accent in the clear syllables—a slight
softening of consonants and broadening of vowels, becoming enough
variations on an Anglo-Saxon theme.
“How long had you been in her employ?”
“A year and nine month—ten month. I could not be quite sure.”
“How did you happen to go to Mrs. Ives?”
“It was through Mrs. Bellamy that I go.”
“Mrs. Stephen Bellamy?”
“Yes, sir, through Mrs. Stephen Bellamy.”
“Will you tell us just how that happened, Miss Cordier?”
“Assuredly. My little younger sister had been sent by an agency three
or four years ago to Mrs. Bellamy directly when she land in this
country. She was quite inexperience’, you understand, and could not
command a position such as one trained could demand; but Mrs. Bellamy
was good to her and she work hard, and after a while she marries a
young man who drives for the grocer and they——”
“Yes, quite so, Miss Cordier. My question was, how did Mrs. Bellamy
happen to send you to Mrs. Ives?”
“Yes, that is what I explain.” Miss Cordier, exquisitely unruffled,
pursued the even tenor of her way. “Sometime when my sister was there
with Mrs. Bellamy I would go out to show her what she should do. For
me, I have been a waitress for eight years and am well experience’.
Well, then I see Mrs. Bellamy and tell her that if some time she knows
of a excellent position in that Rosemont, I would take it so that
sometime I could see my little sister who is marrying that young man
from the grocer’s. And about two years ago, maybe, she write to me to
say that her friend Mrs. Patrick Ives she is looking for a extremely
superior waitress. So that is how I go to Mrs. Ives.”
“Are you still in the employ of Mrs. Ives?”
“No. On June twentieth I resign, since I am not quite content with
something that have happen.”
“Did this occurrence have anything to do with the death of Mrs.
Bellamy?”
“That I do not say. But I was not content.”
“Miss Cordier, have you seen this book before? I call your attention
to its title—_Stone on Commercial Paper_, Volume III.”
Miss Cordier’s black eyes swept it perfunctorily. “Yes, that book I
know.”
“When did you last see it?”
“The night of June nineteenth, about nine o’clock.”
“Where?”
“In the study of Mr. Ives.”
“What particularly brought it to your attention?”
“Because I take it out of the corner by the desk to look inside it.”
“For what purpose?”
“Because I want to see whether a note I put there that afternoon still
was there.”
“And was that note still there, Miss Cordier?”
“No, monsieur, that note, it was gone.”
The prosecutor tossed the impressive volume carelessly on to the
clerk’s desk. “I offer this volume in evidence, Your Honour.”
“Any objections?” Judge Carver turned an inquiring eye on the bulky
figure of Dudley Lambert, hovering uncertainly over the buckram-clad
repository of correspondence.
Mr. Lambert, shifting from one foot to the other, eyed the volume as
though he were endeavouring to decide whether it were an infernal
machine or a jewel casket, and with one final convulsive effort
arrived at a conclusion: “No objection.”
“Miss Cordier, to whom was the note that you placed in the book
addressed?”
“It was addressed to Mr. Patrick Ives.”
“Was it written by you?”
“Ah, no, no, monsieur.”
“Do you know by whom it was written?”
“Yes, monsieur.”
“By whom?”
“By Mrs. Stephen Bellamy.”
“And how did it happen that you were in possession of a note from Mrs.
Bellamy to Mr. Ives?”
“It was the habit of Mrs. Bellamy to mail to me letters that she
desire’ to have reach Mr. Ives, without anyone should know. Outside
there would be my name on the envelope; inside there would be a more
small envelope with the name of Mr. Ives on it. That one I would put
in the book.”
“You had been doing this for some time?”
“For some time, yes—six months—maybe eight.”
“How many notes had you placed there, to the best of your
recollection?”
“Ah, that I am not quite sure—ten—twelve—twenty—who knows? At first
once a month, maybe; that last month, two and three each week.”
“At what time did you put the note there?”
“Maybe fifteen minutes before seven, maybe twenty. After half-past
six, I know, and not yet seven.”
“Was that your usual habit?”
“Oh, no, monsieur; it was my habit to put them there in the night,
when I make dark the house. Half-past six, that was a very bad time,
because quite easily someone might see.”
“Then why did you choose that time, Miss Cordier?”
“Oh, but I do not choose. You see, it was like this: That night, when
MacDonald, the chauffeur, bring in the letters a little bit after six,
this one it was there for me, in a envelope that was write on it
Urgent. On the little envelope inside it say Urgent—Very Urgent in
letters with lines under them most black, and so I know that there is
great haste that Mr. Patrick Ives he should get that letter quick. So
I start to go to the study, but there in the hall is all those people
who have come from the club, and Mrs. Ives she send me quick to get
some _canapés_, and Mr. Dallas he come with me to show me what he want
for the cocktails—limes and honey and all those thing, you know.” She
looked appealingly at the prosecutor from the long black eyes and for
a moment his tense countenance relaxed into a grim smile.
“You were about to tell us why you placed the note there at that
time.”
“Yes; that is what I tell. Well, I wait and I wait for those people to
go home, and still they do not go, but I dare not go in so long as
across the hall from the study they all stay in that living room. But
after a while I cannot wait any longer for fear that Mr. Patrick Ives
should come and not find that most urgent note. So very quiet I slip
in when I think no one look, and I put that note quick, quick in the
book, and I start to come out in the hall; but when I get to the door
I see there is someone in the hall and I step back again to wait till
they are gone.”
“And whom did you see in the hall, Miss Cordier?”
“I see in the hall Mr. Elliot Farwell and Mrs. Patrick Ives.”
“Did they see you?”
Miss Cordier lifted eloquent shoulders. “How do I know, monsieur?
Maybe they do, maybe they don’t—me, I cannot tell. I step back quick
and listen, and after a while their voices stop and I hear a door
close, and I come out quick through the hall and into the door to the
kitchen without I see no one.”
“Did you hear what Mr. Farwell and Mrs. Ives were saying?”
“No, that I could not hear even when I listen, so low they talk, so
low that almost they whisper.”
“You heard nothing else while you were there?”
“Yes, monsieur. While I stand by the desk, but before I take out the
book, I heard mademoiselle go through the hall with the children.”
“Mademoiselle? Mademoiselle who?” The prosecutor’s voice was
expressionless enough, but there was a prophetic shadow of annoyance
in his narrowed eyes.
“Mademoiselle Page.”
“You say that she was simply passing through the hall?”
“Yes, monsieur—on her way to the stairs.”
“You had not yet touched the book?”
“No, monsieur.”
“You waited until she passed before you did so?”
“Yes.”
“Was Mrs. Ives in the hall at the time that you placed the note in the
book?”
“Ah, that, too, I do not say. I say only that she was there one
minute—one half minute after I have put it there.”
“Could she have seen you place it in the book from the position in
which you saw her standing?”
“It is possible.”
“Was she facing you?”
“No, monsieur; it is Mr. Farwell who face’ me. Mrs. Ives had the back
toward me.”
Again that shadow of fierce annoyance, turning the blue eyes almost
black. “Then what makes you say that she might have seen you?”
The dark eyes meeting his widened a trifle in something too tranquil
for surprise—a mild, indolent wonder at the obtuseness of the human
race in general, men in particular, and prosecutors more particularly
still. “I say that because it might well be that in that little minute
she have turn’ the back to me, or if she have not, then it might be
that she see in the mirror.”
“There was a mirror?”
“But yes, on the other side of the hall from the study door there is a
long, long chair—a what you call a bench—where the gentlemen they
leave their hats. Over that there hangs the mirror. And it was by that
bench that I see Mr. Farwell and Mrs. Ives.”
“And the desk and the bookcase were reflected in the mirror?”
“Yes, monsieur.”
“I see. Now did you notice anything at dinner, Miss Cordier?”
“Nothing at all; everything was as usual, of an entire serenity.”
“It was at the usual hour?”
“At quarter past seven—yes.”
“Who was present?”
“Mrs. Patrick Ives, Mrs. Daniel Ives, Mr. Ives, as usual.”
“Do you recall the conversation?”
“Oh, no, monsieur, I recall only that everyone talk as always about
small things. It is my practice, like an experience’ waitress, serious
and discreet, to be little in the dining room—only when serving, you
understand.” The serious and discreet waitress eyed her interrogator
with a look of bland superiority.
“Nothing struck you as unusual after dinner?”
“No, no.”
“You saw no one before you turned out the lights for the night?”
“Oh, yes, I have seen Mrs. Daniel Ives at that time, and she ask me
whether Mrs. Ives have return, and I say no.”
“No one else?”
“Only the other domestics, monsieur. At a little past ten I retire’
for the night.”
“You went to sleep immediately?”
“Yes, monsieur.”
“Breakfast was just as usual the next morning?”
“As usual—yes.”
“At what time?”
“At nine, as on all Sundays. Mrs. Patrick Ives have hers at half-past
nine, when she gets home from church.”
“Nothing unusual in that?”
“Oh, no; on the contrary, that is her habit.”
“And after breakfast, nothing unusual occurred?”
“I do not know whether you call it unusual, but after breakfast, yes,
something occurred.”
“Just tell us what it was, please.”
Miss Cordier spent an interminable moment critically inspecting a pair
of immaculate cream-coloured gloves before she decided to gratify this
desire: “It was just so soon as Mr. Ives and his mother have finish’
breakfast, a few minutes before half-past nine. Mr. Ives he go
directly to his study, and I go after him with the Sunday papers and
before I go out I ask—because me, I am desirous to know—‘Mr. Ives, you
have got that note all right what I put in the book?’ And he say——”
“Your Honour, I object! I object! What Mr. Ives said——”
This time there was no indecision whatever in the clamour set up by
the long-suffering Lambert, and the prosecutor, eyeing him
benevolently, raised a warning hand to his witness. “Never mind what
he said, Miss Cordier. Just tell us what you said.”
“I said, after he spoke, ‘Oh, Mr. Ives, then if you have not got it,
it is Mrs. Ives who have found it. She have seen me put it in the book
while she stood there in the hall.’”
The prosecutor waited for a well-considered moment to permit this
conveniently revelatory reply to sink in. “It was after this
conversation with Mr. Ives that you decided you would no longer remain
with Mrs. Ives?”
“No, monsieur, it was later in the morning that I decide that.”
“Something occurred that made you decide it then?”
Miss Cordier’s lacquer-red lips parted, closed, parted again. “Yes.”
“What, Miss Cordier?”
“At half-past eleven I have heard that Mrs. Bellamy have been killed.”
The dark eyes slipped sidelong in the direction of the quiet young
woman who had not so long since been her mistress. There she sat,
leaning easily back in the straight, uncomfortable chair, ankles
crossed, hands linked, studying the tips of her squarely cut little
shoes with lowered eyes. The black eyes travelled from the edge of the
kilted skirt to the edge of the small firm chin and then slid slowly
back to the prosecutor: “When I heard that, I was not content, so I no
longer stayed.”
“Exactly.” The prosecutor plunged his hands deep in his pockets and
cocked a flagrantly triumphant eye at the agitated Lambert. “You no
longer stayed. That will be all, Miss Cordier. Cross-examine.”
“Miss Cordier, you knew perfectly that if for one second it came to
Mrs. Ives’s attention that you had been acting as go-between in the
alleged correspondence between her husband and Mrs. Bellamy you would
not have remained five minutes under her roof, did you not?”
Miss Cordier leaned a trifle farther over the edge of the witness box
to meet the rough anger of Lambert’s voice, something ugly and
insolent hardening the creamy mask of her face.
“I know that when Mrs. Ives is angered she is quick to speak, quick to
act—yes, monsieur.”
At the fatal swiftness of that blow, the ruddy face before her sagged
and paled, then rallied valiantly. “And so you decided that you had
better leave before Mr. Ives questioned her about finding the note and
you were turned out in disgrace, didn’t you?”
“I have said already, monsieur, that I leave because I have heard that
Mrs. Bellamy have been murdered and I am not content.” The ominously
soft voice pronounced each syllable with a lingering and deadly
deliberation.
Mr. Lambert eyed her savagely and moved heavily on: “You say that you
were cut off from escaping through the hall by the fact that you saw
that it was occupied by Mr. Farwell and Mrs. Ives?”
“That is so.”
“Why didn’t you go back through the dining room to the pantry?”
“Because I hear Mr. Dallas and Mr. Burgoyne talking from the dining
room, where they try one more cocktail.”
“Why should they have thought it unusual to have you come from the
study?”
“I think it more prudent that no one should know I have been in that
study.”
“You were simply staying there in order to spy on Mrs. Ives, weren’t
you?”
“I could not help see Mrs. Ives unless I close’ my eyes.”
Mr. Lambert was obliged to swallow twice before he was able to
continue:
“Did you tell Mr. Ives that Mr. Farwell was in the hall also at the
time that you saw Mrs. Ives there?”
“I do not remember whether I tell him or whether I do not.”
“Mr. Farwell was facing you, was he not?”
“Yes.”
“What made you so sure that it was Mrs. Ives who took the note, not
Mr. Farwell?”
“Because, when I hear the door close, then I know that Mr. Farwell he
has gone.”
“And how did you know that?”
Once more Miss Cordier raised eloquent shoulders. “Because, monsieur,
I am not stupid. I look out, he is standing by the hat stand; I go
back, I hear a door close, I look out once more, and he is not there.
But that is of the most elementary.”
“You should be a detective instead of wasting your time waiting on
tables,” commented her courtly interrogator. “The plain truth is,
isn’t it, that anyone in the house might have gone out and closed that
door while Mr. Farwell went back to the living room with Mrs. Ives?”
“If you say so, monsieur,” replied Miss Cordier indifferently.
“And the plain truth is that Mr. Farwell was frantically infatuated
with Mrs. Bellamy and was spying on her constantly, isn’t it?”
“It is possible.”
“Possible! Mr. Farwell himself stated it half a dozen times from this
very witness box. It’s a plain fact. And another plain fact is that
any one of a dozen other people might have passed through the hall and
seen you at work, mightn’t they?”
“I should not believe so—no, monsieur.”
“Whether you believe it or not, it happens to be the truth. Six or
eight servants, eight or ten guests—— What reason have you for
believing that Miss Page herself did not notice something unusual in
your attitude and turn back in time to see you place the note after
you believed that she had passed?”
“No reason, monsieur—only the evidence of all five of my senses.”
“You are a highly talented young woman, Miss Cordier, but you can’t
see with your back turned, can you?”
“Monsieur is pleased to jest,” remarked Miss Cordier, in the tone of
one frankly undiverted.
“Don’t characterize my questions, please—answer them.”
“Willingly. I do not see with my back turn’.”
“So it comes down to the fact that ten—twelve—fourteen people might
have seen you place this urgent and mysterious note that you so boldly
charge Mrs. Ives with taking, doesn’t it?”
“That is monsieur’s opinion, not mine.”
Monsieur glared menacingly at the not too subtle mockery adorning the
witness’s pleasing countenance.
“And furthermore, Miss Cordier, it comes down to the fact that we have
only your word for it that the note was ever placed in the book at
all, doesn’t it?”
“Monsieur does not find that sufficient?”
Monsieur ignored the question, but his countenance testified
eloquently that such was indeed the case.
“Just how did you happen to select a book in Mr. Ives’s library as a
hiding place for this correspondence?”
“Because that is a good safe place, where every night he can look
without anyone to watch.”
“What made you think that someone else might not take out that book to
read?”
“That book? _Stone on Commercial Paper_, Volume III? Monsieur is
pleased to jest!”
Monsieur, scowling unattractively at some openly diverted members of
the press, changed his line of attack with some abruptness. “Miss
Cordier, you know a man called Adolph Platz, do you not?”
Miss Cordier’s lashes flickered once—twice. “Of a certainty.”
“Did you see him in the afternoon of the nineteenth of June?”
“Yes.”
“How did you come to know him?”
“He was for a time chauffeur to Mrs. Ives.”
“Married, wasn’t he?”
“Married, yes.”
“Mrs. Platz was a chambermaid in Mrs. Ives’s employ?”
“Yes.”
“They left because Mrs. Platz quarrelled with you, did they not?”
“One moment, please.” The prosecutor lifted an imperious voice. “Are
we to be presented with an account of all the back-stairs quarrels,
past and present, indulged in by Mrs. Ives’s domestics? To the best of
my belief, my distinguished adversary is entering a field, however
profitable and entertaining it may prove, that I have left totally
virgin. Does the court hold this proper for cross-examination?”
“The Court does not. The question is overruled.”
“I ask an exception, Your Honour. . . . Miss Cordier, when you were
turning out the lights that night, did you go into all the downstairs
rooms?”
“Into all of them—yes.”
“Did you see Mr. Patrick Ives in any of them?”
“No, monsieur.”
Sue Ives leaned forward with a swift gesture, a sudden wave of colour
sweeping her from throat to brow. Mr. Lambert looked diligently away.
“You have placed great stress on your skill, experience, and training
as a waitress, Miss Cordier. Are you a waitress at present?”
“No.”
“Just what is your present occupation?”
“At present I have no occupation. I rest.”
“In the boarding house in Atlantic City where you have been occupied
in resting for the past three or four months, you are not reposing
under the name of Melanie Cordier, are you?”
The black eyes darted toward the prosecutor, who stood leaning, shrewd
and careless, over the back of a tilted chair. “Is it particularly
germane to this inquiry whether Miss Cordier chooses to call herself
Joan of Arc, if she wants to?” he inquired.
“I propose to attack the credibility of this witness,” said Mr.
Lambert unctuously. “I propose to prove by this witness, that while
she is posing here as a correct young person and a model servant she
is actually living a highly incorrect life as a supposedly married
woman. . . . Miss Cordier, I ask you whether for the past three months
you have not been passing as the wife of Adolph Platz, having
persuaded him to abandon his own wife?”
In the pale oval of her face the black eyes flamed and smoked. “And I
tell you no, no, and again no, monsieur!”
“You do not go under the name of Mrs. Adolph Platz?”
“I do not persuade him to abandon that stupid doll, his wife. Long
before I knew him, he was tired and sick of her.”
“You do not go under the name of Mrs. Adolph Platz?”
“That is most simple. Monsieur Platz he have been to me a excellent
friend and adviser. When I explain to him that I am greatly in need of
rest he suggest to me that a woman young, alone, and of not an entire
lack of attraction would quite possibly find it more restful if the
world should consider her married. So he is amiable enough to suggest
that if it should assist me, I might for this small vacation use his
name. It is only thing I have take from him, monsieur may rest
assured.”
“You remove a great weight from my mind,” Mr. Lambert assured her,
horridly playful; “and from the minds of these twelve gentlemen as
well, I am sure.” The twelve gentlemen, who had been following the
lady’s simple and virtuous explanation of her somewhat unconventional
conduct with startled attention, smiled for the first time in four
days, shifting stiffly on their chairs and exchanging sidelong
glances, skeptically jocose. “It is a pleasure to all of us to know
that such chivalry as Mr. Platz has exhibited is not entirely extinct
in this wicked workaday world. I hardly think that we can improve on
your explanation as to why you are known in Atlantic City as Mrs.
Adolph Platz, Miss Cordier. That will be all.”
The prosecutor, who did not seem unduly perturbed by these weighty
flights of sarcasm, continued to lean on his chair, though he once
more lifted his voice: “You had saved quite a sum of money during
these past years, hadn’t you, Miss Cordier?”
“Yes, monsieur.”
“It proved ample for your modest needs on this long-planned and
greatly needed vacation, did it not?”
“More than ample—yes.”
“Mr. Platz had left his wife some time before these unhappy events
caused you to leave Mrs. Ives, hadn’t he?”
“Of a surety, monsieur.”
“That’s all, thank you, Miss Cordier.”
Miss Cordier moved leisurely from the stand, chic and poised as ever,
disdaining even a glance at the highly gratified Lambert, and
bestowing the briefest of smiles on Mr. Farr, who responded even more
briefly. Many a lady, trailing sable and brocade from an opera box,
has moved with less assurance and grace than Mrs. Ives’s one-time
waitress, the temporary Mrs. Adolph Platz. The eyes of the courtroom,
perplexed, diverted, and faintly disturbed, followed her balanced and
orderly retreat, the scarlet camellia defiant as a little flag.
“Call Miss Roberts.”
“Miss Laura Roberts!”
Miss Laura Roberts also wore black, but she wore her black with a
difference. A decent, sober, respectful apparel for a decent, sober,
respectful little person—Miss Roberts, comely, rosy-faced, gray-eyed,
fawn-haired and soft-voiced, had all the surface qualifications of an
ideal maid, and she obviously considered that those qualifications did
not include scarlet lips and scarlet flowers. Under the neat black hat
her eyes met the prosecutor’s shyly and bravely.
“Miss Roberts, what was your occupation on June nineteenth, 1926?”
“I was maid and seamstress to Mrs. Patrick Ives, sir.”
The pretty English voice, with its neat, clipped accent, fell
pleasantly and reassuringly on the ears of the courtroom, which
relaxed with unfeigned relief from the tensity into which her Gallic
colleague had managed to plunge it during her tenure of the witness
box.
“Did you see Mrs. Ives on the evening of the nineteenth?”
“Not after dinner—no, sir. I asked her before dinner if it would be
quite all right for cook and me to go down to the village to church
that night, and she said quite, and not to bother about getting home
early, because she wouldn’t be needing me again. So after church we
met two young gentlemen that we knew and went across to the drug store
and had some ices, and sat talking a bit before we walked home, so
that it was well on to eleven when we got in, and all the lights were
out except the one in the kitchen, so I knew that Mrs. Ives was in
bed.”
“What time did you leave the house for church, Miss Roberts?”
“Well, I couldn’t exactly swear to it, sir, but it must have been
around half-past eight; because service was at nine, and it’s a good
bit of a walk, and I do remember hurrying with dinner so that I could
turn down the beds and be off.”
“Were you chambermaid in the household as well as seamstress-maid?”
“Oh, no, sir; only it was the chambermaid’s night off, you see, and
then it was my place to do it.”
“I see. So on this night you turned down all the beds before
eight-thirty?”
“Yes, sir—all but Miss Page’s, that is.”
“That wasn’t included in your duties?”
“Oh, yes, sir, it was. But that night when I got to the day nurse’s
door it was locked, and when I knocked, no one didn’t answer at first,
and then Miss Page called out that she had a headache and had gone to
bed already——”
Miss Roberts hesitated and looked down at the prosecutor with honest,
troubled eyes.
“Nothing extraordinary about that, was there?”
“Well, yes, sir, there was. You see, when I was coming down the hall I
heard what I thought were voices coming out of those rooms, and
crying, and I was afraid that the little girl was having more trouble
with her ear. That’s why I started to go in without knocking, but
after I’d been standing there a minute, I heard that it was Miss Page
crying herself, fit to break her heart. I never heard anyone cry so
dreadful in all my life. It fairly gave me a turn, but the moment I
knocked there wasn’t a sound, and then after a minute she called out
that she wouldn’t need me, just as I told you, sir. So I went on my
way, of course, though I was still a bit worried. She’d been crying so
dreadful, poor thing, that I was afraid she would be right down sick.”
“Yes, quite so. Very much upset, as though she’d been through an
agitating experience?”
“Oh, yes, indeed, sir.”
“You were mistaken about the voices weren’t you? It was just Miss Page
crying?”
“No, sir—I thought I heard voices, too.” The soft voice was barely
audible.
“The little girl’s?”
“No, sir. It sounded—it sounded like Mr. Ives.”
The prosecutor stared at her blankly.
“Mr. Patrick Ives?”
“Yes, sir.”
“You could hear what he was saying?”
“No, sir, I couldn’t; it stopped as soon as I tried the door. I
thought he was talking to the little girl.”
Mr. Farr continued to contemplate her blankly for a moment, and then,
with an eloquent shrug of the shoulders, dismissed Mr. Ives, Miss
Page, and the locked door for more fruitful pastures.
“Now, Miss Roberts, your duties included the care of your mistress’s
wardrobe, did they not?”
“Yes, sir.”
“You are quite familiar with all its contents?”
“Oh, quite.”
“Will you be good enough to tell us if it contains to-day all the
articles that it contained on the nineteenth of June, 1926?”
“No, sir, it doesn’t. Mrs. Ives gives away a lot of her things at the
end of every season. We sent a big box off to a sick cousin she has in
Arizona, and another to some young ladies in Delaware, and another to
the——”
“Never mind about the things that you sent at the end of the season.
Did you send anything at about the time of the murder—within a few
weeks of it, say?”
The roses in Miss Roberts’s cheeks faded abruptly, and the candid eyes
fled precipitately to the chair where Susan Ives sat, playing idly
with the crystal clasp of her brown suède bag. At the warm, friendly,
reassuring little smile that she found waiting for her, Miss Roberts
apparently found heart of grace. “Yes, sir, we did,” she said
steadily.
“On what date, please?”
“On the twentieth of June.”
The courtroom drew in its breath sharply—a little sigh for its lost
ease—and moved forward the inch that separated suspense from polite
attention.
“To whom was the package sent?”
“It was sent to the Salvation Army.”
“What was in it?”
“Well, there were two old sweaters and a swiss dress that had shrunk
quite small, and a wrapper, and some blouses and a coat.”
“What kind of a coat, Miss Roberts?”
“A light flannel coat—a kind of sports coat, you might call it,” said
Miss Roberts clearly; but those who craned forward sharply enough
could see the knuckles whiten on the small, square, capable hands.
“Cream-coloured flannel?”
“Well, more of a biscuit, I’d call it,” replied Mrs. Ives’s maid
judicially.
“The coat that Mrs. Ives had been wearing the evening before, wasn’t
it?”
“I believe it was, sir.”
“Did you see the condition of this coat before you packed it, Miss
Roberts?”
“No, sir, I didn’t. It wasn’t I that packed it.”
“Not you? Who did pack it?”
“Mrs. Ives packed it herself.”
“Ah, I see.” In that sudden white light of triumph the prosecutor’s
face was almost beautiful—a cruel and sinister beauty, such as might
have lighted the face of the youngest Spanish Inquisitionist as the
stray shot of a question went straight to the enemy’s heart. “It was
Mrs. Ives who packed it. How did it come into your hands, Miss
Roberts?”
“The package, sir?”
“Certainly, the package.”
“It was this way, sir: A little before eight Sunday morning Mrs.
Ives’s bell rang and I went down to her room. She was all dressed for
church, and there was a big box on her bed. She said, ‘I rang for you
before, Roberts, but you were probably at breakfast. Take this down to
MacDonald and tell him to mail it when he gets the papers. The post
office closes at half-past nine.’”
“Was that all that she said?”
“Oh, no, sir. She asked me for some fresh gloves, and then she said
over her shoulder like as she was going out, ‘It’s those things that I
was getting together for the Salvation Army. I put in the coat I was
wearing last night too. I absolutely ruined it with some automobile
grease on Mr. Bellamy’s car.’”
“Nothing more?”
“Well, then I said, ‘Oh, madam, couldn’t it be cleaned?’ And Mrs. Ives
said, ‘It isn’t worth cleaning; this is the third year I’ve had it.’
Then she went out, sir, and I took it down and gave it to MacDonald.”
“Was it addressed?”
“Oh, yes, sir.”
“How?”
“Just Salvation Army Headquarters, New York, N. Y.”
“No address in the corner as to whom it came from?”
“Oh, no, sir. Mrs. Ives never——”
“Be good enough to confine yourself to the question. You are not
aware, yourself, of the exact nature of these stains, are you, Miss
Roberts?”
“Yes, sir, I am,” said the pink-cheeked Miss Roberts firmly. “They
were grease stains.”
“What?” The prosecutor’s startled voice skipped half an octave.
“Didn’t you distinctly tell me that you didn’t see this coat?”
“No, sir, no more I did. It was Mrs. Ives that told me they were
grease stains.”
The prosecutor indulged in a brief bark of mirth that indicated more
relief than amusement. “Then, as I say, you are unable to tell us of
your own knowledge?”
“No, sir,” replied Miss Roberts, a trifle pinker and a trifle firmer.
“Mrs. Ives told me that those stains were grease stains, so I’m
certainly able to say of my own knowledge that it was absolutely true
if she said so.”
There was something in the soft, sturdy voice that made the grimy
courtroom a pleasanter place. Sue Ives’s careless serenity flashed
suddenly to that of a delighted child; Stephen Bellamy’s fine, grave
face warmed and lightened; the shadows lifted for a moment from Pat
Ives’s haunted eyes; there was a grateful murmur from the press, a
friendly stir in the jury. The quiet-eyed, soft-voiced, stubborn
little Miss Roberts was undoubtedly the heroine of the moment.
Mr. Farr, however, was obviously unmoved by this exhibition of
devotion and loyalty. He permitted more than a trace of annoyance to
penetrate his clear, metallic voice. “That’s all very pretty and
touching, naturally, Miss Roberts, but from a crudely legal standpoint
we are forced to realize that your statement as to the nature of the
stains has no weight whatever. It is a fact, is it not, that you never
laid eyes on the stained coat that Mrs. Ives sent out of her house
within a few hours of the time that this murder was committed?”
“Yes, sir, that is a fact.”
“No further questions, Miss Roberts. Cross-examine.”
“It is a fact, too, that Mrs. Ives frequently sent packages in just
this way, isn’t it, Miss Roberts?” inquired Mr. Lambert mellifluously.
“Oh, yes, indeed, she did—often and often.”
“Was she in the habit of putting her address on packages sent to
charitable institutions?”
“No, sir. She didn’t want to be thanked for her charities—not ever.”
“Precisely. That’s all, Miss Roberts—thanks.”
“Call Orsini.”
“Loo-weegee Aw-see-nee!”
Luigi Orsini glanced darkly at Ben Potts as he mounted the witness
stand, and Mr. Potts returned the glance with Nordic severity.
“What was your occupation on June 19, 1926, Orsini?”
“I work for Miz’ Bell’my.”
“In what capacity?”
“What you say?”
“What was your job?”
“I am what you call handy—do everything there is to do.”
The spacious gesture implied Gargantuan labours and super-human
abilities. A small, thick, stocky individual, swarthy and pompadoured,
with lustrous eyes, a glittering smile, and a magnificent barytone
voice, he suggested without any effort whatever infinite possibilities
in the rôle of either tragedian or comedian. The redoubtable Farr eyed
him with a trace of well-justified apprehension.
“Well, suppose you tell us what your principal activities were on the
nineteenth of June.”
“Ah, well, that day me, I am very active, like per usual. At six
o’clock I arise and after some small breakfast I take extra-fine
strong wire and some very long sticks——”
“No, no, you can skip all that. You heard Mr. Farwell’s testimony,
didn’t you?”
“For sure I hear that testimony.”
“Was it correct that he stopped around noon at the Bellamys’ and asked
for Mrs. Bellamy?”
“All correct, O. K.”
“Did he tell you where he was going?”
“Yes, sair, he then he say he get her at that cottage.”
“Nothing else?”
“Not one other thing else.”
“You didn’t see him again?”
“No, no; I do not see him again evair.”
“When did you last see Mrs. Bellamy?”
“It is about eight in the evening—maybe five minute before, maybe five
minute after.”
“How do you fix the time?”
“I have look at my watch—this watch you now see, which is a good
instrument of entirely pure silver, but not always faithful.”
The prosecutor waved away the bulky shining object dangled enticingly
before his eyes with a gesture of almost ferocious impatience. “Never
mind about that. Why did you consult your watch?”
The owner of the magnificent but unfaithful instrument swelled darkly
for a moment, but continued to dangle his treasure. “That you shall
hear—patience. I produce the instrument at this time so that you note
that while the clock over the door it say twenty minutes before the
hour, this watch it say nine minute—or maybe eight. You judge for
yourself. It is without a doubt eccentric. But on that night still I
have consult it to see if I go to New York at eight-twenty. I wait to
decide still when I see Mrs. Bell’my run down the front steps and come
down to the gate where I stand.”
“Did she speak to you?”
“Oh, positive. She ask, ‘What, Luigi, you do not go to New York?’”
“How did she know that you were going to New York?”
“Because already before dinner I have ask permission from Mr. Bell’my
if I can go to New York that evening to see a young lady from Milan
that I think perhaps I marry, maybe. Miz’ Bell’my she is in the next
room and she laugh and call out, ‘You tell Marietta that if she get
you, one day she will find herself marry to the President of these
United State’.’ I excuse myself for what may seem like a boast, but
those are the words she use.”
And suddenly, as though he found the memory of that gay, mocking young
voice floating across the heavy air of the courtroom more unbearable
than all the blood and shame and horror that had invaded it, Stephen
Bellamy’s face twisted to a tortured grimace and he lifted an unsteady
hand to lowered eyes.
“Look!” came a penetrating whisper. “He’s crying, ain’t he? Ain’t he,
Gertie?”
And the red-headed girl lowered her own eyes swiftly, a shamed and
guilty flush reaching to the roots of her hair. How ugly, how
contemptible, one’s thoughts could sound in words!
“What reply did you make to Mrs. Bellamy?”
“I tell to her that I think maybe I had better not go, as that
afternoon I have invest my money in a small game of chance with the
gardener next door and the investment it have prove’ unsound. I say
that how if I go to New York to see my young lady, it is likely that I
must request of her the money to return back to Rosemont—and me, who
am proud, I find that indelicate. So Miz’ Bell’my she laugh out and
look quick in the little bag that she carry and give me three
dollar’—to make the course of true love run more smooth, she say—and
then she call back over her shoulder, ‘Better hurry, Luigi, or you
miss that train.’ So I hurry, but all the same I miss it—by two small
minute, because, chiefly, this watch he is too eccentric.”
In spite of its eccentricity, he returned it tenderly to his vest
pocket, after a final flip in the direction of the harassed Farr and
the enraptured audience.
“Did you notice anything else in the bag when Mrs. Bellamy opened it?”
“Oh, positive. The eyes of Luigi they miss nothing what there is to
see. All things they observe. In that bag of Miz’ Bell’my there are
stuff, stuff in two, three letters—I dunno for sure—maybe four. But
they make that small little bag bulge out so—very tight, like that.”
Mr. Orsini’s eloquent hands sketched complete rotundity.
“You never saw Mrs. Bellamy again?”
“Not evair—no, no more—not evair.”
For a moment the warm blood under the swarthy Southern skin seemed to
run more slowly and coldly; but after a hasty glance at the safe,
reassuring autumn sunlight slanting across the crowded room, the
colour flowed boldly back to cheek and lip.
“You say that you missed the train to New York. What did you do then?”
“Then I curse myself good all up and down for a fool that is a fool
all right, and I go back to my room in the garage and get into my bed
and begin to read a story in a magazine that call itself _Honest
Confession_ about a bride what——”
“Never mind what you were reading. Did you notice anything unusual on
your return?”
“Well, maybe you don’t call it nothing unusual, but I notice that the
car of Mr. Bell’my it is no longer in the garage. That make me
surprise’ for a minute, because I have heard Mr. Bell’my tell Nellie,
the house girl, that it is all right for her to go home early to her
mother, where she sleep, because he will be there to answer the
telephone if it should ring. But all the same, I go on to bed. I just
think he change his mind, maybe.”
“What time did you get back to the garage?”
“At twenty-two minutes before nine I am in my room. That I verify by
the alarm clock that repose on the top of my bureau, and which is of
an entire reliability; I note it expressly, because I am enrage’ that
I have miss’ that train by so small an amount.”
“Orsini, do you know what kind of tires Mr. Bellamy was using on his
car?”
“Yes, sair, that, too, I know. There are three old tires of what they
call Royal Cord make—two on back and one on front. On the left front
one is a good new Silvertown Cord, what I help him to change about a
month before all these things have happen. For spare, he carry a all
new Ajax. And that is all there is.”
“You’re perfectly sure that the Ajax wasn’t on?”
“Oh, surest thing.”
“When did you last see the car?”
“When I go down to the gate, round half-past seven.”
“And the Ajax was still on as a spare?”
“That’s what.”
“Did you see Mr. Bellamy again on the evening of the nineteenth?”
“Yes, that evening I have seen Mr. Bell’my again.”
“At what time?”
“At five before ten.”
“Was he alone?”
“No; with him there was a lady.”
“Did you recognize her?”
“Yes, sair, I have recognize’ her.”
“Who was this lady, Orsini?”
“This lady, sair, was Miz’ Patrick Ives.”
At those words, pronounced with exactly their proper dramatic
inflection by that lover of the drama, Mr. Luigi Orsini, every head in
the courtroom pivoted to the spot where Mrs. Patrick Ives sat with the
autumn sun warming her hair to something better than gold. And quite
oblivious to the ominous inquiry in those straining eyes, she turned
toward Stephen Bellamy, meeting his startled eyes with a small, rueful
smile, lifted brows and a little shake of the head that came as near
to saying “I told you so” as good sportsmanship permitted.
“You are quite positive of that?”
“Oh, without one single doubt.”
“How were you able to identify her?”
“Because I hear her voice, as clear as I hear you, and I see her clear
as I see you too.”
“How were you able to do that?”
“By the lights of Mr. Bell’my’s car, when she get out and look up at
my window, where I stand and look out.”
“Tell us just how you came to be standing there looking out, please.”
“Well, after a while, I began to get sleepy over that magazine, and I
look at the clock and it say ten minutes to ten, and I think, ‘Luigi,
my fine fellow, to-morrow you rise at six to do the work that lies
before you, and at present it is well that you should sleep.’ So I
arise to turn out the light, which switch is by the window, and just
when I get there to do that I hear a auto car turn in at the gate. I
think, ‘Ah-ha! There now comes Mr. Bell’my.’ And then I look out of
that window, for I am surprise’. It is the habit of Mr. Bell’my to put
away that car so soon as he come in, but this time he don’t do that.
He stop in front of the house and he help out a lady. She stand there
looking up at my window, and I see her clear like it is day, but it is
all dark inside, so she can see nothing. Then she say, ‘I still could
swear that I have seen a light,’ and Mr. Bell’my he say, ‘Sue, don’t
let this get you. I tell you that there is no one here—I saw him
headed for the train. Maybe perhaps it was the shine from our own
lamps what you see. Come on.’ And she say, ‘Maybe; but I could
swear——’ And then I don’t hear any more, because they go into the
house, and me, I stand there like one paralyze’, because always I have
believe Mr. Bell’my to be a man of honour who love——”
“Yes—never mind that. Did you see them come out?”
“Yes, that I see, too. In five-ten minutes they come out and get quick
into the car, and drive away without they say one word. They start off
very fast, so that the car it jump.”
“Do you know at what time Mr. Bellamy returned that night?”
“No; because then I wake only half up from sleep when I hear him drive
that car into the garage, and I do not turn to look at the clock.”
“It was some time later?”
“Some time—yes. But whether one hour—three hours—five hours, that I
cannot say. What I am not sure of like my life, that I do not say.”
“Exactly; very commendable. That’s all, thanks. Cross-examine.”
Orsini wheeled his lustrous orbs in the direction of Mr. Lambert,
whose ruddy countenance had assumed an expression of intense
inhospitality, though he managed to inject an ominous suavity into his
ample voice. “With those vigilant and all-seeing eyes of yours,
Mr.—er—Mr. Orsini, were you able to note the garments that Mrs.
Bellamy was wearing when she went past you at the gate?”
“Oh, positive. A white dress, all fluffy, and a black cape, quite
thin, so that almost you see through it—not quite, maybe, but almost.”
“Any hat?”
“On the head a small black scarf that she have wrap’ also around her
neck, twice or mebbe three time. The eyes of Luigi——”
“Exactly. Could you see whether she had on her jewels?”
“Positive. Always like that in the evening, moreover, she wear her
jewels.”
“You noticed what they were?”
“Same like always—same necklace out of pearls, same rings, diamond and
sapphire, two on one hand, one the other—I see them when she open that
bag.”
“Mr. Bellamy was a person of moderate means, wasn’t he, as far as you
know?”
“Oh, everybody what there is around here knows he wasn’t no John P.
Rockfeller, I guess.”
“Do you believe that the stones were genuine?”
Mr. Orsini, thus appealed to as an expert, waxed eloquent and
expansive. “Oh, positive. That I know for one absolute sure thing.”
“Tell us just how, won’t you?”
“Well, that house girl, Nellie, one night she tell me that Miz’
Bell’my have left one of her rings at the club where she wash her
hands, but that Miz’ Bell’my just laugh and say she should worry
herself, because all those rings and her pearls they are insure big,
and if she lose those, she go out and buy herself a new house and a
auto car, and maybe a police dog too.”
“I see. Had it ever occurred to you that Mrs. Bellamy was using the
cottage at Orchards for other purposes than piano practice, Mr.
Orsini?”
Orsini’s smile flashed so generously that it revealed three really
extravagant gold fillings. “Well, me, I don’t miss many things, maybe
you guess. After she get that key three-four times, I think to myself,
‘Luigi, it is funny thing that nevair she give you back that key until
the day after, and always those evenings she go out by herself—most
generally when Mr. Bell’my he stay in town to work.’ So one of those
nights when she ask for that key I permit myself to take a small
little stroll up the road in Orchards, and sure thing, there is a
light in that cottage and a auto car outside the door. Sufficient! I
look no further. Me, I am a man of the world, you comprehend.”
“Obviously.”
“Just a moment, Mr. Lambert,” interrupted Judge Carver. “Is your
cross-examination going to take some time?”
“Quite a time, I believe, Your Honour.”
“Then I think it best that we adjourn for the noon recess, as it is
already after twelve. The Court stands adjourned until one-ten.”
“Well, here’s where we get our comic relief,” said the reporter with
unction. “That son of sunny Italy is going to give us an enviable
imitation of a three-ringed circus and a bag of monkeys before he and
Lambert get through with each other, or I miss my guess. He’s got a
look in his eye that is worth the price of admission alone. What’s
your mature opinion of him?”
“I think that he’s beguiling,” said the red-headed girl somewhat
listlessly. Little shadows were under her gray eyes, and she curled
small limp paws about a neglected notebook. Something in the drooping
shoulders under the efficient jacket suggested an exhausted baby in
need of a crib and a bottle of hot milk and a firm and friendly
tucking in. She made a half-hearted effort to overtake an enormous
yawn that was about to engulf her, and then surrendered plaintively.
“Bored?” inquired the real reporter, his countenance illuminated by an
expression of agreeable surprise.
“Bored?” cried the lady beside him in a voice at once scornful and
outraged. “Bored? I’m half destroyed with excitement. I can’t sleep
any more. I go back to the boarding house every night and sit up in
front of a gas stove with an orange-and-magenta comforter over my
shoulders that ought to warm the dead, writing up my notes until all
hours; and then I put a purple comforter over my knees and a muffler
over my nose, and get an apple and sit there alternately gnawing the
apple and my fingers and trying to work out who did it until even the
cats stop singing under my window and the sky begins to get that nice,
appealing slate colour that’s so prettily referred to as dawn. And
even then I don’t know who did it.”
“Don’t you, indeed?” inquired the reporter severely, looking irritated
and anxious. “Haven’t you any sense at all, you little idiot? Listen,
I know a place just two blocks down where you can get some fairly
decent hot soup. You go and drink about a quart of it and then trot
along home and turn in, and I’ll do your notes for you to-night so
well that your boss will double your salary in the morning—and if
you’re very good and sleep eighteen hours, I may tell you who did the
murder.”
The red-headed girl, who had shuddered fastidiously at the offer of
fairly decent soup, eyed him ungratefully as she extracted a packet of
salted peanuts from the capacious pouch that served her as handbag,
commissary, and dressing table.
“Thank you kindly,” she said. “My boss wrote me two special-delivery
letters yesterday to say that I was doing far the best stuff that was
coming up out of Redfield—far. He said that the three clippings that I
sent him of your stuff showed promise—he did, honestly. . . . I think
that soup’s terrible, and this is the first time in my life that I’ve
been able to stay up as late as I pleased without anyone sending me to
bed. I’m mad about it. . . . Have some peanuts?”
“No, thanks,” said the reporter, rising abruptly. “Anything I can get
you outside?”
“You’re cross!” wailed the red-headed girl, her eyes round with panic
and contrition. “You are—you are—you’re absolutely furious. Wait,
please—please, or I’ll hang on to your coat tails and make a scene.
The real reason I don’t go out and get soup is because I don’t dare.
If I went away even for a minute, something might happen, and then I
wouldn’t ever sleep again. Someone might get my seat—didn’t you see
that fat, sinful-looking old lady who got the _Gazette_ girl’s place
yesterday? She wouldn’t go even when three officers and the sheriff
told her she had to, and the _Gazette_ girl had to sit on a stool in
the gallery, and she said she had such a rushing of rage in her ears
that she couldn’t hear anything that anyone said all afternoon. So,
you see—— And I would like a ham sandwich and I think that you write
better than Conrad, and I apologize, and if you’ll tell me who did the
murder, I’ll tell you. And please hurry, because I hope you won’t be
gone long.”
“You’re a nice little nut,” said the reporter, and he beamed on her
forgivingly, “and I like you. I like the way your nose turns up
and your mouth turns down, and I like that funny little hat you
wear. . . . I’ll make it in two jumps. Watch me!”
The red-headed girl watched him obediently, her face pink and her eyes
bright under the funny little hat. When the door opened to let him
out, she plunged her eyes apprehensively for a moment into the silent,
pushing, heaving mob behind the policeman’s broad blue shoulders,
shivered, and turned them resolutely away.
“If I were convicted of murder to-morrow,” thought the red-headed girl
passionately, “they’d shove just like that to see me hanged. Ugh!
What’s the matter with us?”
She eyed with an expression of profound distaste the plump lady just
beyond her, conscientiously eating stuffed eggs out of a shoe box. So
smug, so virtuous, so pompadoured and lynx-eyed—— Her eyes moved
hastily on to the pair of giggling flappers exchanging powder puffs
and anecdotes over a box of maple caramels; on to the round-shouldered
youth with the unattractive complexion and unpleasant tie; on to the
pretty thing with overflushed cheeks and overbright eyes above her
sable scarf and beneath her Paris hat. The red-headed girl wrenched
her eyes back to the empty space where there sat, tranquil and aloof,
the memory of the prisoner at the bar.
It was good to be able to forget those hot, hungry, cruel faces, so
sleek and safe and triumphant, and to remember that other face under
the shadow of the small felt hat, cool and controlled and gay—yes,
gay, for all the shadows that beset it. Only—what thoughts were
weaving behind that bright brow, those steady lips? Thoughts of
terror, of remorse, of bitterness and horror and despair? If you were
strong enough to strike down a laughing girl who barred your path, you
would be strong enough to keep your lips steady, wouldn’t you?
The red-headed girl stared about her wildly; she felt suddenly small
and cold and terrified. Where was the reporter? What a long time—— Oh,
someone had opened a window. It was only the wind of autumn that was
blowing so cold then, not the wind of death. What was it those little
newsboys were calling outside, yelping like puppies in the gray
square?
“Extra Extra! All about the mysterious——”
“Well,” said the reporter’s voice at her elbow, tense with some
suppressed excitement, “this is the time he did it! No enterprising
Filipino and housemaid around this time. Read that and weep!”
Across the flimsy sheet of the Redfield _Home News_ it ran in letters
three inches high: Ex-fiancé of Murdered Girl Blows Out Brains.
Prominent Clubman Found Dead in Garden at Eleven Forty-five This
Morning.
“I’ve got a peach of a story started over the wires this minute,” said
the reporter exultantly. “Here, boy, rush this stuff and beat it back
for more. I couldn’t get your sandwich.”
“Well,” said the red-headed girl in a small awed voice—“well, then,
that means that he did it himself, doesn’t it? That means that he
couldn’t stand it any longer because he killed her, doesn’t it?”
“Or it means that he good and damn well knew that Susan Ives did it,”
muttered the reporter, shaken from Olympian calm to frenzied activity.
“Here, boy! Boy! Hi, you, rush this—and take off the ear muffs. It’s a
hundred-to-one bet that he knew that Sue’d done it, and that he’d as
good as put the knife in her hand by telling her where, when, and why
it should be managed. . . . Here, boy!”
“He didn’t!” said the red-headed girl fiercely. “He didn’t know it.
How could——”
“The Court!” sang Ben Potts.
“How could he know whether she——”
“Silence!” intoned Ben reprovingly.
Mr. Orsini and Mr. Lambert were both heading purposefully for the
witness box.
“Now you’ve just told us, Mr. Orsini, that you were able to see Mrs.
Ives’s face when you looked down from your window in the garage as
clearly as you see mine. Can you give us an idea of the approximate
distance from the garage to the house?”
“Positive. The distance from the middle of the garage door to the
middle of the front porch step, it is”—he glanced earnestly at a small
slip of paper hitherto concealed in one massive paw, and divulged a
portion of its contents to his astounded interrogator—“it is
forty-seven feet five inches and one half inch.”
“What?”
Mr. Orsini contemplated with pardonable gratification the unfeigned
stupor that adorned the massive countenance now thrust incredulously
forward. “Also I can now tell you the space between the front gate and
the door—one hunnerd forty-three feet and a quarter of a inch,” he
announced rapidly and benevolently. “Also from the fence out to the
road—eleven feet nine inch and a——”
Judge Carver’s gavel fell with a crash over the enraptured roar that
swept the courtroom. “One more demonstration of this kind and I clear
the Court. This is a trial for murder, not a burlesque performance.
You, sir, answer the questions that are put to you, when they are put.
What’s that object in your hand?”
Mr. Orsini dangled the limp yellow article hopefully under the judge’s
fine nose. “The instrument with which I make the measure,” he
explained, all modest pride. “What you call a measure of tape. The
card on which I make the notes as well.”
Judge Carver schooled his momentarily shaken countenance to its
customary rigidity and turned a lion tamer’s eye on the smothered
hilarity of the press. The demoralized Lambert pulled himself together
with a mighty effort; a junior counsel emitted a convulsive snort;
only Mr. Farr remained entirely unmoved. Pensive, nonchalant and
mildly sardonic, he bestowed a perfunctory glance on the measure of
tape and returned to a critical perusal of some notes of his own,
which he had been studying intently since he had surrendered his
witness to his adversary. The adversary, his eyes still bulging,
returned once more to the charge.
“May I ask you what caused you to burden yourself with this invaluable
mass of information?”
“Surest thing you may ask. I do it because me, I am well familiar with
the questions what all smart high-grade lawyers put when in the
court—like, could you then tell us how high were those steps, and how
many were those minutes, and how far were those walls—all things like
that they like to go and ask, every time, sure like shooting.”
“I see. A careful student of our little eccentricities. How has it
happened that your crowded life has afforded you the leisure to make
so exhaustive a study of our habits?”
“Once again, more slow?” suggested the student affably.
“How have you happened to become so familiar with court life?”
“Oh, me, I am not so familiar with it as that. Once-twice—that is
enough for one who know how to use his eyes and ear—more is not
necessary.”
“No, as you say, once or twice ought to be enough; it’s a pity that
you’ve found it necessary to extend your experience. Orsini, have you
ever been in jail?”
“Who—me?” The glittering smile with which Mr. Orsini was in the habit
of decorating his periods was not completely withdrawn, but it became
slightly more reticent. His lambent eyes roved reproachfully in the
direction of Mr. Farr, who seemed more absorbed than ever in his
notes. “In what kind of a jail you mean?”
Mr. Lambert looked obviously disconcerted. “I mean jail—any kind of a
jail.”
“Was it up on a hill, perhaps, this jail?” inquired his victim
helpfully.
“On a hill? What’s that got to do with it? How should I know whether
it was on a hill?”
“A high hill, mebbe, with trees all about it?” Once more Orsini’s
hands were eloquent.
“All right, all right, were you ever in a jail on a hill with trees
around it?”
Orsini gazed blandly into the irate and contemptuous countenance
thrust toward him. “No, sair,” he replied regretfully. “If that jail
was up on a hill with trees around it, then I was not in that jail.”
Once more the courtroom, reckless of the gavel, yielded to helpless
and hilarious uproar, and for this time they were spared. One look at
Mr. Lambert’s countenance, a full moon in the throes of apoplexy, had
undermined even Judge Carver’s iron reserves. The gavel remained idle
while he indulged himself in a severe attack of coughing behind a
large and protective handkerchief. The red-headed girl was using a
more minute one to mop her eyes when she paused, startled and
incredulous. Across the courtroom, Patrick and his wife Susan were
laughing into each other’s eyes, for one miraculous moment the gay and
care-free comrades of old; for one moment—and then, abruptly, memory
swept back her lifted veil and they sat staring blankly at the
dreadful havoc that lay between them, who had been wont to seek each
other in laughter. Slowly, painfully, Sue Ives wrenched her eyes back
to their schooled vigilance, and after an interminable breath, Pat
Ives turned his haunted ones back to the window, beyond which the sky
was still blue. Only in that second’s wait the red-headed girl had
seen the dark flush sweep across his pallor, and the hunger in those
imploring eyes, frantic and despairing as those of a small boy who had
watched a beloved hand slam a heavy door in his face.
“Why, he loves her!” thought the red-headed girl. “He loves her
dreadfully!” Those few scattered seconds when laughter and hope and
despair had swept across a court—how long—how long they seemed! And
yet they would have scantily sufficed to turn a pretty phrase or a
platitude on the weather. They had just barely served to give the
portly Lambert time to recover his breath, his voice, and his venom,
all three of which he was now proceeding to utilize simultaneously and
vigorously.
“I see, I see. You’re particular about your jails—like them in
valleys, do you? Now be good enough to answer my question without any
further trifling.”
“What question is that?”
“Have you ever been in jail?”
Mr. Orsini’s expression became faintly tinged with caution, but its
affability did not diminish. “When?” he inquired impartially.
“When? Any time! Will—you—answer—my—question?”
Thus rudely adjured, his victim yielded to the inevitable with
philosophy, humour, and grace. “Not any time—no, no! That is too
exaggerate’. But sometimes—yes—I do not deny that sometimes I have
been in jail.”
Under the eyes of the entranced spectators, Mr. Lambert’s rosy jowls
darkened to a fine, deep, full-bodied maroon. “You don’t deny it, hey?
Well, that’s very magnanimous and gratifying—very gratifying indeed.
Now will you continue to gratify us by telling us just why you went to
jail?”
Mr. Orsini dismissed his penal career with an eloquent shrug. “Ah,
well, for what thing do you not go to jail in these days? If you do
not have money to pay for fine, it is jail for you! You drink beer
what is two and three quarter, you shake up some dice where you think
nobody care, you drive nine and one-half mile over a bridge where it
say eight and one half——”
“That will do, Orsini. In 1911 did you or did you not serve eight
months in jail for stealing some rings from a hotel room?”
“Ah, that—that is one dirty lie—one dirty plant is put on me! I get
that——”
From under the swarthy skin of the erstwhile suave citizen of the
world there leaped, sallow with fury, livid with fear, the Calabrian
peasant, ugly and vengeful, chattering with incoherent rage. Lambert
eyed him with profound satisfaction.
“Yes, yes—naturally. It always is. Very unfortunate; our jails are
crowded with these errors. It’s true, too, isn’t it, Orsini, that less
than three weeks before the murder you told Mr. Bellamy that the
reason you hadn’t asked your little Milanese friend to marry you was
that you couldn’t afford to buy her an engagement ring?”
“You—you——”
“Just one moment, Orsini.” The prosecutor’s low voice cut
sharply across the thick, violent stammering. “Don’t answer that
question. . . . Your Honour, I once more respectfully inquire as to
whether this is the trial of Mr. Bellamy and Mrs. Ives or of my
witnesses, individually and en masse?”
“And the Court has told you once before that it does not reply to
purely rhetorical questions, Mr. Farr. You are perfectly aware as to
whose trial this is, and while the Court is inclined to agree as to
the impropriety of the last question, it does not believe that it is
in error in stating that it is some time since you have seen fit to
object to any of the questions put by Mr. Lambert to your witness.”
“Your Honour is quite correct. It being my profound conviction that I
have an absolutely unshakable case, I have studiously refrained from
injecting the usual note of acrimonious bickering into these
proceedings that is supposed to be the legal prerogative. This kind of
thing causes me profoundly to regret my forbearance, I may state.
About two out of three witnesses that I’ve put on the stand have been
practically accused of committing or abetting this murder. Whether
they’re all supposed to be in one gigantic conspiracy or to have
played lone hands is still a trifle hazy, but there’s no doubt
whatever about the implications. Miss Page, Miss Cordier, Mr. Farwell,
Mr. Ives, Mr. Orsini—it’ll be getting around to me in a minute.”
“I object to this, Your Honour, I object!” The choked and impassioned
voice of Mr. Dudley Lambert went down before the clear, metallic clang
of the prosecutor’s, roused at last from lethargy.
“And I object, too—I object to a great many things! I object to the
appalling gravity of a trial for murder being turned into a farce by
the kind of thing that’s been going on here this morning. I’m entirely
serious in saying that Mr. Lambert might just as well select me as a
target for his insinuations. I used to live in Rosemont. I have a good
sharp pocket knife—my wife hasn’t a sapphire ring to her name—I’ve
been arrested three times—twice for exceeding a speed limit of
twenty-two miles an hour and once for trying to reason with a traffic
cop who had delusions of grandeur and a——”
“That will do, Mr. Farr.” There was a highly peremptory note in Judge
Carver’s voice. “The Court has exercised possibly undue liberality in
permitting you to extend your observations on this point, because it
seemed well taken. It does not believe that you will gain anything by
further elaboration. Mr. Lambert your last question is overruled. Have
you any further ones to put to the witness?”
Mr. Lambert, looking a striking combination of a cross baby and a
bulldog, did not take these observations kindly. “Am I denied the
opportunity of attacking the credibility of the extraordinary
collection of individuals that Mr. Farr chooses to produce as
witnesses?”
“You are not. In what way does your inquiry as to Mr. Orsini’s
inability to provide a young woman with an engagement ring purport to
attack his credibility?”
“It purports to show that Orsini had a distinct motive for robbery
and——”
“Precisely. And precisely for that reason, since Mr. Orsini is not on
trial here, the Court considers the question irrelevant and
incompetent, as well as improper. Have you any further ones to put?”
“No.” The rage that was consuming the unchastened Mr. Lambert choked
his utterance and bulged his eyes. “No further questions. May I have
an exception from Your Honour’s ruling?”
“Certainly.”
Orsini, stepping briskly down from the witness box, lingered long
enough to bestow on his late inquisitor a glance in which knives
flashed and blood flowed freely—a glance which Mr. Lambert, goaded by
frustrated rage, returned with interest. The violence remained purely
ocular, however, and the obviously disappointed spectators began to
crawl laboriously to their feet.
“Call for Turner.”
“Joseph Turner!”
A bright-eyed, brown-faced, friendly-looking boy swung alertly into
the box and fired a pair of earnest young eyes on the prosecutor.
“What was your occupation on June nineteenth of this year, Mr.
Turner?”
“I was bus driver over the Perrytown route.”
“Still are?”
“No, sir; driving for the same outfit, but over a new route—Redfield
to Glenvale.”
“Ever see these before, Turner?”
The prosecutor lifted a black chiffon cape and lace scarf from the
pasteboard box beside him and extended them casually toward the
witness.
The boy eyed them soberly. “Yes, sir.”
“When?”
“Two or three times, sir; the last time was the night of the
nineteenth of June.”
“At what time?”
“At about eight-thirty-five.”
“Where did you pick Mrs. Bellamy up?”
“At about a quarter of a mile beyond her house, toward the club.
There’s a bus stop there, and she stepped out from some deep shadows
at the side of the road and signalled me to stop.”
“Did you know Mrs. Bellamy by name at that time?”
“No, sir; I found out later. That’s when I learned where her house was
too.”
“Was yours the first bus that she could have caught?”
“If she missed the eight o’clock bus. Mine was the next.”
“Did anything particularly draw your attention to her?”
“Yes, sir. She had her face all muffled up in her veil, the way she
always did, but I specially noticed her slippers. They were awfully
pretty shiny silver slippers, and when I let her out at the corner
before Orchards it was sort of muddy, and I thought they sure were
foolish little things to walk in, but that it was a terrible pity to
spoil ’em like that.”
“How long did it take you to cover the distance between the point from
which you picked Mrs. Bellamy up to the point at which you set her
down?”
“About eight minutes, I should say. It’s a little over two
miles—nearer two and a half, I guess.”
“Did she seem in a hurry?”
“Yes, sir, she surely did; when she got out at the Orchards corner she
started off almost at a run. I pretty nearly called to her to look out
or she’d trip herself, but then I decided that it wasn’t none of my
business, and of course it wasn’t.”
“How do you fix the date and the time, Turner?”
“Well, that’s easy. It was my last trip that night to Perrytown, see?
And about the date, next morning I saw how there had been the—a—well,
a murder at Orchards, and I remembered her and those silver slippers,
and that black cloak, so I dropped in at headquarters to tell ’em what
I knew—and it was her all right. They made me go over and look at her,
and I won’t forget that in a hurry, either—no, sir.”
The boy who had driven her to Orchards set his lips hard, turning his
eyes resolutely from the little black cloak. “I got ’em to change my
route the next day,” he said, his pleasant young voice suddenly
shaken.
“You say that you had driven her over several times before?”
“Well, two or three times, I guess—all in that last month too. I only
had the route a month.”
“Same time—half-past eight?”
“That’s right—eight-thirty.”
“Anything in particular call your attention to her?”
“Well, I should think she’d have called anyone’s attention to her,”
said Joe Turner gently. “Even all wrapped up like that, she was
prettier than anything I ever saw in my whole life.” And he added,
more gently still: “About twenty times prettier.”
The prosecutor stood silent for a moment, letting the hushed voice
evoke once more that radiant image, lace-scarfed, silver-slippered,
slipping off into the shadows. “That will be all,” he said.
“Cross-examine.”
“No questions.” Even Lambert’s voice boomed less roundly.
“Next witness—Sergeant Johnson.”
“Sergeant Hendrick Johnson!”
Obedient to Ben Potts’s lyric summons, a young gentleman who looked
like a Norse god inappropriately clothed in gray whipcord and a Sam
Browne belt strode promptly down the aisle and into the witness box.
“Sergeant Johnson, what was your occupation on the nineteenth of June,
1926?”
“State trooper—sergeant.”
“When did you first receive notification of the murder at Orchards?”
“At a little before ten on the morning of the twentieth of June. I’d
just dropped in at headquarters when Mr. Conroy came in to report what
he’d discovered at the cottage.”
“Please tell us what happened then.”
“I was detailed to accompany Mr. Dutton, the coroner, Dr. Stanley and
another trooper, Dan Wilkins, to the cottage. Mr. Dutton took Dr.
Stanley along with him in his roadster, and Wilkins rode with me in my
side car. We left headquarters at a little after ten and got to the
cottage about quarter past.”
“Just one moment. Do I understand that the state troopers have
headquarters in Rosemont?”
“That’s correct, sir.”
“Of which you are in charge?”
“That’s correct too.”
“Who had the key to the cottage?”
“I had it; Mr. Conroy had turned it over to me. I unlocked the door of
the cottage myself, and we all went in together.” The crisp, assured
young voice implied that a murder more or less was all in the day’s
work to the state police.
“Did you drive directly up to the cottage door?”
“No; we left the motorcycle and the car just short of the spot where
the little dirt road to the cottage hits the gravel road to the main
house and went in on foot, using the grass strip that edges the road.”
“Any special reason for that?”
“There certainly was. We didn’t want to mix up footprints and other
marks any more than they’d been mixed already.”
“What happened after you got in the house?”
“Well, Mr. Dutton and the doctor took charge of the body, and we
helped them to move it into the dining room across the hall, after a
careful inspection had been made of the position of the body. As a
matter of fact, a chalk outline was made of it for further analysis,
if necessary, and I took a flash light or so of it so that we’d have
that, too, to check up with later. I helped to carry the body to the
other room and place it on the table, where it was decided to keep it
until the autopsy could be performed. I then locked the door of the
parlour so that nothing could be disturbed there, put the key in my
pocket, and went out to inspect the marks in the dirt road. I left Mr.
Dutton and Dr. Stanley with the body and sent Wilkins down the road to
a gas station to telephone Mr. Bellamy that his wife had been found in
the cottage. There was no telephone in the cottage, and the one at the
main house had been disconnected.”
“Sergeant, was Mr. Bellamy under suspicion at the time that you
telephoned him?”
“I didn’t do the telephoning,” corrected Sergeant Johnson
dispassionately; and added more dispassionately still; “Everyone was
under suspicion.”
“Mr. Bellamy no more than another?”
“What I said was,” remarked the sergeant with professional reticence,
“that everyone was under suspicion.”
Mr. Farr met the imperturbable blue eye of his witness with an
expression in which irritation and discretion were struggling for
supremacy. Discretion triumphed. “Did you discover any tracks on the
cottage road?”
“I surely did.”
“Footprints?”
“No; there were some prints, but they were too cut up and blurred to
make much out of. What I found were tire tracks.”
“More than one set?”
“There were traces of at least four sets, two of them made by the same
car.”
“All equally distinct?”
“No, they varied considerably. The ground in the cottage road is of a
distinctly clayey character, which under the proper conditions would
act almost as a cast.”
“What would be a proper condition?”
“A damp state following a rainstorm, followed in turn by sufficient
fair weather to permit the impression to dry out.”
“Was such a state in existence?”
“In one case—yes. There was a storm between one and three on the
afternoon of the nineteenth. We’ll call the tire impressions A, B 1
and 2, and C. A showed only very vague traces of a very broad, massive
tire on a heavy car. It was almost obliterated, showing that it must
have been there either before or during the downpour.”
“Would those tracks have corresponded to the ones on Mr. Farwell’s
car?”
“There were absolutely no distinguishing tire marks left; it could
have been Mr. Farwell’s or any other large car. C had come much later,
when the ground had had time to dry out considerably. They were the
traces of a medium-sized tire on fairly dry ground. They cut across
the tracks left by both A and B.”
“Could they have been made by Mr. Conroy’s car?”
“I think that very likely they were. I checked up as well as possible
under the conditions, and they corresponded all right.”
“What about the B impressions?”
“Both the B impressions were as sharp and distinct as though they had
been made in wax. They were made by the same car; judging from the
soil conditions, at an interval of an hour or so. We made a series of
tests later to see how long it retained moisture.”
“Of what nature were these impressions, sergeant?”
“They were narrow tires, such as are used on the smaller, lighter
cars,” said Sergeant Johnson, a slight tinge of gravity touching the
curtness of his unemotional young voice. “Two of the tires—the ones on
the front right and rear left wheels had the tread so worn off that it
would be risky to hazard a guess as to their manufacture. The ones on
the front left and rear right were brand new, and the impressions in
both cases were as clear cut as though you’d carved them. The
impressions of B 2 were even deeper than B 1, showing that the car
must have stood much longer at one time than at another. We
experimented with that, too, but the results weren’t definite enough
to report on positively.”
“What makes you so clear as to which were B 2?”
“At one spot B 2 was superimposed on B 1 very distinctly.”
“What were the makes of the rear right and left front tires,
sergeant?”
“The rear right was a new Ajax tire; the front left was a practically
new Silvertown cord.”
“Did they correspond with any of the cars mentioned so far in this
case?”
“They corresponded exactly with the tires on Mr. Stephen Bellamy’s car
when we inspected it on the afternoon of June twentieth.”
“No possibility of error?”
“Not a chance,” said Sergeant Johnson, succinctly and gravely.
“Exactly. Had the car been washed at the time you inspected it,
Sergeant?”
“No, sir, it had not.”
“Was there mud on the tires?”
“Yes, but as it was of much the same character as the mud in Mr.
Bellamy’s own drive, we attached no particular importance to it.”
“Was there any grease on the car?”
“No, sir; we made a very thorough inspection. There was no trace of
grease.”
“Did you find anything else of consequence on the premises, sergeant?”
“I picked up a kind of lunch box in the shrubbery outside, and in the
dining room, on a chair in the corner, I found a black cape—chiffon, I
expect you call it—a black lace scarf and a little black silk bag with
a shiny clasp that looked like diamonds.”
“Did you keep a list of the contents of the bag?”
“I did.”
“Have you it with you?”
“I have.”
“Let’s hear it, please?”
“‘Contents of black purse found in dining room of Thorne Cottage, June
20, 1926,’” read Sergeant Johnson briskly, “‘One vanity case, pale
green enamel; one lip stick, same; one small green linen handkerchief,
marked Mimi; leather frame inclosing snapshot of man in tennis
clothes, inscribed For My Mimi from Steve; sample of blue chiffon with
daisies; gold pencil; two theatre-ticket stubs to Vanities, June
eighth; three letters, written on white bond paper, signed Pat.’”
“That’s all?”
“That’s all.”
“Are these the articles found in the dining room, sergeant?”
Sergeant Johnson eyed the contents of the box placed before him
somewhat cursorily. “Those are the ones.”
“Just check over the contents of the bag, will you? Nothing missing?”
“Not a thing.”
“I ask to have these marked for identification and offer them in
evidence, Your Honour.”
“No objections,” said Mr. Lambert unexpectedly.
Mr. Farr eyed him incredulously for a moment, as though he doubted the
evidence of his ears. Then, rather thoughtfully, he produced another
object from the inexhaustible maw of his desk and poised it carefully
on the ledge under the sergeant’s nose. It was a box—a nice, shiny tin
box, painted a cheerful but decorous maroon—the kind of a box that
good little boys carry triumphantly to school, bursting with cookies
and apples and peanut-butter sandwiches. It had a neat handle and a
large, beautiful, early English initial painted on the top.
“Did you recognize this, sergeant?”
“Yes. It’s a lunch box that I picked up back of the shrubbery to the
left of the Orchards cottage.”
“Had it anything in it?”
“It was about three-quarters empty. There was a ham sandwich and some
salted nuts and dates in it, and a couple of doughnuts.”
“What should you say that the initial on the cover represented?”
“I shouldn’t say,” remarked the sergeant frankly. “It’s got too many
curlicues and doodads. It might be a D, or it might be P, or then
again, it mightn’t be either.”
“So far as you know, it hasn’t been identified as anyone’s property?”
“No, sir.”
“It might have been left there at some previous date?”
“Well, it might have been; but the food seemed pretty fresh, and there
were some new twigs broken off, as though someone had pressed way back
into the shrubbery.”
“I offer this box in evidence, Your Honour, not as of any evidential
value, but merely to keep the record straight as to what was turned
over by the police.”
“No objections,” said Mr. Lambert with that same surprising
promptitude, his eyes following the shiny box somewhat hungrily.
“Very well, sergeant, that’s all. Cross-examine.”
“Did you examine the portion of the drive to the rear of the cottage,
sergeant?” inquired Mr. Lambert with genial interest.
“Yes, sir.”
“Find any traces of tires?”
“No, sir.”
“No further questions,” intoned Mr. Lambert mellifluously.
Mr. Farr turned briskly to an unhappy-looking young man crouching
apprehensively in a far corner. “Now, Mr. Oliver, I’m going to get you
just to read these three letters into the record. I’m unable to do it
myself, as I’ve been subjected to considerable eye strain recently.”
“Do I start with the one on top?” inquired the wretched youth, who
looked as though he were about to die at any moment.
“Start with the first in order of date,” suggested Mr. Farr
benevolently. “May twenty-first, I think it is. And just raise your
voice a little so we’ll all be able to hear you.”
“Darling, darling,” roared Mr. Oliver unbelievably, and paused,
staring about him wildly, flame coloured far beyond the roots of his
russet hair. “May twenty-first,” he added in a suffocated whisper.
Darling, darling:
I waited there for you for over an hour. I couldn’t believe that you
weren’t coming—not after you’d promised. And when I got back and
found that hateful, stiff little note—— Mimi, how could you? You
didn’t mean it to say, “I don’t love you”? It didn’t say that, did
it? It sounded so horribly as though that was what it was trying to
say that I kept both hands over my ears all the time that I was
reading it. I won’t believe it. You do—you must. You’re the only
thing that I’ve ever loved in all my life, Mimi; I swear it. You’re
the only thing that I’ll ever love, as long as I live.
You say that you’re frightened; that there’s been talk—oh, darling,
what of it? “They say? What say they? Let them say!” They’re a lot
of wise, sensible, good-for-nothing idiots, who haven’t anything
better to do in the world than wag their heads and their tongues, or
else they’re a pack of young fools, frantic with jealousy because
they can’t be beautiful like Mimi or lucky like Pat. If their talk
gets really dangerous or ugly we can shut them all up in ten seconds
by telling them that we’re planning to shake the dust of Rosemont
from our heels any minute, and live happy ever after in some
“cleaner, greener land.”
Do you want me to tell them that I’ve asked you fifteen thousand and
three times to burn all our bridges and marry me, Mimi? Or didn’t
you hear me? You always look then as though you were listening to
someone else—someone with a louder voice than mine, saying “Wait—not
yet. Think again—you’ll be sorry. Be careful—be careful.” Don’t
listen to that liar, Mimi—listen to Pat, who loves you.
To-morrow night, about nine, I’ll have the car at the back road.
I’ll manage to get away somehow, and you must too. Wear that frilly
thing that I love—you know, the green one—and the slippers with
butterflies on them, and nothing on your hair. The wickedest thing
that you ever do is to wear a hat. No, I’m wrong, you can wear
something on your hair, after all. On the two curls right behind
your ears—the littlest curls—my curls—you can wear two drops of that
stuff that smells like lilacs in the rain. And I’ll put you—and your
curls—and your slippers—and your sweetness—and your magic—into my
car and we’ll drive twenty miles away from those wagging tongues.
And, Mimi, I’ll teach you how beautiful it is to be alive and young
and in love, in a world that’s full of spring and stars and lilacs.
Oh, Mimi, come quickly and let me teach you!
Pat.
The halting voice laboured to an all too brief silence. Even the back
of Mr. Oliver’s neck was incandescent—perhaps he would not have flamed
so hotly if he had realized how few eyes in the courtroom were resting
on him. For across the crowded little room, Sue Ives, all her gay
serenity gone, was staring at the figure by the window with terrified
and incredulous eyes, black with tears.
“Oh, Pat—oh, Pat,” cried those drowning eyes, “what is this that you
have done to us? Never loved anyone else? Never in all your life? What
is this that you have done?”
And as though in answer to that despairing cry, the man by the window
half rose, shaking his head in fierce entreaty.
“Don’t listen! Don’t listen!” implored his frantic eyes. . . .
“Now the next one, Mr. Oliver,” said Mr. Farr.
Rosemont, June 8th.
Mimi darling, darling, darling:
It’s after four o’clock and the birds in the vines outside the
window are making the most awful row. I haven’t closed my eyes yet,
and now I’m going to stop trying. What’s the use of sleeping, when
here’s another day with Mimi in it? Dawn—I always thought it was the
worst word in the English language, and here I am on my knees
waiting for it, and ranting about it like any fool—like any happy,
happy fool.
I’m so happy that it simply isn’t decent. I keep telling myself that
we’re mad—that there’s black trouble ahead of us—that I haven’t any
right in the world to let you do this—that I’m older and ought to be
wiser. And when I get all through, the only thing I can remember is
that I feel like a kid waking up on his birthday to find the sun and
the moon and the stars and the world and a little red wagon sitting
in a row at the foot of his bed. Because I have you, Mimi, and
you’re the sun and the moon and the stars and the world—and a little
red wagon too, my beautiful love.
Well, here’s the sun himself, and no one in Rosemont to pay any
attention to him but the milkman and me. “The sun in splendour”—what
comes after that, do you remember? Not that it makes any difference;
the only thing that makes any difference is that what will come
after that in just a few minutes will be a clock striking five—and
then six and then seven and it will be another day—another
miraculous, incredible day getting under way in a world that holds
Mimi in it. Lucky day, lucky world, lucky, lucky me, Mimi, who will
be your worshipper while this world lasts.
Good morning, Beautiful.
Your Pat.
The eyes of the Court swung avidly back to the slim figure in the
space before them, but for once that bright head was bowed. Sue Ives
was no longer looking at Mimi’s worshipper.
“And the next?” murmured Farr.
Rosemont, June 9th.
My little heart:
I went to bed the minute I got home, just as I promised, but it
didn’t do much good. I did go to sleep for a bit, but it was only to
dream that you were leaning over me again with your hair swinging
down like two lovely clouds of fire and saying over and over in that
small, blessed voice—that voice that I’d strain to hear from under
three feet of sod—“It’s not a dream, love, it’s not a dream—it’s
Mimi, who’s yours and who’s sweeter than all the dreams you’ll dream
between here and heaven. Wake up. Wake up! She’s waiting for you.
How can you sleep?” And I couldn’t sleep; no, it’s no use. Mimi, how
can I ever sleep again, now that I have you?
It wasn’t just a dream that between those shining clouds that are
your hair your eyes were bright with laughter and with tears, was
it, Mimi? No, that was not a dream. To think that anyone in the
world can cry and still be beautiful! It must be an awful temptation
to do it all the time—only I know that you won’t. Darling, don’t
cry. Even when you look beautiful and on the edge of laughter, it
makes me want to kill myself. It’s because you’re afraid, isn’t
it—afraid that we won’t be able to make a go of it? Don’t be afraid.
If you will come to me—really, forever, not in little snatched bits
of heaven like this, but to belong to me all the days of my life—if
you will believe in me and trust me, I swear that I’ll make you
happy. I swear it.
I know that at first it may be hideously hard. I know that giving up
everything here and starting life all over somewhere with strangers
will be hard to desperation. But it will be easier than trying to
fight it out here, won’t it, Mimi? And in the end we’ll hold
happiness in our hands—you’ll see, my blessed. Don’t cry, don’t cry,
my little girl—not even in dreams, not even through laughter.
Because, you see, like the Prince and Princess in the fairy tale,
we’re going to live happy ever after.
Your Pat.
“That concludes the letters?” inquired Judge Carver, hopefully, his
eyes on the bowed head beneath his throne.
“That concludes them,” said Mr. Farr, removing them deftly from the
assistant prosecutor’s palsied fingers. “And as it is close to four, I
would like to make a suggestion. The state is ready to rest its case
with these letters, but an extremely unfortunate occurrence has
deprived us so far of one of our witnesses, who is essential as a link
in the chain of evidence that we have forged. This witness was
stricken three weeks ago with appendicitis and rushed to a New York
hospital. I was given every assurance that he would be able to be
present by this date, but late last week unfavourable symptoms
developed and he has been closely confined ever since.
“I have here the surgeon’s certificate that he is absolutely unable to
take the stand to-day, but that it is entirely possible that he may do
so by Monday. As this is Friday, therefore, I respectfully suggest
that we adjourn to Monday, when the state will rest its case.”
“Have you any objections, Mr. Lambert?”
“Every objection, Your Honour!” replied Mr. Lambert with passionate
conviction. “I have two witnesses myself who have come here at great
inconvenience to themselves and are obliged to return at the earliest
possible moment. What about them? What about the unfortunate jury?
What about the unfortunate defendants? I have most emphatic objections
to delaying this trial one second longer.”
“Then I can only suggest that the trial proceed and that the state be
permitted to produce its witness as soon as is humanly possible, in
which case the defense would necessarily be permitted to produce what
witnesses it saw fit in rebuttal.”
Mr. Lambert, still flown with some secret triumph, made an ample
gesture of condescension.
“Very well, I consider it highly irregular, but leave it that
way—leave it that way by all means. Now, Your Honour——”
“You say you have a certificate, Mr. Farr?”
“Yes, Your Honour.”
“May we have its contents?”
“Certainly.” Mr. Farr tendered it promptly. “It’s from the chief
surgeon at St. Luke’s. As you see, it simply says that it would be
against his express orders that Dr. Barretti should take the stand
to-day, but that, if nothing unfavourable develops, he should be able
to do so by Monday.”
“Yes. Well, Mr. Farr, if Mr. Lambert has no objections you may produce
Dr. Barretti then. You have no further questions?”
“None, Your Honour.”
“Very well, the Court stands adjourned until to-morrow at ten.”
“What name did he say?” inquired the reporter in a curiously hushed
voice. “Dr. What?”
“It sounded like Barretti,” said the red-headed girl, getting limply
to her feet.
“The poor fool!” murmured the reporter in the same awe-stricken tones.
“What?”
“Lambert. Did you get that? The poor blithering fool doesn’t know who
he is and where he’s heading.”
“Well, who is he?” inquired the red-headed girl over her shoulder
despairingly. She felt that if anything else happened she would sit on
the floor and cry, and she didn’t want to—much.
“It’s Barretti—Gabriel Barretti,” said the reporter. “The greatest
finger-print expert in the world. Lord, it means that he must have
their—— What in the world’s the matter? D’you want a handkerchief?”
The red-headed girl, nodding feebly, clutched at the large white
handkerchief with one hand and the large blue serge sleeve with the
other. Anyway, she hadn’t sat on the floor.
The fourth day of the Bellamy trial was over.