The reporter looked from the clock to the red-headed girl and back
again, with an expression in which consternation and irritation were
neatly blended. The red-headed girl’s hat was well over one eye, her
nose was undeniably pink, she had a fluff of hair over her ear, a
fiery spot burning in either cheek and two or more in her eyes. The
clock said ten-thirty-five.
“Well, you’re a fine one,” said the reporter in tones that belied the
statement. He removed an overcoat, a woolly scarf, a portable
typewriter, seven tabloid newspapers, and a gray felt hat from the
seat next to him and waited virtuously for appropriate expressions of
gratitude. None were forthcoming. The red-headed girl scrambled
unceremoniously over his feet, sank into the seat, and abandoned
herself to a series of minute but audible pants varied by an
occasional subdued sniff.
“What in the world—” began the reporter.
“Don’t speak to me!” said the red-headed girl in a small fierce voice,
and added even more fiercely: “What’s happened?”
“That’s what I want to know!” remarked the reporter with some
emphasis. “What in the world was that perfectly ungodly racket going
on outside in the hall?”
“Me,” said the red-headed girl. “Who’s been on the stand?”
“You? For the Lord’s sake, what were you doing?”
“Screaming,” said the red-headed girl. “Who’s been on the stand?”
“Just a guy from a prison out West to prove that Orsini had served a
jail sentence for robbery. What were you screaming about?”
“Because they wouldn’t let me in. . . . Who’s on now?”
“That red-headed fellow, Leo Fox, from the gas station. He’s through
with his direct, and Farr has him now. . . . Why wouldn’t they let you
in?”
“Because—— No, I can’t tell you all that now. Later—at lunch. Listen,
won’t you——”
“It was Saturday night, wasn’t it, Mr. Fox?”
“Sure it was Saturday night.”
Mr. Fox, who was lavishly decorated with freckles, whose coat was
about three inches too tight for him, and whose tie was about three
shades too green, shifted his chewing gum dexterously to the other
cheek and kept a wary eye on Mr. Farr.
“There were a good many cars getting gas at your station on fine
Saturday nights in June, weren’t there?”
“Sure there were.”
“Yet this car and its occupants are indelibly stamped on your memory?”
“If you mean do I remember the both of them, sure I do. They wasn’t
just getting gas; the dame—the lady—she wanted a drink of water, and
it was me who got it for her. That was what made me remember them,
see?”
“And all you know is that it was some time after nine, because you
didn’t come on duty until nine?”
“That’s right. I don’t never come on until then; and sometimes I’m a
couple of minutes late, at that.”
“But it might have been two minutes past nine instead of twenty-five
minutes past, as Mrs. Ives claims?”
“No, sir, it couldn’t have been nothing of the kind. People don’t get
eight gallons of gas, and pay for it, and get change, and ask for
glasses of water and get them, and drink them and get away all in two
minutes. It must have been more than ten minutes past, no matter if
they were the first ones to come along after I checked in.”
Mr. Farr contemplated him with marked disfavour. “I didn’t ask you for
a speech, Mr. Fox. The only fact you are able to state to us
positively as to the time is that you came on duty at nine o’clock,
and that Mrs. Ives and Mr. Bellamy appeared after you had arrived.”
“That’s right.”
“Then that will be all. You may stand down.”
“Call Mr. Patrick Ives,” said Mr. Lambert.
“Mr. Patrick Ives!”
From the corner by the window where he had sat, hour after hour and
day after day, with his mother’s small gloved hand resting lightly and
reassuringly on his knee, Patrick Ives rose and moved slowly forward
toward the witness box.
How tall he was, thought the red-headed girl—how tall and young, for
all the haggard misery and bitterness of that white and reckless face.
He stood staring about him for a moment, his black head towering
inches above those about him; then, with one swift stride, he was in
his place.
“Mr. Ives, will you be good enough to tell us as concisely as possible
just what happened on the night of June 19, 1926, from the time that
you arrived at your home to the time that you retired for the night?”
“Oh,” said Patrick Ives indifferently, “I doubt whether I could do
anything along that line at all. I have a notoriously bad memory, and
I’d simply be faking a lot of stuff that wouldn’t do either of us any
good. Besides, most of that ground has been gone over by other
witnesses, hasn’t it?”
The casual insolence of the conversational tone had had the effect of
literally hypnotizing Mr. Lambert, Mr. Farr, and the redoubtable
Carver himself into a state of stupefied inaction. As the voice
ceased, however, all three emerged from coma into violent energy. It
was difficult to tell which of the three was the more profoundly
moved, though Mr. Lambert’s protestations were the most piercing.
Fortified by his gavel, however, Judge Carver managed to batter the
rest into silence.
“Let that answer be stricken from the record! It is totally improper,
Mr. Ives. This is not a debating society. You will kindly refrain from
expressing your opinions on any subject whatsoever, and will confine
yourself to the briefest replies possible.”
“If Mr. Lambert will put a definite question to me I’ll see whether I
can give him a definite answer,” replied Mr. Ives, looking entirely
unchastened and remotely diverted.
“Very well,” said Lambert, choking with ill-concealed wrath. “Will you
be so kind as to tell us whether anything out of the ordinary occurred
during that evening, Mr. Ives?”
“No.”
“Before dinner?”
“No.”
“After dinner?”
“No.”
Mr. Ives flung him the monosyllables like so many very bare bones
tossed at a large, hungry, snapping dog.
“Miss Page testified that she met you at the nursery door with a ship
model in your hand at about eight o’clock. Is that correct?”
“Yes.”
“When did you see her again?”
“About a quarter of an hour later.”
“Was her testimony as to what followed correct?”
“Oh, it was correct enough as far as it went.”
“It went further than she told us?”
“Considerably,” said Mr. Ives, a grimly reminiscent smile flitting
across his haggard young face.
“In what direction?”
“In the direction of violent hysterics and general lunacy,” said Mr.
Ives unfeelingly.
“What was the cause of these—er—manifestations?”
“Miss Page,” said Mr. Ives with great clarity and precision, “is a
high-strung, unbalanced, hysterical little idiot Mrs. Ives had——”
“Does Your Honour consider that a responsive reply?” inquired Mr. Farr
with mild interest.
“The Court has already warned the witness to keep strictly to the
question. It repeats that warning. As for the reply, it may be
stricken from the record.”
“I consider it an absolutely responsive reply,” cried Mr. Lambert with
some heat. “Mr. Ives was explaining why Miss Page——”
“You may take your exception and put the question again, Mr. Lambert.
The Court has ruled on the reply.”
“What caused the hysteria you speak of?” inquired Mr. Lambert through
gritted teeth.
“The fact that Mrs. Ives had told her that her services were no longer
required, and that she had better make her preparations to leave on
Monday. Miss Page wished me to intervene in her behalf, as I had
already done on two occasions.”
“Did you acquiesce?”
“On the contrary,” said Pat Ives—and at the tone of chilled steel in
his voice the red-headed girl felt a flash of something like pity for
her pet detestation, the flower-faced Miss Page—“I told her that in my
opinion Sunday was a better day than Monday, and that I’d send Roberts
to help with the packing.”
“Why was Miss Page so anxious to stay, Mr. Ives?”
“How should I know?” inquired Mr. Ives. “She probably realized that it
was a very excellent job that she was losing.”
“That is the only explanation that occurs to you?”
“It is the only explanation that it occurs to me to give you,” said
Mr. Ives gently, a small, dangerous smile playing about the corner of
his mouth.
Mr. Lambert eyed him indecisively for a moment, and prudently decided
on another tack. “Did that conclude your conversation?”
“Oh, no,” replied Mr. Ives, the smile deepening. “That started it.”
“Will you give us the rest of it, please?”
“I’m afraid I can’t. As I told you, I have a bad memory. If it doesn’t
betray me, however, I believe that it was largely an elaboration of
the two original themes.”
“What themes?”
“The themes of her departure and my intervention.”
“Miss Page said nothing about a note?”
“A note?” There was a look of genuine surprise in the lifted brows.
“She did not mention having intercepted a note from Mrs. Stephen
Bellamy—having abstracted it from a book in the library?”
“I see,” said Mr. Ives, the brows relaxing, the smile returning, a
little deeper and more dangerous. “No, I don’t believe that she
mentioned that. It would probably have made an impression on me if she
had.”
“Had you any reason to believe that Miss Page was jealous of Mrs.
Bellamy, Mr. Ives?”
“Jealous of Mrs. Bellamy? Why should Miss Page have been jealous of
Mrs. Bellamy?”
“I thought that possibly you might be able to tell us.”
“You were in error,” said Mr. Ives, leaning a little forward in his
chair. “I am totally unable to tell you.”
He did not lift his voice, but Mr. Lambert moved back a step somewhat
precipitately.
“Yes—exactly. Now, Mr. Ives, Melanie Cordier has testified that you
told her that you had not found the note she claims to have placed
there. Was that correct?”
“That is what I told her, certainly.”
“And it was an accurate statement on your part?”
Mr. Farr rose leisurely to his feet. “Just one moment, please. I’m
becoming a little confused from time to time as to whether this is
direct or cross-examination. It looks as though Mr. Lambert were going
to leave me very little to do. Possibly I’m in error, but it certainly
sounds to me as though he were impeaching the veracity of his own
witness.”
“The Court is inclined to agree with you. Do you object to the
question?”
“I don’t particularly object to the question, but it strikes me as
totally out of place.”
“Very well. You need not reply to that question, Mr. Ives.”
“Thanks—with Your Honour’s permission, I prefer to. I’m sure that Mr.
Lambert will be glad to know that my reply to Melanie Cordier was
entirely accurate.”
“How many of these notes had you received previously?” inquired Mr.
Lambert, and the expression that inflamed his countenance was not one
of gratitude.
“Six or eight, possibly.”
“Over what period?”
“Over a period of about two months.”
“Are you aware that Miss Cordier testified that she had placed
possibly twenty there over a much more extended period?”
“Well, if she testified that,” said Patrick Ives indifferently, “she
lied.”
“What was the tenor of these notes?”
“They were largely suggesting appointments at the cottage.”
“How often were these appointments carried through?”
“Twice.”
“Only twice?”
At the flat incredulity of Lambert’s face something flared in Patrick
Ives’s heavy blue eyes.
“Twice, I said—twice.”
“Will you give us the dates?”
“I’m afraid I can’t—once in the latter part of May, again about a week
before the murder. That’s about the best that I can do.”
“Mr. Ives, there has been some talk here of this knife, State Exhibit
6. Miss Page has identified it as belonging to you. Is that correct?”
“Quite.”
“Will you tell us when you last saw it?”
“The last time that I remember seeing it before it was produced here
in court was on the afternoon of my wife’s arrest—Monday the
twenty-first.”
“Have you any idea where it was on the night of June nineteenth at
half-past nine?”
“I have a very definite and distinct idea,” said Patrick Ives, and for
the first time since he had mounted the stand the haggard restlessness
of his face relaxed to something curiously approaching gaiety. “It was
in my right-hand trousers pocket.”
Mr. Lambert’s exultant countenance was turned squarely to the jury.
“How did it come to be there?”
“It was there because that’s where I stuck it when I took the boat
upstairs to Pete at eight o’clock that evening, and it stayed there
until I put it back on the desk Sunday morning after breakfast.”
“No chance of an error on that?”
“Not a chance.”
“No possibility of its being in the possession of Mrs. Ives at any
time that evening?”
“Not a possibility.”
“Mr. Ives, where were you that evening at nine-thirty o’clock?”
The careless gaiety departed abruptly from Patrick Ives’s face. For a
long moment he sat staring at Lambert, coolly and speculatively. His
eyes, still speculating, shifted briefly to the hundreds of eager
countenances straining toward his, and at the sight of their frantic
attention his mouth twisted somewhat mirthlessly. “Unkind, isn’t it,”
mocked his eyes, “to keep you waiting!”
“I was at home,” said Patrick Ives.
“What were you doing?”
“Smoking a pipe and looking through a magazine, I think, though I
shouldn’t like to swear to the exact time. I wasn’t using a stop
watch.”
“In what room?”
“Well, I’m afraid that I can’t help you there much either. I moved
about from one room to another, you see. I did a little more work on
the boat, smoked, read—I didn’t follow any set programme. I wasn’t
aware at the time that it would have been judicious to do so.”
“You are aware now, however, that Melanie Cordier said that you were
not in any of the lower rooms when she made her rounds at ten?”
“Then I must have been in one of the upper rooms,” said Patrick Ives
gently.
“You are also aware that Mrs. Daniel Ives has told us that you didn’t
bring her her fruit that night because you were not in the house?”
“Well,” said Pat Ives gently still, “this is probably the first time
in her life that she was ever mistaken. I was in the house.”
“What caused you to change your mind as to attending the poker party,
Mr. Ives?”
“Circumstances arose that made it impossible.” The inscrutability of
Mr. Ives’s countenance suggested that he would be a formidable
addition to any poker party.
“What circumstances?”
“Circumstances,” said Mr. Ives, “that I shouldn’t dream of discussing
either here or elsewhere. I am able to assure you, however, that they
were not even remotely connected with the murder.”
“What circumstances?” repeated Mr. Lambert, with passionate
insistence.
“Now, what,” asked Mr. Farr with languid pathos, “I again inquire, is
my distinguished adversary leaving for a mere prosecutor to do?”
“Mr. Lambert,” said Judge Carver austerely, “it strikes the Court that
you are most certainly pressing the witness unduly in view of the fact
that this is direct examination, and you are therefore bound to abide
by his answer. The Court——”
“He has refused to give me an answer,” replied Mr. Lambert, with some
degree of justice and a larger degree of heat. “I may state to Your
Honour that I regard the witness’s manner as distinctly hostile and——”
“The Court fails to see wherein he has proved hostile,” remarked Judge
Carver critically, “and it therefore requests you to bear in mind
henceforth that you are dealing with your own witness. You may proceed
with the examination.”
Mr. Lambert turned his richly suffused countenance back to his own
witness, avoiding Sue Ives’s eye, which for the last half hour had not
once wavered from the look of passionate indignation that she had
directed toward him at the outset of his manœuvres.
“Mr. Ives,” said Mr. Lambert, “you heard Miss Roberts testify that she
believed that it was your voice that she heard as she tried the door
to the day nursery, did you not?”
“Yes, I heard her testify to that effect.”
“Was she mistaken?”
“No,” said Patrick Ives, spacing his words with cool deliberation,
“she was not mistaken.”
“Was she mistaken in believing that the door was locked?”
“No, she was not mistaken.”
“Which of you locked the door, Mr. Ives?”
“If you will tell me what that has to do with the murder of Mimi
Bellamy,” said Mr. Ives with even greater deliberation, “I will tell
you who locked the door.”
“You refuse to answer my question?”
“Most assuredly I refuse to answer your question.”
“Your Honour——” choked the frenzied Lambert.
“The Court also fails to see what the question has to do with the
case,” said Judge Carver, in a tone by no means propitiatory. “It is
excluded. Proceed.”
“It is being made practically impossible for me to proceed in any
direction,” remarked Lambert, in a voice unsteady with indignation.
“Impossible! Mr. Ives, all that any occupant of that room had to do in
order to get out of the house was to unlock that door and go, wasn’t
it?”
“Absolutely all,” acquiesced the hostile witness cordially.
“No one would have been likely to see either one or the other or both
depart, would they?”
“I think it highly unlikely.”
“No one saw either you or Miss Page in the house between nine and ten,
did they?”
“Not a soul—not a single solitary soul,” said Mr. Ives, and his voice
was almost blithe.
“How long would it take to get from your house to the cottage at
Orchards?”
“On foot?”
“On foot, yes.”
“Oh, ten-fifteen minutes, perhaps. There’s a short cut across the
fields behind the house that comes out close to there.”
“The one that Miss Page used to take the children to the playhouse?”
“That’s the one, yes.”
“She knew of this path?”
“Well, obviously.” The grim smile flashed for a moment to open
mockery.
“And you knew of it?”
“And I knew of it.”
“How?”
“My mother had told me that Miss Page was taking the children there,
and I’d requested her not to do so as I knew Sue’s feeling about the
place.”
“Mr. Ives, were your relations with your wife happy?”
For a moment Patrick Ives sat perfectly still, fighting back the surge
of crimson that flooded his pale mockery. When he spoke, his voice,
for all its clearness, sounded as though it had travelled back from a
great distance.
“Yes,” he said, “they were happy.”
“In so far as you know, she was unaware that you had ceased to care
for her?”
“She could hardly have been aware of it,” said Patrick Ives. “From the
moment that I first saw her I have loved her passionately—and
devotedly—and entirely.”
After a long, astounded silence, Lambert’s voice asked heavily, “You
expect us to believe, in the face of the evidence that has been
presented to us here, that you have been faithful to Mrs. Ives?”
“It’s a matter of supreme indifference to me what you believe,” said
Patrick Ives. “I don’t regard fidelity to Sue as particularly
creditable. The fool of the world would have enough sense for that.”
“You are saying that you never ceased to love her?”
“I am saying that since I met her I’ve never given another woman two
thoughts except to wish to God that she was somewhere else.”
“That was why you went to meet Madeleine Bellamy at the gardener’s
cottage?”
“That,” said Mr. Ives imperturbably, “is precisely why I went to meet
Madeleine Bellamy at the gardener’s cottage.”
Before the cool indifference of his eye the ugly sneer on Lambert’s
countenance wavered for a moment, deepened. “You deny that you wrote
these letters?”
Pat Ives bent on the small packet flourished beneath his eye a
careless glance. “Not for a moment.”
“Were they or were they not written after rendezvous had taken place
between you and Mrs. Bellamy?”
“Two of them were written after what you are pleased to describe as
rendezvous had taken place—one before.”
“And where, Mr. Ives, was your wife at the time of these meetings—on
June eighth, June ninth and May twenty-second?”
“I don’t know.”
“She was in New York, wasn’t she?”
“I haven’t the faintest idea. I’d never met her, you see.”
Lambert goggled at him above his sagging jaw. “You’d never met her?”
The courtroom throng blinked, shivered, stared wildly into one
another’s eyes. No, no, that wasn’t what he had said—that couldn’t be
what he had said. Or perhaps he was going mad before their eyes,
sitting there with those reckless eyes dark in his white face. . . .
“No; those letters were written in 1916. I didn’t meet Sue until the
spring of 1919.”
“Ha!” exhaled Lambert in a great breath of contemptuous relief.
“Written in 1916, eh? And may I ask why Mrs. Bellamy was carrying them
around in her bag in 1926?”
“You may ask,” Pat Ives assured him, “and what’s more, I’ll tell you.
She was selling them to me.”
“Selling them to you? What for?”
“For a hundred thousand dollars,” said Patrick Ives.
Over the stupefied silence of the courtroom soared Lambert’s
incredulous voice: “You expect us to believe that?”
“I wish to the Lord you’d stop asking me that,” said his witness with
undisguised irritation. “It’s not my business to decide what you’ll
believe or what you won’t believe. What I’m telling you is the truth.”
“It is your contention that these letters of yours, which you now
claim were written in 1916, were being used for purposes of blackmail
by Mrs. Bellamy?”
“You choose your own words,” said Pat Ives. “Personally, I’d chose
prettier ones. Mimi undoubtedly considered that I would be getting
value received in the letters. She was right. She also may have
considered that I owed her something. She was right again.”
“You owed her something?”
“I owed her a great deal for not having married me,” said Pat Ives.
“As she didn’t, I owe her more happiness than most men even dream of.”
Lambert made a sound that strongly suggested a snort. “Very
pretty—very pretty indeed. What it comes down to, however, is that you
accuse this dead girl, who is not here to defend herself, of
deliberately stooping to blackmailing the man she loved for a colossal
sum of money—that’s it, isn’t it?”
“Well, hardly. She didn’t love me, of course—she never loved anyone in
her life but Steve. She told me that she wanted the money because she
thought that he was sick; that he was working himself to death and
getting nothing out of it. She was going to persuade him that an aunt
in Cheyenne had left her the money, and that she wasn’t happy here,
and that they ought to start out again in a place that she’d heard of
in California. She had it all worked out very nicely.”
“One moment, Mr. Ives.” Judge Carver lifted an arresting hand. “As it
is after twelve, the Court will at this time take its customary recess
for luncheon. We will reconvene at one-fifteen.”
The reporter viewed the recessional through the doors behind the
witness box with an expression of unfeigned diversion. “Watch Uncle
Dudley,” he adjured the red-headed girl. “He’s not going to have any
luncheon; he’s going to stay right here where nobody can get at him to
give him any unwelcome instructions before he gets through with Mr.
Patrick Ives. There, what did I tell you?”
Mr. Lambert, who had followed somewhat perfunctorily in the wake of
his clients, now wheeled about briskly and returned to his well-laden
desk, where he proceeded to plunge into a large stack of papers before
him with virtuous abandon. He apparently found them of the most
absorbing interest, although from time to time he permitted himself a
slightly apprehensive glance at the closed door.
Finally it opened, and one of the amiable and harassed-looking young
men who shared the desk with him entered purposefully. An animated
though inaudible colloquy ensued, punctuated by much emphatic head
wagging by Lambert. Finally the young man departed more precipitately
than he had come, Mr. Lambert returned to his studies, and the
reporter and the red-headed girl emerged from the fascinated hush in
which they had been contemplating this silent drama.
“Ten to one she doesn’t get in a syllable to him before he gets
through with Ives,” said the reporter.
“Who doesn’t?” The red-headed girl’s tone was a trifle abstracted. She
was wondering if her nose was still pink, and if the young man beside
her was one of the young men who consider face powder more immoral
than tooth powder.
“Sue Ives, goose! What were you screaming about?”
“I was screaming,” said the red-headed girl, memory lighting a
reminiscent glitter in her eye, “because they wouldn’t let me in, and
I thought that if I made enough noise they might.”
“Why wouldn’t they let you in?”
“Because a fat fiend made a snatch at my ticket and tore it in two and
I had only half a one to show them.” She relinquished the powder box
regretfully and exhibited a blue scrap about two inches square. “Next
time,” she remarked with grim pride, “they’ll know whom this ticket
belongs to. Two policemen snatched at me, and I told them if they laid
one finger on me, I’d have them up for assault and battery. So they
didn’t lay a finger on me.”
“It will probably be a life work—and an uphill job, at that—to
eliminate a marked lack of emotional control that is your
distinguishing characteristic,” said the reporter meditatively.
“However, did you enjoy the picnic?”
“I adored it!” said the emotionally uncontrolled young woman beside
him.
“It was a fair picnic,” conceded the reporter. “And for a person whose
height should be measured in inches rather than feet, you’re a very
fair hiker. Too bad there’s only one Sunday to a trial. You have
rather a knack with bacon sandwiches too. How are you with scrambled
eggs?”
“Marvellous!” said the red-headed girl frankly.
“Though, if things keep up the way they’ve been going this morning,
we’re liable to have another trial started before this one is over.
The people versus Patrick Ives! I can see it coming.”
“You don’t think he did it, do you?” inquired the red-headed girl
anxiously.
“Oh, when it comes to murder trials, I don’t think. But I’ll tell you
this: If Steve Bellamy didn’t do it, he thinks that Pat Ives did. And
if Pat didn’t he thinks that Sue did. And I don’t envy any of them
their thoughts these days. . . . Ah, here we are again!”
“Mr. Ives, do I understand that you were perfectly willing to pay a
hundred thousand dollars for two or three letters that you protest are
perfectly innocent?”
“I don’t protest anything of the kind. I think they’re damned
incriminating letters—just exactly the kind of stuff that a sickening,
infatuated, fatuous young fool would write. And you’re flattering me
when you say that I was perfectly willing. It took me about two months
to get even moderately resigned to the situation, and at that, I
didn’t regard it with marked favour.”
“Still, you were willing to pay a hundred thousand dollars to keep the
letters out of your wife’s hands?”
“Five hundred thousand dollars, if I could put my hands on it, to keep
pain and sorrow and ugliness out of her way.”
“You were not convinced, then, that she would accept your story as to
when the letters were written?”
“I didn’t want her to know that they had ever been written. I’d never
told her of the degree of—intimacy that had existed between Mimi and
myself.”
“Exactly. Now Miss Cordier had told us that the notes from Mrs.
Bellamy had been increasing in frequency at the time of the murder. Is
that true?”
“Yes; I’d have about three in ten days.”
“Her demands were becoming more insistent?”
“Considerably.” Again that small grim smile, curiously unsuggestive of
mirth.
“So that it had become essential for you to do something at once if
you were to prevent these letters from reaching your wife?”
“It was necessary for me to produce the money at once, if that is what
you mean.”
“Don’t trouble to analyze my meanings, if you please. Just answer my
question.”
Patrick Ives’s eyes narrowed slightly. “Your question was ambiguous,”
he commented without emphasis.
“I asked you if it was not imperative for you to act promptly in order
to prevent these letters from reaching your wife?”
“It’s still ambiguous. As I said before, however, it was necessary to
pay for the letters pretty promptly, and I brought out the money on
the night of the nineteenth with that end in view.”
“Oh!” said Lambert, in a heavily disconcerted voice. “You brought it
out, did you? In what form?”
“I got it out of my safety box at noon—eighty-five thousand in Liberty
Bonds and fifteen in municipal bonds.”
“Did anyone know that you were doing this?”
“Naturally not.”
“Where did you place this sum on your return, Mr. Ives?”
“Well, I put it first in the back of the desk drawer in my study just
before dinner. I intended to put it upstairs in a wall safe behind a
panel in my dressing room, but while I was looking through it in the
study to make sure that it was all there, Sue called to me from the
hall that our guests were going, and I went out on the porch to say
good-bye to them. We didn’t go upstairs before dinner, so that I
didn’t get a chance to transfer them until later in the evening.”
“No one knew they were in the house?”
“Not so far as I know?”
“What did you do with them subsequently?”
“I returned them to my safety-deposit box on Monday at noon.”
“Anyone know of that transaction?”
“Not a soul.”
“So you are the only person able to attest that you ever had any
intention of paying that money to Mrs. Bellamy?”
“Well, whom do you want better?” inquired Pat Ives agreeably.
Mr. Lambert bestowed on him an enigmatic smile that was far from
agreeable. “Did this sum represent a substantial portion of your
capital?”
“It certainly would be no exaggeration to say that it made a large
dent in it.”
“You say that it had taken you a long time to decide to pay it?”
“A moderately long time—two months.”
“Why didn’t you take it to Mrs. Bellamy that evening, Mr. Ives?”
“I had no appointment with her. She was to let me know if she was able
to get away, and at what time.”
“It didn’t occur to you to look in the book to see whether there was a
note?”
“It most assuredly did occur to me. I went in for that specific
purpose at the time that Sue called me from the hall.”
“So that you didn’t look?”
“Oh, yes, I did look when I came back five minutes later. There was no
note.”
“Aha!” said Mr. Lambert, and the red-headed girl, watching with
horrified eyes the reckless progress of young Mr. Ives across the
spread nets, made a mechanical note that never except in a book had
she heard a human being say “Aha” before. “So you looked in the book,
did you? And there was no note, was there?”
“Right both times,” said Mr. Ives.
“Now that’s very interesting,” beamed Mr. Lambert—“very interesting,
indeed. But if there had been a note in that book, you’d have found
it, wouldn’t you?”
“Well, not being a blithering idiot, that’s a fairly safe
proposition.”
“And if you had found it, you would have gone to the rendezvous,
wouldn’t you?”
“I’d certainly have made every effort to.”
“Cancelling your poker engagement?”
“Presumably.”
“Taking the short cut across the fields?”
“I don’t know how I’d have gone. It’s slightly academic, isn’t it?”
“And in that gardener’s cottage you would have found waiting for you
the unfortunate girl with those letters that it was so vitally
necessary for you to obtain?”
“Why don’t you ask him whether he would still have had the knife in
his pocket?” inquired Mr. Farr gently. “And why don’t you ask him what
he would have done with it? You don’t want to leave anything like that
out.”
Lambert, thus rudely checked in his exultant career, turned bulging
eyes and a howl of outraged protest in the direction of Judge Carver’s
unresponsive countenance.
“Your Honour, in a somewhat protracted career at the bar, I have yet
to encounter as flagrant a breach——”
Judge Carver cut sharply across these strident objurgations: “And in a
somewhat protracted career at the bar, Mr. Lambert, this Court has yet
to encounter as extraordinary a conduct of an examination as you have
permitted yourself, and as the Court, in the absence of protests from
either the witness or the prosecution, has permitted you. Mr. Farr’s
objection was not put in a proper form, but is otherwise quite
legitimate. The questions that you are putting to the witness involve
a purely supposititious case, and as such, the witness is entirely at
liberty to refuse to answer them. You may proceed.”
“I’ll answer it,” said Pat Ives. “If I’d found the note, I’d have gone
to the cottage, given Mimi the money, got the letters, and none of us
would have spent these last weeks thinking what a nice pleasant place
hell would be for a change. I wish to God I’d found it. Is that what
you wanted to know?”
It was very far indeed from what Mr. Lambert wanted to know. However,
he turned a wary eye on the jury, who were contemplating soberly and
not too sympathetically the bitter, insolent face of the young
gentleman in the witness box. Flippancy was obviously an evil stench
in their nostrils. Mr. Lambert rattled the letters still clenched in
his hand reminiscently.
“There are two or three things in these letters that I’d like to have
you reconcile with the statement that they were written in 1916.
First, what does it mean, Mr. Ives, when you say: ‘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’—do what, Mr. Ives?”
“Carry on the highly indiscreet affair that we were indulging in,”
said Pat Ives, his white face a shade whiter. “We’d both completely
lost our heads. She wasn’t willing to marry me because she was afraid
that I hadn’t it in me to make good. There was a lot of ugly gossip
going on, and it had upset her.”
“Quite so,” smiled Mr. Lambert dreadfully; “oh, quite so. Now in the
one that begins: ‘Mimi darling, darling, darling, it’s after four
o’clock and——’”
“Are you going through those letters again?” inquired Patrick Ives,
his hands clenched on the edge of the box.
“Just one or two little things that I’d like cleared up, and I’m sure
that these gentlemen would too. It goes on: ‘Dawn—I always thought
that was the worst word in the English language and here I am on my
knees waiting for it, and ranting like——’”
“You needn’t go on,” said Patrick Ives, “if what you’re really after
is when they were written. The sun that rose at 4:30 that morning in
June in 1916 would have kept me waiting exactly one hour and six
minutes longer in 1926. You and Mimi and I had forgotten just one
thing, Mr. Lambert—we’d forgotten that in 1916 there was no such thing
as daylight saving.”
And through the staggered silence that invaded some three hundred-odd
people who had forgotten precisely the same thing, there rose a little
laugh—a gay, excited, triumphant little laugh, as though somewhere a
small girl had suddenly received a beautiful and unexpected present.
It came from just behind Mr. Lambert’s sagging shoulders—it came
from—— The startled eyes of those in the courtroom jerked in that
direction, staring unbelievingly at the quiet figure, so quiet, so
cool, so gravely aloof. But the red-headed girl felt idiotic tears
sting swiftly beneath her lids. Under the lowered barrier of Sue
Ives’s lashes there still danced the echo of that joyous truant,
shameless and unafraid. It was she who had laughed, after all.
Mr. Lambert was not laughing. “You are a little late in recalling
this,” he remarked heavily.
“Oh, a good deal late,” agreed Patrick Ives. “But, you see, I hadn’t
been going in for watching the sun rise for some time previous to the
murder. Since then I have. And when I heard that letter read in court
the other day, something clicked in my head. Not five o’clock, and the
sun was up! Something wrong there. I went back to New York and looked
it up in the public library. On Friday, June 9, 1916, the sun rose at
four twenty-two A. M. On Wednesday, June 9, 1926, the sun rose at five
twenty-eight. So that’s that.”
“Have you a certified statement to that effect?” inquired Lambert,
forlornly pompous.
“No,” said Mr. Ives. “But I can lend you a World Almanac.”
“You seem to find a trial for murder a very amusing affair,” remarked
Lambert heavily, his eyes once more on the jury.
“You’re wrong,” said Patrick Ives briefly. “I don’t.”
“I do not believe that your attitude makes further examination
desirable,” commented Lambert judicially. “Cross-examine.”
Farr rose casually from his chair, his hands in his pockets, his head
cocked a trifle to one side. “Mr. Ives,” he said leisurely, “I’m going
to ask you the one question that Mr. Lambert didn’t. Did you murder
Madeleine Bellamy?”
After a pause that seemed interminable, Pat Ives lifted his eyes from
their scrutiny of his hands, locked at the edge of the witness box.
“No,” he said tonelessly.
“No further questions,” remarked Mr. Farr, still more leisurely
resuming his seat.
Lambert glared—swallowed—glared again, and turned on his heel. “Mrs.
Ives, will you be good enough to take the stand?”
She was on her feet before the words were off his lips, brushing by
him with her light, swift step and a look of contemptuous anger that
was bright and terrible as a sword.
“Looks as though his precious Sue was going to give Uncle Dudley a bad
half hour,” murmured the reporter exultantly.
“Why?” whispered the red-headed girl. “Why did she look like that?”
“Because I rather fancy that Lambert has just a scrap exceeded his
authority in his efforts to speed Pat Ives to the gallows. The old
walrus made out a fairly damaging case against him, even if he did
snort himself purple. If——”
“Mrs. Ives, I’m going to ask you to tell us in your own words just
what occurred on the evening of the nineteenth of June, from the time
that Mr. Farwell spoke to you at the club. I won’t interrupt unless I
feel that something is not quite clear. At what time did the
conversation with Mr. Farwell take place?”
She looked so small, sitting there—so small and young and fearless,
with her dark, bright eyes and her lifted chin and the pale gold wings
of her hair folded under the curve of the little russet hat. She had
no colour at all—not in her cheeks, not in her lips.
“It was a little after five,” said Sue Ives, and the red-headed girl
gave a sigh of sheer delight. Once or twice in a lifetime a voice like
that falls on our lucky ears—a voice clear and fresh as running water,
alive and beautiful and effortless. The girl in the box did not have
to lift it a half tone to have it penetrate to the farthest corner of
the gallery. “We got in from the links just at five, and Elliot came
up and asked me if he could bring me something to drink. I said yes,
and when he came back he suggested that we go over and sit on the
steps, as he had a splitting headache, and everyone was making a good
deal of a racket. We hadn’t been there more than five minutes before
he told me.”
“Before he told you what?” prompted Lambert helpfully.
“Before he told me that Pat was having an affair with Mimi Bellamy.”
She did not vouchsafe him even a glance, but kept the clear, stern
little face turned squarely to the twelve attentive ones lifted to
hers. “At first I thought that it was simply preposterous nonsense—I
told him so. Everyone knew that Elliot was absolutely out of his head
over Mimi, and I thought that he really was going a little mad. I
could see that he’d been drinking, of course, and I wasn’t even as
angry as I ought to have been, because he was so unhappy—dreadfully
unhappy. And then he said that he’d spied on them—that he’d seen them
go to the cottage together. Well, that—that was different. That didn’t
sound like the kind of thing that you’d invent or imagine, no matter
how unbalanced you were.”
“You believed it?”
“No, not at first—not quite. But it bothered me dreadfully all the way
home from the club—all the time that we were standing around in our
living room waiting for the cocktails. I couldn’t get it out of my
head. And then Pat came in.”
She paused, frowning a little at the memory of that sick perplexity.
“You say that Mr. Ives came in?”
“Yes. He was looking dreadfully tired and—excited. No, that’s not the
word. Keyed up—different. Or perhaps it was just that I expected him
to look different. I don’t know. Anyway, Elliot started to go then,
and I went into the hall after him, because he’d been drinking a good
deal more, and I was afraid that he’d talk as indiscreetly to someone
else as he had to me. I couldn’t think very clearly yet, but I was
quite sure that that ought to be stopped. So I asked him to be
careful, and he said that he would.”
“Did you notice Melanie Cordier in the library?”
“No. I was watching Elliot. He looked so wretchedly unhappy that I was
really worried about him. Well, anyway, he went off without even
saying good-bye, and I went back toward the living room. Just as I
came up to it I heard George Dallas say, ‘We can count on you for the
poker party to-night, can’t we?’ And Pat said, ‘I’ll surely try to
make it, but don’t count on me.’ Something inside my head went click,
and all the pieces in the puzzle fell into place. I walked straight
into the room and up to where he was standing. He’d gone over to the
table and was pouring out another of those new cocktails. Everyone was
making a dreadful racket, laughing and talking. I said, ‘Nell Conroy
wanted us to go to the movies to-night. Don’t you think that it would
be rather fun?’ And he said, ‘Sorry, but I told George that I’d run
over for a poker game. Tell Nell that you’ll go, and then I won’t
worry about you being lonely.’ I said, ‘That’s a good idea.’ And Pat
said, ‘Be back in a minute. I have some papers I want to get rid of.’
“He went across the hall; I could hear his steps. I felt just exactly
as though I’d taken poison and I stood there waiting for it to begin
to work. Someone came up to me to say good-bye—I think it was the
Conroys, and then everyone else began to go, too, the way they always
do. I started to go out to the porch with them, and while I was
passing through the hall I saw Pat standing by the desk. He was
looking at some papers in his hand. I went on toward the porch,
calling back over my shoulder that everyone was leaving. In a minute,
he came out too. I looked to see whether he still had the papers in
his hand, but he hadn’t. While we were both standing there watching
them drive off, Melanie came out, announced dinner, and we went in.
Pat stopped behind in the study for a moment, but he didn’t go near
the desk drawer—I could see it from my place at the table.”
“Could you have seen him take a book from the corner shelf?”
“No—the screen between the rooms cut off that corner.”
“Nothing unusual occurred at dinner?”
“No. That made it worse. Nothing unusual occurred at all. Pat talked
and laughed a good deal, but that’s what he always did.”
“And after dinner?”
“After dinner Mother Ives went out into the garden, and Pat asked me
to come into the study to look at the clipper ship that he’d been
making for Pete. All the time that I was supposed to be looking at it,
I couldn’t take my eyes off the desk, wondering what he’d done with
those papers—wondering what they were. There had been quite a little
pile of them. After a while I couldn’t stand it any longer, and I
said, ‘If you want to say good-night to Pete and Polly, you’ll have to
hurry. They ought to be asleep by now.’ He said, ‘Lord, that’s true!’
He snatched up the boat and started for the door, and I called after
him, ‘I’m not coming. I kissed them good-night before dinner.’ I
waited until I heard his footsteps on the stairs——”
She paused for a moment, pushing the bright hair back from her brow as
though she found it suddenly heavy.
“And then, Mrs. Ives?”
“Then,” said Sue Ives steadily, “I did something disgusting. I
searched the desk. I pushed the door to, so that none of the servants
could see me if they passed through the hall, and I hurried like mad.
I don’t know exactly what I expected to find, but I thought that maybe
those papers were letters from Mimi, and then I knew that Pat kept his
check book there, too, and I thought that there might be entries of
some kind that would tell me something; I could bear anything but not
knowing. It was like a—like a frenzy. Oh, it was worse! The top drawer
on the left-hand side of the desk was locked.”
She paused again for a moment, staring down as curiously and intently
at the upturned faces below her as they stared up at her; then, with a
quick, impatient shake of her head she went on: “But that didn’t make
any difference, because I knew where the key was. I used the top
right-hand drawer myself for my household accounts and bills and loose
silver, and I kept it locked because, whenever Pat brought home gold
pieces from his directors’ meetings, we used to put them there. We
saved them up until we had enough to get a present for the house,
something beautiful and—— No, that doesn’t make any difference. We
called the drawer the bank, and Pat showed me where he kept the key so
that I could always get into it.”
“Where did he keep this key?”
“In a tobacco jar on top of the bookcase. I found it and opened the
drawer, and there were the papers, quite a thick packet of them,
pushed way back in the drawer. They were bonds—eighty-five thousand
Liberty, fifteen thousand municipal. I counted them twice to make
sure.” For the first time since she had mounted the stand she turned
her dark and shining eyes on the perturbed Lambert. “You were very
anxious to know whether anyone but Pat had seen that money, weren’t
you? Well, I saw it. And I was just as sure that Pat had taken it out
of our safe-deposit box in order to run away with Mimi Bellamy as I
was that I was standing there counting it—just as sure as that. I put
it back and locked the drawer and dropped the key back into the
tobacco jar and went to the flower room to telephone to Stephen
Bellamy. The clock in the hall said five minutes past eight. I hadn’t
been in the study for more than ten minutes.” Once more she lifted her
hands to that bright hair. “Do you want me to repeat the telephone
conversation?”
“Was it substantially the same as Miss Page gave it?”
“Exactly the same, word for word.”
“Then I hardly think that that will be necessary. Just tell us what
you did after you finished telephoning.”
“I went to the foot of the nursery stairs and called up to ask Pat if
he had absolutely decided to go to the poker game. He called back yes,
and asked if he couldn’t drop me at the Conroys’. I told him that I’d
rather walk. I got that flannel coat out of the closet and started off
for the gate at the back of the house that led to the back road. I was
almost running.”
“Had you planned any course of action?”
“No, I hadn’t any definite plan, but I knew that I had to get to
Stephen and make him stop Mimi, and that every minute was precious.
Just as I got to the gate, I noticed that a wind had sprung up—quite a
cold wind—and I remembered that Mother Ives had told me at dinner that
Polly’s ear had been hurting her, and that she slept right by the
window where that wind would blow on her, so I turned back to the
house to tell Miss Page to be sure to put a screen around the head of
her crib. I saw Mother Ives at the far end of the rose garden, but I
thought that it would take as long to call her and explain as it would
to do it myself. So I ran on to the house, and I was halfway up the
nursery stairs before I heard Pat’s voice. I thought he was talking to
the babies, and I hurried up the last few steps. I was almost at the
nursery door when I heard another voice—Kathleen Page’s. It wasn’t
coming from the nursery; it was coming from her room. She was saying,
‘Don’t let her send me away from you—don’t, don’t! All I want——’”
“Your Honour——”
Farr’s warning voice was hardly swifter than Judge Carver’s: “I am
afraid that you cannot tell us what you heard, Mrs. Ives.”
“I cannot tell you what I heard Kathleen Page saying?”
The wonder in the clear, incredulous voice penetrated the farthest
corner of the courtroom.
“No. Simply confine yourself to what you did.”
“Did? I did nothing whatever. I could no more have moved a step nearer
to the door than if I had been nailed to the floor. She was crying
dreadfully, in horrid little pants and gasps. It was absolutely
sickening. Pat said, ‘Keep quiet, you little lunatic. Do you want——’”
“Mrs. Ives, the Court has already warned you that you are not able to
tell us what was said.”
“Why am I not able to tell you what was said? I told you what we said
downstairs.”
Judge Carver leaned toward her, his black sleeves flowing majestically
over the edge of the rail. “No objection was raised as to that
conversation. Mr. Farr objects to this and the Court sustains him. For
your own sake, the Court requests you to conform promptly to its
rulings.”
For a moment the two pairs of dark eyes met in an exchange of glances
more eloquent than words; a look of grave warning and one of fearless
rebellion.
“I do not understand your rules. What am I permitted to tell of the
things that I am asked to explain?”
“Simply tell us what you did after you heard the voices in the room.”
“Very well; I will try again. I stood there for a moment, staring at
the door to the day nursery. The key was on the outside so that the
babies couldn’t lock themselves in. I don’t remember moving, but I
must have moved, because suddenly I had the door knob in my hand. I
jerked it toward me and slammed the door so hard that it nearly threw
me off my feet. The key——”
“Yes, yes,” cut in Lambert, his face suffused with a sudden and
terrifying premonition. “We needn’t go too much into all these
details, you know. We want to stick to our story as closely as
possible. You didn’t say anything, did you?”
“No.”
“Just went on downstairs to meet Stephen Bellamy, didn’t you?”
“No.”
“You did not?” Mr. Lambert’s blank query was enough to wring
commiseration from a stone. Sue Ives did not look particularly
merciful, however. She had turned in her chair so that she faced her
devoted adversary squarely. She leaned forward a little now, her
lovely mouth schooled to disdain, her eyes under their level brows
bright with anger.
“No, not then. I was telling you what I did. I turned the key in the
lock and put it in my pocket. You didn’t want me to say that, did you,
Uncle Dudley? You wanted everyone to believe that it was Pat who
murdered Mimi, didn’t you?”
“Mrs. Ives—Mrs. Ives——”
“Silence! Silence!”
“Mrs. Ives!”
Over the outraged clamour of the law, her voice rose, clear and
triumphant: “He didn’t murder her, because he was locked in those
rooms until quarter to eleven that night, and I had the key in my
pocket. Now, you can all strike that out of the record!”
“Mrs. Ives!” Over the last crash of the gavel, Judge Carver’s voice
was shaken with something deeper than anger. “Mrs. Ives, if you are
not immediately silent, the Court will be obliged to have you
removed.”
“Removed?” She was on her feet in an instant, poised and light. “You
wish me to go?”
“I wish you to get yourself in hand immediately. You are doing
yourself untold injury by pursuing this line of conduct. The rules
that you are refusing to obey were made largely for your own
protection.”
“I don’t want to be protected. I want to tell the truth. Apparently no
one wants to hear it.”
“On the contrary, you are permitted to take the stand for that express
purpose.”
“For that purpose? To tell the truth?” The scorn in her voice was
almost gay.
“Precisely. The limits that are imposed are for your benefit, and you
are injuring your co-defendant as well as yourself by refusing to
abide by them.”
“Stephen?” She paused at that, considering gravely. “I don’t want to
do that, of course. Very well, I will try to go on.” She turned back
to her chair, and a long sigh of incredulous relief trembled through
the courtroom.
“I have forgotten where I stopped.”
“You were about to tell us what you did after you came down the
nursery stairs?” Lambert’s shaken voice was hardly audible.
“Yes. Well, then—then we did exactly what Stephen said we did. We
drove through the back road to the River Road, where we turned to the
left and went into Lakedale in order to get more gasoline. I
distinctly remember the time, because we had been discussing whether
the movies would be out by the time that we got back. It was
twenty-five minutes past nine. After that we retraced our steps—down
the River Road to the back road, down to the place in the back road
where I had met Stephen, past our house into the main street of the
village, past the movie house, which was dark, and up the main street,
which runs into the Perrytown Highway—up the Perrytown Highway to the
Bellamy house.
“I was absolutely sure that I saw a light over the garage, but it
certainly wasn’t there a minute or so afterwards, and I decided that I
might as well go in anyway. I was beyond bothering much about any
minor conventions, and I thought that if Mimi were actually there, it
would be a heavenly relief to put all the cards on the table and have
it out with her once and forever. Mimi wasn’t there, of course; it was
then that Steve called up the Conroys. When he found that she wasn’t
there, I was really terrified at his condition. He was as quiet as
usual, but he didn’t seem to understand anything at all that was said
to him. He didn’t even bother to listen. He had some kind of a chill,
and he just sat there shivering, while I reassured and argued and
explained.
“I could have saved my breath. He didn’t even hear me. He did finally
rouse himself to telephone the police and the hospital; the rest of
the time he just sat there staring and shivering. He wanted me to call
up Pat and the Dallases, and of course I knew that that wouldn’t do
any good—Pat was locked up two stories away from a telephone. Finally
I asked, ‘Did you see what direction she was going in when she left?’
He shook his head. I said, ‘But she told you that she was going toward
the Conroys’?’ He nodded. I said, ‘Well, maybe she turned her ankle
and fainted somewhere along the side of the road—she always wears such
dreadfully high heels. We might take the car and turn the headlights
along the edge of the road and see if we can get any trace of her.
Come on!’
“I knew that that was perfect nonsense, but I was desperate, and I
thought that there was just a chance that it might rouse him. It did.
It was exactly as though you’d put a galvanic shock through him. He
jerked out of his chair. He was out in the hall without even waiting
to look back at me, and I had to run to get to the car before he
started it.
“We got off with such a jerk that it nearly threw me out of the car,
and I was really afraid that he was going to dash us against one of
the gateposts. I said, ‘If we’re going to find Mimi, Steve, we must go
slowly, mustn’t we? We must look carefully.’ He said, ‘That’s right!’
And after that we literally crept, all the way to the Conroys’.”
“How far was that?”
“Oh, not far—not half a mile—just a little way. It wasn’t until after
we got past their entrance that we decided that——” She paused for a
moment, her eyes dilated strangely in her small pale face; then she
wrung her hands together more closely as though in that hard contact
she found comfort, and continued steadily in her low voice. “We
decided that we might as well go on.”
Lambert, paler than she, said just as steadily, “Might as well go on
where, Mrs. Ives?”
“Go on to the gardener’s cottage at Orchards,” said Susan Ives.
In the gray light of the courtroom, the faces of the occupants looked
gray, too—sharpened, fearful, full of an ominous unease. More than one
of them glanced swiftly over a hunched shoulder at the blue-coated
guardians of the door, and then back again, with somewhat pinched and
rueful countenance, at the slight occupant of the witness box. The
figure sat so quietly there in the gathering shadows; to many who
watched it seemed that there slanted across her lifted face another
shadow still—the shadow of the block, of the gallows, of the
chair. . . .
“Is she confessing?” asked the red-headed girl in a small colourless
voice.
“Wait!” said the reporter. “God knows what she’s doing.”
Judge Carver leaned suddenly toward Lambert.
“Mr. Lambert, it is already considerably past four. Is this testimony
likely to continue for some time?”
“For some time, Your Honour.”
“In that case,” said Judge Carver gravely, “the Court considers it
advisable to adjourn until ten to-morrow. Court is dismissed.”
The small figure moved lightly down from the witness stand into the
deeper shadows—deeper still—she was gone. The sixth day of the Bellamy
trial was over.