did. I noticed him particularly, because he had the reddest hair that
I’ve ever seen on a human being. We were at the station about ten minutes, and I looked at my watch just as we left. It said twenty minutes past nine.”
“Was your watch correct, Mr. Bellamy?”
“Absolutely! I check it every day at the station.”
“How long a drive is it from Lakedale to Rosemont?”
“Under half an hour—it’s around nine miles.”
“And to Orchards from Lakedale?”
“It’s close to twelve—Orchards is about three miles north of Rosemont.”
“Quite so. Now will you be good enough to continue with your story?”
“We hardly talked at all on our way back to Rosemont. I remember that Sue asked whether we wouldn’t get there before the film was over, and I said, ‘Probably.’ But as a matter of fact, we didn’t. We got to Rosemont at about five minutes to ten, and the theatre was dark. There were no cars in front of it and the doors were locked. I said, ‘She’ll probably be at the house,’ and Sue said, ‘If she isn’t, I think that it will look decidedly queer to have me dropping in there at this time of night.’ I said, ‘There’ll be no one there to see you; Nellie’s gone home to her mother and Orsini went to New York at eight-fifteen.’
“It takes only three or four minutes from the theatre to the house, and just as we started to turn in at the gate Sue said, ‘You’re wrong; there’s a light in the garage.’ I looked up quickly, and there wasn’t a sign of a light. I laughed and said, ‘Don’t let things get on your nerves, Sue; I tell you that I saw him going to the train.’ And I helped her out of the car. There was a light in the hall, and as I opened the door I called ‘Mimi!’ No one answered, and then I remembered that I’d left it burning when I went out. I said, ‘Come in. She must be over at the Conroys’. I’ll call up and get her over.’”
“So far so good,” said the reporter contentedly. “If Mr. Stephen Bellamy isn’t telling the truth, he’s as fertile and resourceful a liar as has crossed my trail in these many moons. Do you feel better?”
“Better than best,” the red-headed girl assured him fervently. “Only I wish that Bellamy girl had died a long time ago.”
“Do you indeed?”
“Yes, I do indeed—about twenty years ago, before she got out of socks and hair ribbons and started in breaking men’s hearts. Elliot Farwell and Patrick Ives and Stephen Bellamy—even that little bus driver looked bewitched. Of course I ought to be sorry she’s dead—but truly she wasn’t good for very much, was she?”
“Not very much. The ones who are good for very much aren’t generally particularly heartbreaking.”
“You’d probably be as bad as any of them,” said the red-headed girl darkly, and relapsed into silence.
“I’m universally rated rather high on susceptibility,” admitted the reporter with modest pride. “Did you sleep better last night?”
“Not any better at all.”
“Look here, are you telling me that after reducing me to a state of apprehension that resulted in my spending six dollars and thirty-five cents, and two hours and twenty minutes of invaluable time in a hired flivver in order to cure you of insomnia, you went back to that gas log of yours and worked half the night and had it again? Didn’t you solemnly swear——”
“I’m not ever solemn when I swear. I didn’t work after twelve. If you paid six thousand dollars for it, it was a tremendous bargain. It was the nicest ride I ever took. That was why I didn’t sleep.”
“Mollifying though mendacious,” said the reporter critically. “Are you by any chance a flirt?”
The red-headed girl eyed him thoughtfully. After quite a lengthy period of contemplation she seemed to arrive at a decision. “No,” she said gravely, “I’m not a flirt.”
“In that case,” said the reporter quite as gravely, “I’m going to get you some lunch. And if Sue Ives decides to confess to the entire newspaper fraternity that it really was she who did it, after all, I’m not going to be there—I’m going to be bringing your lunch back to you because you’re not a flirt. Do I make myself clear?”
“Yes, thank you,” said the red-headed girl.
She sat staring after him with round bright eyes that she was finding increasingly difficult to keep open. What was it that she had said that first day—that day that seemed so many, many days ago? Something about a murder story and a love story being the most enthralling combination in the world? Well—— The red-headed girl looked around her guiltily, wondering if she looked as pink as she felt. It was frightful to be so sleepy. It was frightful and ridiculous not to be able to sleep any more because of the troubles and passions of half a dozen people that you’d never laid eyes on in your life, and didn’t really know from Adam and Eve—or Cain and Abel were better, perhaps. What’s he to Hecuba or Hecuba to him? What indeed? She yawned despairingly.
No, but that wasn’t true—you did know them—a hundred times—a thousand times better than people that lived next to you all the days of their lives. That was what gave a trial its mysterious and terrible charm; curiosity is a hunger in everyone alive, and here the sides of the houses were lifted off and you saw them moving about as though they were alone. You knew—oh, you knew everything! You knew that little Pat Ives had sold papers in the streets and that he carved ships, and that once he had played the ukulele and had taken Mimi Dawson riding on spring nights.
You knew that Sue Ives had gone to church in little cotton gloves when she was six years old, and that she had a coat of cream-coloured flannel, and poor relations in Arizona, and a rose garden beyond the study window. You knew that Stephen Bellamy dined at quarter to seven and had a small car, and flowering almonds in his garden, and a wife who was more beautiful than a dream, with silver slippers and sapphire-and-diamond rings. You knew that Laura Roberts turned down the beds on the chambermaid’s night out and had a gentleman friend in the village and that—and that——
“Wake up!” said the reporter’s voice urgently. “Here are the sandwiches. I broke both legs trying to get back through that crowd. . . . Oh, Lord, here’s the Court! Too late—hide ’em!”
The red-headed girl hid them with a glance of unfeigned reluctance.
“Mr. Bellamy,” inquired Mr. Lambert happily, “you were telling us that you went into your house. What occurred next?”
“I went straight to the telephone and called up Mrs. Conroy. She answered the telephone herself, and I said, ‘Can I speak to Mimi for a moment, Nell?’ She said, ‘Why, Steve, Mimi isn’t here. The show got out early and we waited for about five minutes to make sure that she wasn’t there. I thought that she must have decided not to come.’ I said, ‘Yes, that’s what she must have decided.’ And I rang off. That same terror had me again; I felt cold to my bones. I said. ‘She’s not there. I was right the first time—something’s happened to her.’ Sue said, ‘Of course she’s not there. She went to the cottage.’ I said, ‘But you say that Pat didn’t go. She’d never wait there two hours for him. Maybe we’d better call up Dallas and make sure he’s there.’”
The even voice hesitated—was silent. Mr. Lambert moved forward energetically. “And what did Mrs. Ives say to that?”
“She said—she said, ‘No, that’s no good. He’s not at the Dallases’; he’s home.’ I said, ‘Then let’s call him up there.’ Sue said, ‘No, I’d rather not do that. I don’t want him to know about this until I decide what to do next. I give you my word of honour that he’s there. Isn’t that enough?’ I said all right, then, I’d call up the police court and the hospital to see if any accidents had been reported. I remember that Sue said something about its being premature, but none of her business. Neither the station nor the hospital had any information.”
“Did you give your name?”
“Naturally. I asked them to communicate with me at once if they heard anything.”
“And then what, Mr. Bellamy?”
“Then—then, after that, I don’t remember much. All the rest of it was sheer nightmare. I do remember Sue saying that we might retrace the route that Mimi started over toward the Conroys, on the bare chance that she had had some kind of collapse at the roadside. But that was no good, of course. And finally we decided that there was nothing more to do till morning, and that I’d better get Sue home. I drove her back to the house——”
“To your house?”
“No, no; the Ives’ house. I dropped her at the front gate. I didn’t drive in. I asked her to let me know if Pat was there, and she said that if he were she’d turn on the light in the study twice. I waited outside by the car for what seemed a hundred years, and after a long time the light in the study went on once, and off, and on again and off, and I got in the car and drove away.”
“What time was that, Mr. Bellamy?”
“I’m not sure—about quarter to eleven, perhaps. Mrs. Ives had asked me what time it was when we stopped at the gate. It was shortly after ten-thirty.”
“Did you go straight home?”
“Not directly—no. I drove around for quite a bit, but I couldn’t possibly tell you for how long. It’s like trying to remember things in a delirium.”
“But it was only after you heard that Mrs. Bellamy had not been at the movies that you were reduced to this condition—before that everything is quite clear?”
“Oh, quite.”
“And you are entirely clear that at the time fixed for the murder you and Mrs. Ives were a good ten miles away from the gardener’s cottage at Orchards?”
“Nearer twelve miles, I believe.”
“Thank you, Mr. Bellamy; that will be all. Cross-examine.”
Mr. Farr arrived in the center of the arena where sat his victim, pale and patient, with a motion so sudden that it suggested a leap. Not once had he lifted his voice during that long, laboriously retrieved narration. Now the courtroom was once more filled with its metallic clang, arresting and disturbing.
“Mr. Bellamy, you’ve told us that the tools in the garage belonged to Orsini. They were perfectly accessible to anyone else, weren’t they?”
“Perfectly.”
“Was Mrs. Bellamy in the garage at any time before you left?”
“Why, yes, I believe that she was. I remember meeting her as she came into the house just as I came downstairs to dinner—I’d gone up to wash my hands. She said she’d been out to the garage to see whether she’d left a package with some aspirin and other things from the drug store in the car. They weren’t there, and she asked me to call up the club the next day to see whether she had left them there.”
“So that she would have been perfectly able to have made that incision of that tire herself?”
“I should think so.”
“She did not at any time suggest that you accompany her either to the movies or the Conroys, did she?”
“Oh, no.”
“She countered such suggestions on your part, did she not, by saying that you would have to walk back, that it would be awkward for you to get away, and other excuses of that nature?”
“Yes. My wife knew that the pictures hurt my eyes, and she never urged me to——”
“No, never mind that, Mr. Bellamy. Please confine yourself to yes or no, whenever it is possible. It will simplify things for both of us. It would have been entirely possible for your wife to injure that tire in order to keep you from accompanying her, wouldn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“Now, Mr. Bellamy, I want to get this perfectly correctly. You claim that at nine-thirty you were on the River Road twelve miles from Orchards. Do you mean twelve miles by way of the back road, Rosemont and the Perrytown Road?”
“Yes.”
“Retracing your way over the route that you had previously taken?”
“Yes.”
“But surely you know that there is another and shorter route from Lakedale to Orchards, Mr. Bellamy?”
“I know that there is another route—yes. I was not aware that it was much shorter.”
“Well, for your information I may state that it is some three miles shorter. Can you describe this route to us?”
“Not very well, I’m afraid. I’m not at all familiar with it. I believe that it is the road that Mr. Thorne was speaking of having taken that night, leading into the back of Orchards.”
“Your supposition is entirely correct. Now, will you tell us just how you get there?”
“As I said, I’m not sure that I can. I believe that you continue on down the River Road until you turn off down a rather narrow, rough little road that leads directly to the back gates of Orchards. It’s practically a private road, I believe, ending at the estate.”
“What is its name?”
“I’m not sure, but I believe that it’s something like Thorne Path, or Road, or Lane—I’m pretty clear that it has the name Thorne in it.”
“Oh, you’re clear about that, are you, in spite of the fact that you’ve never been near it?”
“You misunderstood me evidently. I never said that I had never been near it. As a matter of fact, I have been over it several times—two or three anyway.”
“And yet you wish us to believe that you have no idea of either the name or the distance?”
“Certainly. It’s been a great many years since I’ve used it—ten, perhaps. It was at a time that I was going frequently to Orchards, when Mr. Thorne, Senior, was alive.”
“And you have never used it since?”
“No. It’s not a road that anyone would use unless he were going to Orchards. It’s practically a blind alley.”
“Again I must ask you to refrain from qualifications and elaborations. ‘No’ is a reply to that question. The fact remains, doesn’t it, that here was an unobtrusive short cut to Orchards that you haven’t seen fit to tell us about?”
Stephen Bellamy smiled slightly—that gracious and ironic smile, so oddly detached as to be disconcerting. “I’m afraid that I can’t answer that either yes or no—either would be misleading. I had completely forgotten that there was such a road.”
“Completely forgotten it, had you? Had Mrs. Ives forgotten it too?”
“I’m sure that I don’t know.”
“Mr. Bellamy, is not this road, known as Thorne Lane, the one that you and Mrs. Ives took to reach Orchards the night of the murder?”
Mr. Bellamy frowned faintly in concentration. “I beg your pardon?”
“Did you not use Thorne Lane to reach Orchards on the night of the murder?”
The frown vanished; for a moment, Mr. Bellamy looked frankly diverted. Were these, inquired his lifted brows, the terrors of cross-examination? “We certainly did nothing of the kind. I thought that I’d already explained that I hadn’t been over that road in ten years.”
“I heard your explanation. Now, will you kindly explain to us why you didn’t use it?”
“Why?” inquired Stephen Bellamy blankly.
“Why, consumed with anxiety as you were for the safety of your wife, didn’t it occur to you to go to this gardener’s cottage, where you were assured that she was having a rendezvous with another man?”
“I was not assured of any such thing. I was most positively assured that Mr. Ives had not gone there to meet her. Nor was I in anxiety at all about my wife during my drive with Mrs. Ives. I believed that she had gone to the movies.”
“Very well, when you found out that she wasn’t at the movies, why didn’t you go then to the cottage?”
“Mrs. Ives gave me her word of honour that Mr. Ives was at home. It seemed incredible to both of us that she would have waited there for over two hours.”
“Incredible to both of you that she could have waited? I thought you wished us to believe that you had such entire confidence in her love for you that you were perfectly convinced that she had never been near the cottage.”
“I”—the whitened lips tightened resolutely—“I did not believe that she had been. It was simply a hypothesis that I accepted in desperation—a vain attempt to believe that she might be safe, after all.”
“It would have consoled you to know that she was safe in the gardener’s cottage with Patrick Ives?”
“I would have given ten years of my life to have believed that she was safe and happy anywhere in the world.”
“Your honour meant nothing to you?”
“My honour? What had my honour to do with it?”
“Do you not consider that when a man’s wife has betrayed him, his honour is involved and should be avenged?”
“I believe nothing of the kind. My honour is involved only by my own actions, not by those of others.”
“You would have let her go to her lover with your blessing?”
Something flared in the dark eyes turned to the prosecutor’s mocking blue ones, and died. “I did not say that,” said Stephen Bellamy evenly.
Judge Carver leaned forward abruptly, “Mr. Bellamy is entirely correct,” he said sternly. “He said nothing of the kind.”
“I regret that I seem to have misunderstood him,” said the prosecutor with ominous meekness.
“You would have prevented her?”
“I would have begged her to try to find happiness with me.”
“And if that had not succeeded, you would have prevented her?”
“How could I have prevented her?”
The prosecutor took a step forward and lowered his voice to that strange pitch that carried farther than a battle cry. “Quite simply, Mr. Bellamy. As simply as the person who drove that knife to Madeleine Bellamy’s heart prevented her joining her lover—as simply as that.”
Judge Carver’s gavel fell with a crash. “Let that remark be stricken from the record!”
Stephen Bellamy’s head jerked back, and from somewhere an arm flashed out to catch him. He motioned it away, steadying himself carefully with an iron grip on the witness box. His eyes, the only things alive in his frozen face, met his enemy’s unswervingly.
“I did not drive that knife to her heart.” His voice was as ominously distinct as the prosecutor’s.
“But you did not raise a hand to prevent it from striking?”
“I could not raise a hand—I was not there.”
“You did not raise a hand?”
“Your Honour!”
Bellamy’s eyes swung steadily to the clamorous and distracted Lambert. “Please—I’d rather answer. I have told you already that I was not there, Mr. Farr. If I had been I would have given my life—gladly, believe me—to have prevented what happened.”
Farr turned a hotly incredulous countenance to Judge Carver’s impassive one. “Your Honour, I ask to have that stricken from the record as deliberately unresponsive.”
“It is not strictly responsive,” conceded His Honour dispassionately. “However, the Court feels that you had already received a responsive answer, so were apparently pressing for an elaboration. It may remain.”
“I defer to Your Honour’s opinion,” said Mr. Farr in a tone so far from deferential that His Honour regarded him somewhat fixedly. “Mr. Bellamy, what reason did Mrs. Ives give you for believing that Mr. Ives was at home?”
“She did not give me a reason; she gave me her word of honour.”
“You did not press her for one?”
“No; I considered her word better than any assurance that she——”
“Your Honour, I have repeatedly requested the witness to confine himself to yes and no. I ask with all deference to have the Court add its instructions to that effect.”
“Confine yourself to a direct answer whenever possible, Mr. Bellamy. You are not permitted to enter into explanations.”
“Very well, Your Honour.”
“Nothing was said about an intercepted note, Mr. Bellamy?”
“No.”
“You were perfectly satisfied that she had some mysterious way of ascertaining that he had not gone out at all that evening?”
“Yes.”
“But at some time during the evening that assurance on your part evaporated?”
“I don’t follow you.”
“I’ll be clearer. By the time you reached Mrs. Ives’s home—I believe that you’ve told us that that was at about ten-thirty—your confidence in her infallibility had so diminished that you suggested that she signal to you if Mr. Ives were actually there?”
“I believe that that was her suggestion.”
“Her suggestion? After she had given you her word of honour that he was there?”
“Yes.”
“You wish that to be your final statement on that subject?”
“Wait a moment.” He looked suddenly exhausted, as though he had been running for a long time. “I told you that things were very confused from the time that I found that Mimi hadn’t gone to the movies. I’m trying to get it as straight as possible. It was some time after we had left my house—after ten, I mean—and before we got to hers, that I suggested there was just a chance that she was mistaken and that Pat had gone to meet her after all. Sue said she couldn’t be mistaken, and that, anyway, they’d never dare stay at the cottage so late—it wouldn’t fit in with the movie story. I suggested then that possibly she had been right in her idea that they had been planning to run away together. Possibly that was what they had done to-night. She said, ‘Steve, you sound as though you wish they had.’ I said, ‘I wish to God they had.’ Then she said, ‘I know that Pat hasn’t been out, but I’ll let you know definitely when we go home.’ It was then that she suggested the lights.”
“It all comes back very clearly now, doesn’t it, Mr. Bellamy?”
“Yes.”
“Very convenient, remembering all those noble bits about how you wished to God that they’d eloped, isn’t it?”
“I don’t know that it’s particularly noble or convenient. It’s the truth.”
“Oh, undoubtedly. Mr. Bellamy, at what time——”
“Your Honour, I protest these sneers and jeers that Mr. Farr is indulging in constantly. I——”
“I simply remarked that Mr. Bellamy was undoubtedly telling the truth,” said Mr. Farr in dangerously meek tones. “Do you regard that as necessarily sarcastic?”
“I regard your tone as sheerly outrageous. I protest——”
“It might be just as well to make no comments on the witness’s replies, of either a flattering or an unflattering nature,” remarked Judge Carver drily. “Is there a question before the witness?”
“No, Your Honour. I was not permitted to complete my question.”
“It may be completed.” There was a hint of acerbity in the fine voice.
“Mr. Bellamy, at what time, after you left Mrs. Ives at her house, did you return to your own?”
“I don’t know.” The voice was weary to the point of indifference.
“You don’t know?”
“No; the whole thing’s like a nightmare. Time doesn’t mean much in a nightmare.”
“Well, did this nightmare condition permit you to ascertain whether it was after twelve?”
“I believe that it was later.”
“After one?”
“Later.”
“How do you know that it was later?”
“I don’t know—because the sky was getting lighter, I suppose.”
“You mean that dawn was breaking?”
“I suppose so.”
“You are telling us that you drove about until dawn?”
“I am telling you that I don’t remember what I did; it was all a nightmare.”
“Mr. Bellamy, why didn’t you go home to see whether your wife had returned?”
For the first time the eyes fixed on the prosecutor wavered. “What?”
“You heard me, I believe.”
“You want to know why I didn’t go back to my house?”
“Exactly.”
“I don’t know—because I was more or less out of my head, I suppose.”
“You were anxious to know what had become of her, weren’t you?”
“Anxious!” The stiff lips wrenched themselves into something dreadfully like a smile.
“Yet from eleven o’clock on you never went near your house to ascertain whether she had come home or been brought home?”
“No.”
“You didn’t call up the police?”
“I told you I’d already called them up.”
“Nor the hospital?”
“I’d called them too.”
“Where were they to notify you in case they had news to report?”
“At my house.”
“How were you to receive this information—this vital information—if you were roaming the country in an automobile?”
“I don’t know.”
“Weren’t you interested to know whether she was dead or alive?”
“Yes.”
“Then why didn’t you go home?”
“I have told you—I don’t know.”
“That’s your best answer?”
“Yes.”
“Let’s see whether I can’t help you to a better one. Isn’t the reason that you didn’t go home or call up the police or the hospital because you knew perfectly well that any information that anyone in the world could give you would be superfluous?”
Stephen Bellamy focussed his weary eyes intently on the sardonic face only a few inches from his. “I’m sorry—I don’t understand what you mean.”
“Don’t you? I’ll try to make it clearer. Wasn’t the reason that you didn’t go home the perfectly simple one that you knew that your wife was lying three miles away in a deserted cottage, soaked in blood and dead as a doornail?”
“Oh, for God’s sake!” At the low, despairing violence of that cry some in the courtroom winced and turned away their faces from the ugly triumph flushing the prosecutor’s cold face. “I don’t know, I tell you, I don’t know. I was half crazy; I wasn’t thinking of reasons, I wasn’t thinking of anything except that Mimi was gone.”
“Is that your best answer.”
“Yes.”
“At what time the next morning did you hear of the murder of your wife, Mr. Bellamy?”
Slowly, carefully, fighting inch by inch back to the narrow plank of self-control that lay between him and destruction, Stephen Bellamy lifted his tired voice, his tired eyes. “I believe that it was about eleven o’clock.”
“Who notified you?”
“A trooper, I think, from the police station.”
“Please tell us what he said.”
“He said that Mrs. Bellamy’s body had been found in an empty cottage on the old Thorne estate, and that while it had already been identified, headquarters thought I had better go over and confirm it. I said that I would come at once.”
“And did so?”
“Yes.”
“You saw the body?”
“Yes.”
“Identified it?”
“Yes.”
“It was clothed?”
“Yes.”
“In these garments, Mr. Bellamy?”
And there, incredibly, it was again, that streaked and stiffened gown with its once airy ruffles, dangling over the witness box in reach of Stephen Bellamy’s fine long-fingered hand. After the first convulsive movement he sat motionless, his eyes dilated strangely under his level brows. “Yes.”
“These shoes?”
Lightly as butterflies they settled on the dark rim of the box, so small, so gay, so preposterous, shining silver, shining buckles. The man in the box bent those strange eyes on them. After a moment, his hand moved forward, slowly, hesitantly; the fingers touched their rusted silver, light as a caress, and curved about them, a shelter and a defense.
“These shoes,” said Stephen Bellamy.
Somewhere in the back of the hall a woman sobbed loudly and hysterically, but he did not lift his eyes.
The prosecutor asked in a voice curiously gentle: “Mr. Bellamy, when you went into the room, was the body to the right or the left of the piano?”
“To the left.”
“You’re quite sure?”
“Absolutely.”
“Oh, God!” whispered the reporter frantically. “Oh, God, they’ve got him!”
“It’s strange that you should be so sure, Mr. Bellamy,” said the prosecutor more gently still. “Because there was no piano in the room to which you were taken to see the body.”
“What?” The bent head jerked back as though a whip had flicked.
“There was no piano in the dining room to which they had removed the body, Mr. Bellamy. The piano was in the parlour across the hall, where the body was first discovered.”
“If that is so I must have seen it when I came in and confused it somehow.”
“You couldn’t very well have seen it when you came in, I’m afraid. The door to the parlour was closed and locked so that the contents of the room would not be disturbed.”
“Well, then—then I must remember it from some previous occasion.”
“A previous occasion? When you were never in the cottage before?”
“No, no, I never said that. I never said anything like that.” The desperate voice rose slightly in its intensity. “I couldn’t have; it isn’t true. I’ve been there often—years ago, when I used to go over to play with Doug Thorne when we were kids. There was a playhouse just a few hundred feet from the cottage, and we used to run over to the cottage and get bread and jam and cookies from the old German gardener. I remember it absolutely; that’s probably what twisted me.”
“But the old German gardener didn’t have any piano, Mr. Bellamy,” explained the prosecutor patiently. “Don’t you remember that Orsini particularly told us how the Italian gardener had just purchased it for his daughter before they went off on their vacation? It couldn’t have been the old German gardener.”
The red-headed girl was weeping noiselessly into a highly inadequate handkerchief. “Horrid, smirking, disgusting beast!” she intoned in a small fierce whisper. “Horrid——”
“No? Well, then,” said the dreadful, hunted voice, “probably Mimi told me about it. She——”
“Mrs. Bellamy?” There was the slightest inflection of reproach in the soothing voice. “Mrs. Bellamy told you that her body was lying to the left of the piano as you entered the room? It isn’t just the piano, you see—I’m afraid that you’re getting a little confused. It’s the position of the body in relation to the piano. You’re quite correct about the position, of course—quite. But won’t you tell us how you were so sure of it?”
“Wait, please,” said Stephen Bellamy very clearly and distinctly. “You’re quite right about the fact that I’m confused. I can see perfectly that I’m making an absolute mess of this. It’s principally because I haven’t had any sleep since God knows when, and when you don’t sleep, you——”
“Mr. Bellamy, I’m sorry that I can’t let you go into that. Will you answer my question?”
“I can’t answer your question. But I can tell you this, Mr. Farr—I can tell you that as God is my witness, Susan Ives and I had nothing more to do with this murder than you had. I——”
“Your Honour! Your Honour!”
“Be silent, sir!” Judge Carver’s voice was more imperious than his gavel. “You are completely forgetting yourself. Let that entire remark be stricken from the record. Mr. Lambert, be good enough to keep your witness in hand. I regard this entire performance as highly improper.”
Mr. Lambert, a pale ghost of his rubicund self, advanced haltingly from where he had sat transfixed during the last interminable minutes. “I ask the Court’s indulgence for the witness, Your Honour. He took the stand to-day against the express advice of his physicians, who informed him that he was on the verge of a nervous breakdown. As it is now almost four, I ask that the court adjourn until to-morrow, when Mr. Bellamy will again take the stand if the prosecutor wishes to continue the cross-examination.”
Judge Carver leaned forward, frowning.
“If it please Your Honour,” said the prosecutor, briskly magnanimous, “that won’t be necessary. I’ve finished with Mr. Bellamy, and unless my friend wishes to ask him anything on redirect——”
“Nothing on redirect,” said Mr. Lambert hollowly, his eyes on the exhausted despair of the face before him. “That will be all, Mr. Bellamy.”
Slowly, stiffly, as though his very limbs had been wrenched by torture, Stephen Bellamy moved down the steps from the box, where there still rested Mimi Bellamy’s lace dress and silver slippers. When he stood a foot or so from his chair, he stopped for a moment, stared about him wildly, turning on the girl seated a little space away a look of dreadful inquiry. There she sat, slim and straight, with colour warm on her cheeks and bright in her lips, smiling that gay, friendly smile that was always waiting just behind the serene indifference of her eyes. And painfully, carefully, Stephen Bellamy twisted his stiffened lips to greet it, turned his face away and sat down. Even those across the courtroom could watch the ripple in his cheeks as his teeth clenched, unclenched, clenched.
“If Your Honour has no objection,” the prosecutor was saying in that smooth new voice, “the witness that I spoke of yesterday is now in the court. He is still under his doctor’s orders, but he had an unusually good night, and is quite able to take the stand; he is anxious to do so, in fact, as he is supposed to get off for a rest as soon as possible. His testimony won’t take more than a few moments.”
“Very well, let him take the stand.”
“Call Dr. Barretti.”
“Dr. Gabriel Barretti.”
Dr. Barretti, looking much more like a distinguished diplomat than most distinguished diplomats ever look, mounted the stand with the caution of one newly risen from a hospital cot and settled himself comfortably in the uncomfortable chair. A small, close-clipped gray moustache, a fine sleek head of graying hair, a not displeasing touch of hospital pallor, brilliant eyes behind pince-nez on the most inobtrusive of black cords, and the tiny flame of the Legion of Honour ribbon lurking discreetly in his buttonhole—Dr. Barretti was far from suggesting the family physician. He turned toward the prosecutor with an air of gravely courteous interest.
“Dr. Barretti, what is your profession?”
“I believe that I might describe myself, without too much presumption, as a finger-print expert.”
There was no trace of accent in Dr. Barretti’s finely modulated voice, and only the neatest touch of humourous deprecation.
“The greatest authority in the world to-day, aren’t you, Doctor?”
“It would ill become me to say so, sir, and I might find an unflattering number to disagree with me.”
“Still, it’s an undisputed fact. How long has finger-printing been your occupation?”
“It has been both my occupation and my hobby for about thirty-two years.”
“You started to make a study of it then?”
“A little before that. I studied at the time, however, with Sir Francis Galton in England and Bertillon in France. I also did considerable experimental work in Germany.”
“Sir Francis Galton and Bertillon were the pioneers in the use of finger prints for identification, were they not?”
“Hardly that. Finger prints for the purpose of identification were used in the Far East before history was invented to record it.”
Mr. Farr frowned impatiently. “They were its foremost modern exponents as a means of criminal identification?”
“Perfectly true. They were pioneers and very distinguished authorities.”
“Shortly before his death in 1911, did Sir Francis Galton write a monograph on some recent developments in finger-print classification?”
“He did.”
“Did the dedication read ‘To Gabriel Barretti, My Pupil and My Master’?”
“Yes. Sir Francis was more than generous.”
“Are you officially associated with any organization at present?”
“Oh, yes. I am very closely associated with the work of the Central Bureau of Identification in New York, and with the work of the Army and Navy Bureau in Washington.”
“You are the court of final appeal in both places, are you not?”
“I believe so. I am also an official consultant of both Scotland Yard and the Paris Sûreté.”
“Exactly. Is there any opportunity of error in identification by means of finger prints?”
“Granted a moderately clear impression and an able and honest expert to read it, there is not the remotest possibility of error.”
“The prints would be identical?”
“Oh, no; no two prints are ever identical. The pressure of the finger and the temperature of the body cause infinite minute variations.”
“But they do not interfere with identification?”
“No more than the fact that you raise or lower your voice alters the fact that it is your voice.”
“Precisely. Now, Dr. Barretti, I ask you to identify these two photographs and to tell us what they represent.”
Dr. Barretti took the two huge cardboard squares with their sinister black splotches and inspected them gravely. The jury, abruptly and violently agog with interest, hunched rapidly forward to the edges of their chairs.
From over Mr. Farr’s shoulder came an old, shaken voice—the voice of Dudley Lambert, empty of its erstwhile resonance as a pricked drum: “One moment—one moment! Do I understand that you are offering these in evidence?”
“I don’t know whether you understand it or not,” remarked Mr. Farr irritably. “It’s certainly what I intend to do as soon as I get them marked for identification. Now, Dr. Barretti——”
“Your Honour, I object to this—I object!”
“On what grounds?” inquired Judge Carver somewhat peremptorily, his own eyes fixed with undisguised interest on the large squares.
“On the grounds that this entire performance is utterly irregular. I was not told that the witness held back by the prosecutor was a finger-print expert, nor that——”
“You did not make any inquiries to that effect,” the judge reminded him unsympathetically.
“I consider the entire performance nothing more or less than a trap, Your Honour. I know nothing about this man. I know nothing about finger prints. I am not a police-court lawyer, but a——”
“Do you desire further to qualify Dr. Barretti as an expert by cross-examination?” inquired His Honour with more than his usual hint of acerbity.
“I do not, Your Honour; as I stated, I am totally unable to cross-examine on the subject.”
“I am sure that Dr. Barretti will hold himself at your disposal until you have had the time to consult or produce finger-print experts of your own,” said Judge Carver, bending inquiring eyes on that urbane gentleman and the restive prosecutor.
“Oh, by all means,” said Mr. Farr. “One day—two days—three days—we willingly waive cross-examination until my distinguished adversary is completely prepared. May I proceed, Your Honour?”
“You may.”
“They represent two greatly enlarged sets of finger prints, enlarged some fifty to sixty times—both the photographs and the initialled enlargements are in the lower left-hand corners—by my photographer and myself.”
“Both made at the same time?”
“The photographs were made at the same time—yes.”
“No, no—were the finger prints themselves?”
“Oh, no, at quite different times. The set at the right is a photograph of official prints—prints made especially for our file; the one at the left, sometimes known as a casual print, was obtained from a surface at another date entirely.”
“A clear impression?”
“A remarkably clear impression. I believe that I may say without exaggeration—a beautiful impression.”
“Each shows five fingers?”
“The official one shows five fingers, the casual print shows four fingers distinctly—the fifth, the little finger, is considerably blurred, as apparently no pressure was exerted by it.”
“Only one finger print is necessary in order to establish identity?”
“A section of a finger print, if it is sufficiently large, will establish identity.”
“These prints are from the same hand?”
“From the same hand.”
“It should be obvious even to the layman in comparing them that the same hand made them?”
“I should think that it would be inescapable.”
“No two people in the world have ever been discovered to have the same arrangement of whorls or loops or arches that constitute a finger print?”
“No two in the world.”
“How many finger prints have been taken?”
“Oh, millions of them—the number increases so rapidly that it would be folly to guess at it.”
“I’m going to ask you to give these prints to the jury, Dr. Barretti, so that they may be able to compare them at their leisure. Will you pass them on, Mr. Foreman, after you have inspected them? . . . Thanks.”
The foreman of the jury fell upon them with a barely restrained pounce, the very glasses on his nose quivering with excitement. Finger prints! Things that you read about all your life, that you wondered and speculated and marvelled over—and here they were, right in your lucky hands. The rest of the jury crowded forward enviously.
“Dr. Barretti, on what surface were these so-called casual prints found?”
Through the courtroom there ran a stir—a murmur—that strange soaring hum with which humanity eases itself of the intolerable burden of suspense. Even the rapt jury lifted its head to catch it.
“From the surface of a brass lamp—the lamp found in the gardener’s cottage on the Thorne estate known as Orchards.”
“Will you tell us why it was possible to obtain so sharply defined a print from this lamp?”
“Certainly. The hand that clasped the lamp was apparently quite moist, either from natural conditions of temperature or from some emotion. It had clasped the base, which was about six inches in diameter before it swelled into the portion that served as reservoir, quite firmly. The surface of the lamp had been lacquered in order to obviate polishing, making an excellent retaining surface. Furthermore, the impression was developed within twenty-four hours of the time of the murder, and the surface was at no time tampered with. The kerosene that had flowed from it freely flowed away from the base, and, in any case, the prints were on the upper portion of the base. All these circumstances united in making it possible to obtain an unusually fine print.”
“One that leaves not the remotest possibility of error in comparison and identification?”
“Not the remotest.”
“Whose hand made those two sets of impressions, Dr. Barretti?”
“The hand in both cases,” said Dr. Barretti, gravely and pleasantly, “was that of Mrs. Patrick Ives.”
After a long time Mr. Farr said softly, “That is all, Dr. Barretti. Cross-examine.”
And as though it had travelled a great distance and were very tired, the old strange voice that Mr. Lambert had found in the courtroom that afternoon said wearily, “No questions now. Later, perhaps—later—not now.”
The fifth day of the Bellamy trial was over.