Читать книгу The Bellamy Trial - Frances Noyes Hart - Страница 3

Table of Contents

The red-headed girl sank into the seat in the middle of the first row with a gasp of relief. Sixth seat from the aisle—yes, that was right; the label on the arm of the golden-oak chair stared up at her reassuringly. Row A, seat 15, Philadelphia Planet. The ones on either side of her were empty. Well, it was a relief to know that there were four feet of space left unoccupied in Redfield, even if only temporarily. She was still shaken into breathless stupor by the pandemonium in the corridors outside—the rattling of regiments of typewriters, of armies of tickers, the shouts of infuriated denizens of telephone booths, the hurrying, frantic faces of officials, the scurrying and scampering of dozens of rusty-haired freckled-faced insubordinate small boys, whose olive-drab messenger uniforms alone saved them from extermination; the newspaper men—you could spot them at once, looking exhausted and alert and elaborately bored; the newspaper women, keen and purposeful and diverted; and above and around and below all these licensed inhabitants, the crowd—a vast, jostling, lunging beast, with one supreme motive galvanizing it to action—an immense, a devouring curiosity that sent it surging time and time again against the closed glass doors with their blue-coated guardians, fragile barriers between it and the consummation of its desire. For just beyond those doors lay the arena where the beast might slake its hunger at will, and it was not taking its frustration of that privilege amiably.

The red-headed girl set her little black-feathered hat straight with unsteady fingers. She wasn't going to forget that crowd in a hurry. It had growled at her—actually growled—when she'd fought her way through it, armed with the magic of the little blue ticket that spelled open sesame as well as press section. Who could have believed that even curiosity would turn nice old gray-headed ladies and mild-looking gentlemen with brown moustaches and fat matrons with leather bags and thin flappers with batik scarfs into one huge ravenous beast? She panted again, reminiscently, at the thought of the way they'd shoved and squashed and kneaded—and then settled down to gratified inspection.

So this was a courtroom!

Not a very large or very impressive room, looked at from any angle. It might hold three hundred people at a pinch, and there were, conservatively, about three thousand crowding the corridors and walking the streets of Redfield in their efforts to expand its limits. Fan-shaped, with nine rows of the golden-oak seats packed with grimly triumphant humanity, the first three neatly tagged with the little white labels that metamorphosed them into the press section. Golden-oak panelling half-way up the walls, and then whitewashed plaster—rather dingy, smoky plaster, its defects relentlessly revealed by the pale autumnal sunshine flooding in through the great windows and the dome of many-coloured glass, lavish and heartening enough to compensate for much of the grimness and the grime.

Near enough for the red-headed girl to touch was a low rail, and beyond that rail a little empty space, like a stage—empty of actors, but cluttered with chairs and tables. At the back was a small platform with a great high-backed black leather chair, and a still smaller platform on a slightly lower level, with a rail about it and a much more uncomfortable-looking chair. The judge's seat, the witness box—she gave a little sigh of pure uncontrollable excitement, and a voice next to her said affably:

"Hi! Greetings, stranger, or hail, friend, as the case may be. Can I get by you into the next seat without damaging you and those feet of yours materially?"

The red-headed girl scrambled guiltily to the offending feet unobtrusive enough in themselves, but most obtrusively extended across the narrow passage, and turned a flushed and anxious countenance on her cheerful critic, now engaged in folding himself competently into the exiguous space provided by the golden-oak chair. A tall lanky young man, with a straight nose, mouse-coloured hair, shrewd gray eyes, and an expression that was intended to be that of a hard-boiled cynic, and that worked all right unless he grinned. He wore a shabby tweed suit, a polka-dotted tie, had three very sharp pencils, and a good-sized stack of telegraph blanks clasped to his heart. Obviously a reporter—a real reporter. The red-headed girl attempted to conceal her gold pencil and leather-bound notebook, smiling tentatively and ingratiatingly.

"Covering it for a New York paper?" inquired the Olympian one graciously.

"No," said the red-headed girl humbly; "a Philadelphia one—the Philadelphia Planet. Is yours New York?"

"M'm—h'm—Sphere. Doing colour stuff?"

"Oh, I hope so," replied the red-headed girl so fervently that the reporter looked somewhat startled. "You see, I don't know whether it will have colour or not. I'm not exactly a regular reporter."

"Oh, you aren't, aren't you? Well, if it's no secret, just exactly what are you? A finger-print expert?"

"I'm a—a writer," said the red-headed girl, looking unusually small and dignified. "This is my first as—assignment." It was frightful to stammer just when you particularly wanted not to.

The real reporter eyed her severely. "A writer, hey? A real, honest-to-goodness, walking-around writer, with a fountain pen and a great big vocabulary and a world of promise and everything? Well, I'll bet you a hot dog to a soup plate of fresh caviar that about four days from now you'll be parading through these marble halls telling the cockeyed world that you're a journalist."

"Oh, I wouldn't dare. Do all of you call yourselves journalists?"

The reporter looked as though he were about to suffocate. "Get this," he said impressively: "The day that you hear me call myself a journalist you have my full and free permission to call me a ——. Well, no, on second thought, a lady couldn't. But if you ever call me a journalist, smile. And if you solemnly swear never to call yourself one I'll show you the ropes a bit, because you're a poor ignorant little writing critter that doesn't know any better than to come to a murder trial—and besides that you have red hair. Want to know anything?"

"Oh," cried the red-headed girl, "I didn't know that anyone so horrid could be so nice. I want to know everything. Let's begin at the beginning."

"Well, in case you don't know where you are, this is the courtroom of Redfield, county seat of Bellechester, twenty-five miles from the great metropolis of New York. And in case you'd like to know what it's all about, it's the greatest murder trial of the century—about every two years another one of 'em comes along. This particular one is the trial of the People versus Susan Ives and Stephen Bellamy for the wilful, deliberate, and malicious murder of Madeleine Bellamy."

"A murder trial," said the red-headed girl softly. "Well, I should think that ought to be about the most tremendous thing in the world."

"Oh, you do, do you?" remarked the reporter, and for a moment it was no effort at all for him to look cynical. "Well, I'll have you called at about seven to-morrow morning, though it's a pity ever to wake anyone up that can have such beautiful dreams as that. The most tremendous thing in the world, says she. Well, well, well!"

The red-headed girl eyed him belligerently. "Well, yourself! Perhaps you'll be good enough to tell me what's more tremendous than murder."

"Oh, you tell me!" urged the reporter persuasively.

"All right, I'll tell you that the only story that you're going to be able to interest every human being in, from the President of the United States to the gentleman who takes away the ashes, is a good murder story. It's the one universal solvent. The old lady from Dubuque will be at it the first thing in the morning, and the young lady from Park Avenue will be at it the last thing at night. And if it's a love story too, you're lucky, because then you've got the combination that every really great writer that ever lived has picked out to wring hearts and freeze the marrow in posterity's bones."

"Oh, come! Aren't you getting just a dash overwrought? Every great writer? What about Wordsworth?"

"Oh, pooh!" said the red-headed girl fiercely. "Wordsworth! What about Sophocles and Euripides and Shakespeare and Browning? Do you know what 'The Ring and the Book' is? It's a murder trial! What's 'Othello' but a murder story? What's 'Hamlet' but five murder stories? What's 'Macbeth'? Or 'The Cenci'? Or 'Lamia'? Or 'Crime and Punishment'? Or 'Carmen'? Or——"

"I give up," said the reporter firmly—"or, no, wait a moment—can it be that they are murder stories? Quite a little reader in your quiet way, aren't you?"

The red-headed girl ignored him sternly. "And do you want me to tell you why it's the most enthralling and absorbing theme in the world? Do you?"

"No," replied the reporter hastily. "Yes—or how shall I put it? Yes and no, let's say."

"It's because it's real," said the red-headed girl, with a sudden startling gravity. "It's the only thing that's absolutely real in the world, I think. Something that makes you reckless enough not to care a tinker's dam for your own life or another's—that's something to think about, isn't it?"

"Well, yes," said the reporter slowly. "Now that you put it that way, that's something to think about."

"It's good for us, too," said the girl, "We're all so everlastingly canny and competent and sophisticated these days, going mechanically through a mechanical world, sharpening up our little emotions, tuning up our little sensations—and suddenly there's a cry of 'Murder!' in the streets, and we stop and look back, shuddering, over our shoulder—and across us falls the shadow of a savage with a bloodstained club, and we know that it's good and dangerous and beautiful to be alive."

"I rather get you," said the reporter thoughtfully. "And, strangely enough, there's just a dash in what you say. It's the same nice, creepy, luxurious feeling that you get when you pull up closer to a good roaring fire with carpet slippers on your feet and a glass of something hot and sweet in your hand and listen to the wind yowling outside and see the rain on the black windowpanes. Nothing in the world to make you feel warm and safe and sheltered and cozy like a good storm or a good murder—what?"

"Nothing in the world," agreed the red-headed girl; and she added pensively, "It's always interested me more than anything else."

"Has it indeed? Well, don't let it get you. I'd just keep it as a hobby if I were you. At your present gait you're going to make some fellow an awfully happy widow one of these days. Are you a good marksman?"

"You think that murder's frightfully amusing, don't you?" The red-headed girl's soft voice had a sudden edge to it.

The real reporter's face changed abruptly. "No, I don't," he said shortly. "I think it's rotten—a dirty, bloody, beastly business that used to keep me awake nights until I grew a shell over my skin and acquired a fairly workable sense of humour to use on all these clowns called human beings. Of course, I'm one of them myself, but I don't boast about it. And if you're suffering from the illusion that nothing shocks me, I'll tell you right now that it shocks me any amount that a scrap of a thing like you, with all that perfectly good red hair and a rather nice arrangement in dimples, should be practically climbing over that rail in your frenzy to find out what it's all about."

"I think that men are the most amusing race in the world," murmured the red-headed girl. "And I think that it's awfully appealing of you to be shocked. But, you see, my grandfather—who was as stern and Scotch and hidebound as anyone that ever breathed—told me when I was fourteen years old that a great murder trial was the most superbly dramatic spectacle that the world afforded. And he ought to have known what he was talking about—he was one of the greatest judges that ever lived."

"Well, maybe they were in his day. And you said Scotch, didn't you? Oh, well, they do it better over there. England, too—bunches of flowers on the clerks' tables and wigs on the judges' heads, and plenty of scarlet and gold, and all the great lawyers in the land taking a whack at it, and never a cross word out of one of them——"

"He used to say that is was like a hunt," interrupted the red-headed girl firmly, "with the judge as master of the hounds and the lawyers as the hounds, baying as they ran hot on the scent, and all the rest of us galloping hard at their heels—jury, spectators, public."

"Sure," said the reporter grimly. "With the quarry waiting, bound and shackled and gagged till they catch up with him and tear him to pieces—it's a great hunt all right, all right!"

"It's not a human being that they're hunting, idiot—it's truth."

"Truth!" The reporter's laugh was loud and long and free enough to cause a dozen heads to turn. "Oh, what you're going to learn before you get out of here! A hunt for truth, is it? Well, now, you get this straight: If that's what you're expecting to find here, you'll save yourself a whole lot of bad minutes by taking the next train back to Philadelphia. Truth! I'm not running down murder trials from the point of view of interest, you understand. A really good one furnishes all the best points of a first-class dog fight and a highly superior cross-word puzzle, and that ought to be enough excitement for anyone. But if you think that the opposing counsel are honestly in pursuit of enlightenment——"

A clear high voice cut through the rustle and clatter like a knife.

"His Honour! His Honour the Court!" There was a mighty rustle of upheaval.

"Who's that?" inquired a breathless voice at the reporter's shoulder.

"That's the tallest and nicest court crier in the United States of America. Name's Ben Potts. Best falsetto voice outside the Russian Orthodox Church. Kindly notice the central hair part and spit curls. And here we have none other than His Honour himself, Judge Anthony Bristed Carver."

"Hear ye! Hear ye! Hear ye!" chanted the court crier. "All those having business before this honourable court draw near, give your attention and you shall be heard!"

The tall figure in flowing black moved deliberately toward the chair on the dais, which immediately assumed the aspect of a throne. Judge Carver's sleek iron-gray head and aquiline face were an adornment to any courtroom. He swept a pair of brilliant deep-set eyes over the room, seated himself, and reached for the gavel in one motion.

"And he'll use it, too, believe you me," murmured the reporter with conviction. "Sternest old guy on the bench."

"Where are the prisoners—where do they come from?"

"The defendants, as they whimsically prefer to be called for the time being, come through that little door to the left of the judge's room; that enormous red-faced, sandy-haired old duffer talking to the thin young man in the tortoise-shell glasses is Mrs. Ives's counsel, Mr. Dudley Lambert; the begoggled one is Mr. Bellamy's counsel, Harrison Clark."

"Where's the prosecutor?"

"Oh, well, Mr. Farr is liable to appear almost anywhere, like Mephistopheles in Faust or that baby that so obligingly came out of the everywhere into the here. He's all for the unexpected—Ah, what did I tell you? There he is now, conferring with the judge and the defense counsel."

The red-headed girl leaned forward eagerly. The slender individual, leaning with rather studied ease against the railing that hedged in the majesty of the law, suggested a curious cross between a promising light of Tammany Hall and the youngest and handsomest of the Spanish Inquisitioners. Black hair that deserved the qualification of raven, a pale regular face that missed distinction by a destructive quarter of an inch, narrow blue eyes back of which stirred some restless fire, long slim hands—what was there about him that wasn't just right? Perhaps that dark coat fitted him just a shade too well, or that heavily brocaded tie in peacock blue—Well, at any rate, his slim elegance certainly made Lambert look like an awkward, cross, red-faced baby, for all his thatch of graying hair.

"Here they come!" Even the reporter's level, mocking voice was a trifle tense.

The little door to the left of the judge opened and two people came in, as leisurely and tranquilly as though they were advancing toward easy chairs and a tea table before an open fire. A slight figure in a tan tweed suit, with a soft copper silk handkerchief at her throat and a little felt hat of the same colour pulled down over two wings of pale gold hair, level hazel eyes under level dark brows, and a beautiful mouth, steady-lipped, generous, sensitive—the most beautiful mouth, thought the red-headed girl, that she had ever seen. She crossed the short distance between the door and the chair beside which stood Mr. Lambert with a light, boyish swing. She looked rather like a boy—a gallant, proud little boy, striding forward to receive the victor's laurels. Did murderesses walk like that?

Behind her came Stephen Bellamy, the crape band on his dark coat appallingly conspicuous; only a few inches taller than Sue Ives, with dark hair lightly silvered, and a charming, sensitive, olive-skinned face. As they seated themselves, he flashed the briefest of smiles at his companion—a grave, consoling smile, singularly sweet—then turned an attentive countenance to the judge. Did a murderer smile like that?

The red-headed girl sat staring at them blankly.

"Oh, Lord!" moaned the reporter at her side. "Why did that old jackass Lambert let her come in here in that rig? If he had the sense that God gives a dead duck he'd know that she ought to be wearing something black and frilly and pitiful instead of stamping around in brown leather Oxfords as though she were headed straight for the first tee instead of the electric chair."

"Oh, don't!" The red-headed girl's voice was passionate in its protest. "You don't know what you're talking about. Look, what are they doing now? What's that wheel?"

"That's for choosing the jury; it looks as though they were going to start right now. Yes, they're off; that's the sheriff spinning the wheel. He calls the names——"

"Timothy Forbes!"

A stocky man with a small shrewd eye and a reddish moustache wormed his way forward.

"Number 1! Take your seat in the box."

"Will it take long?" asked the red-headed girl.

"Alexander Petty!"

"Not at this rate," replied the reporter, watching the progress toward the jury box of a tow-headed little man with steel-bowed spectacles and a suit a little shiny at the elbows.

"This is going to be just as rapid as the law allows, I understand. Both sides are rarin' to go, and they're not liable to touch their peremptory challenges; and they're not likely to challenge for cause, either, unless it's a darned good cause."

"Eliphalet Slocum!"

A keen-faced elderly man with a mouth like a steel trap joined the men in the box.

"It's a special panel that they're choosing from," explained the reporter, lowering his voice cautiously as Judge Carver glanced ominously in his direction. "Redfield's pretty up and coming for a place of its size. All the obviously undesirables are weeded out, so it saves an enormous amount of time."

"Cæsar Smith!"

Mr. Smith advanced at a trot, his round, amiable countenance beamingly exposing three gold teeth to the pleased spectators.

"Robert Angostini."

A dark and dapper individual with a silky black moustache slipped quietly by Mr. Smith.

"Number 5, take your place in the box.... George Hobart."

An amiable-looking youth in a brown Norfolk jacket advanced briskly.

"Who's that coming in now?" inquired the red-headed girl in a stealthy whisper.

"Where?"

"In the witnesses' seats—over in the corner by the window. The tall man with the darling little old lady."

The reporter turned his head, his boredom lit by a transient gleam of interest. "That? That's Pat Ives and his mother. She's been subpœnaed by the state as a witness—God knows what for."

"I love them when they wear bonnets," said the red-headed girl. "What's he like?"

"Pat? Well, take a good look at him; that's what he's like."

The red-headed girl obediently took a good look. Black hair, blue eyes, black with pain, set in a haggard, beautiful young face that looked white to the bone, a reckless mouth set in a line of desperation.

"He doesn't look very contented," she commented mildly.

"And his looks don't belie him," the reporter assured her drily. "Young Mr. Ives belongs to the romantic school—you know—the guardsman, the troubadour, the rover, and the lover; the duel by candlelight, the rose in the moonlight, the dice, the devil and boots, saddle, to horse and away. The type that muffs it when he's thrown into a show that deals in the crude realism of spilled kerosene and bloody rags and an Italian labourer's stuffy little front parlour. Mix him up with that and he gets shadows under his eyes and three degrees of fever and bad dreams. Also, he gets a little irritable with reporters."

"Did you interview him?" inquired the red-headed girl in awe-stricken tones.

"Well, that's a nice way of putting it," said the reporter thoughtfully. "I went around to the Ives' house with one or two other scientific spirits on the night after Sue Ives and Bellamy were arrested—June twenty-first, if my memory serves me. We rang the doorbell none too optimistically, and the door opened so suddenly that we practically fell flat on our faces in the front hall. There stood the debonair Mr. Ives, in his shirt sleeves, with as unattractive a look on his face as I've ever seen in my life.

"'Come right in, gentlemen,' says he, and he made that sound unattractive too. 'I'm not mistaken, am I? It's the gentlemen of the press that I'm addressing?' We allowed without too much enthusiasm that such was indeed the case, and in we came. 'Let's get right down to business,' he said. 'None of this absurd delicacy that uses up all your energy,' says he. 'What you gentlemen want to know, I'm sure, is whether I was Madeleine Bellamy's lover and whether my wife was her murderess. That's about it, isn't it?"

"It was just about it, but somehow, the way he put it, it sounded not so good. 'Well,' said Ives, I'll give you a good straight answer to a good straight question. Get to hell out of here!' says he, and he yanks the front door open so wide that it would have let out an army.

"Just as I was thinking of something really bright to come back with, a nice soft little voice in the back of the hall said, 'Oh, Pat darling, do be careful. You'll wake up the babies. I'm sure that these gentlemen will come back another time,' And Mrs. Daniel Ives trotted up and put one hand on his arm and smiled a nice, worried, polite little smile at us.

"And Pat darling smiled, too, not so everlastingly politely, and said, 'I'm sure they will—I'm sure of it. Four o'clock in the morning's a good time too.' And we decided that was as good a time as any and we went away from there. And here we are. And if you don't look sharp they'll have a jury before you understand why I know that Mr. Ives is the romantic type that lets realism get on his nerves. What number is that heading for the box now?"

"Otto Schultz!"

A cozy white-headed cherub trotted energetically up.

"Number 10, take your place in the box!"

"Josiah Morgan!"

"Gosh, they'll get the whole panel in under an hour!" exulted the reporter. "Look at the fine hatchet face on Morgan, will you? I bet the fellow that tries to sell Josh a lame horse will live to rue the day."

"Charles Stuyvesant!"

Charles Stuyvesant smiled pleasantly at the sheriff, his fine iron-gray head and trim shoulders standing out sharply against his overgroomed and undergroomed comrades in the box.

"Number 12, take your place in the box! You and each of you do solemnly swear that you will well and truly try Stephen Bellamy and Susan Ives, and a true verdict give according to the law and evidence, so help you God?"

Above the grave answering murmur the red-headed girl begged nervously, "What happens now?"

"I don't know—recess, maybe—wait, the judge is addressing the jury."

Judge Carver's deep voice rang out impressively in the still courtroom:

"Gentlemen of the jury, you will now be given the usual admonition—that you are not to discuss this case amongst yourselves, or allow anybody else to discuss it with you, outside your own body. You are not to form or express any opinion about the merits of the controversy. You are to refrain from speaking of it to anybody, or from allowing anybody to speak to you with respect to any aspect of this case. If this occurs you will communicate it to the Court at once. You are to keep your judgment open until the defendants have had their side of the case heard, and, lastly, you are to make up your judgment solely on the law, which is the last thing that you will hear from the Court in its charge. Until then, you will not be able to render a verdict in accordance with the law, and therefore you must suspend judgment until that time. The Court is dismissed for the noon recess. We will reconvene at one o'clock."

The red-headed girl turned eyes round as saucers on the reporter. "Don't they come back till one?"

"They do not."

"What do we do until then?"

"We eat. There's a fair place on the next corner."

The red-headed girl waved it away. "Oh, I couldn't possibly eat—not possibly. It's like the first time I went to the theatre; I was only seven, but I remember it perfectly. I sat spang in the middle of the front row, just like this, and I made my governess take me three quarters of an hour too early, and I sat there getting sicker and sicker from pure excitement, wondering what kind of a new world was behind that curtain—what kind of a strange, beautiful, terrible world. I sat there feeling more frightful every second, and all of a sudden the curtain went up with a jerk and I let out a shriek that made everyone in the theatre and on the stage jump three feet in the air. I feel exactly like that now."

"Well, get hold of yourself. Shrieking isn't popular around here. If you sit right there like a good quiet child I may bring you back an apple. I don't promise anything, but I may."

She was still sitting there when he came back with the apple, crunched up in her chair, staring at the jury box with eyes rounder than ever.

"Isn't it nearly time?" She eyed the apple ungratefully.

"It is. Come on now, eat it, and I'll show you what I've got in my pocket."

"Show?"

"The jury list—names, addresses, ages, professions and all. Two of them are under thirty, three under forty, four under fifty, two under sixty, one sixty-two. Three merchants, two clerks, two farmers, an insurance man, an accountant, a radio expert, a jeweller and a banker. Not a bad list at all, if you ask me. Charles Stuyvesant's the only one that won't have a good clubby time of it. He's one of the richest bankers in New York."

"He looked it," said the red-headed girl. "What will they do when they come back?"

"Well, if they're good, the prosecutor's going to make them a nice little speech."

"Who is the prosecutor? Is he well known?"

"Mr. Daniel Farr is a promising young lad of about forty who is extremely well known in these parts, and if you asked him his own unbiassed opinion of his abilities, he would undoubtedly tell you that with a bit of luck he ought to be President of these United States in the next ten years."

"And what do you think of him?"

"Well, I think that he may be, at that, and I add in passing that I consider that no tribute to the judgment of these United States. He's about as shrewd as they make 'em, but I'm not convinced that he's a very good lawyer. He goes in too much for purple patches and hitting about three inches below the belt for my simple tastes. And he works on the theory that the jury is not quite all there, which may be amply justified but is a little trying for the innocent bystander. He goes in for poetry, too—oh, not Amy Lowell or Ezra Pound, but something along the lines of 'I could not love thee, dear, so much, loved I not honour more,' and 'How dear to my heart are the scenes of my childhood'—you know the kind of thing—deep stuff."

"Is he successful?"

"Oh, by all manner of means. Twenty years ago he was caddie master at the Rosemont Country Club; five years before that he was a caddie there. America, my child, is the land of opportunity. He's magnificent when he gets started on the idle rich; it's all right to be rich if you're not idle—or well born. If you're one of those well born society devils, you might just as well go and jump in the lake, if you ask Mr. Farr."

"Does he still live in Rosemont?"

"No, hasn't lived there for nineteen years; but I don't believe that he's forgotten one single snub or tip that he got in the good old days. Every now and then you can see him stop and turn them over in his mind."

"What's Mr. Lambert like?"

"Ah, there is a horse of a different colour—a cart horse of a different colour, if I may go so far. Mr. Dudley Lambert is a lawyer who knows everything that there is to know about wills and trusts and estates, and not another blessed thing in the world. If he's as good now as he was when I heard him in a case two years ago, he's terrible. I can't wait to hear him."

The red-headed girl looked pale. "Oh, then, why did she get him?"

"Ah, thereby hangs a tale. Mr. Lambert was a side kick of old Curtiss Thorne—handled his estate and everything—and being a crusty old bachelor from the age of thirty on, he idolized the Thorne children. Sue was his pet. She still calls him Uncle Dudley, and when the split came between Sue and her father he stuck to Sue. So I suppose that it was fairly natural that she turned to him when this thing burst; he's always handled all her affairs, and he's probably told her that he's the best lawyer this side of the Rocky Mountains. He believes it."

"How old is he?"

"Sixty-three—plenty old enough to know better. You might take everything that I say about these guys with a handful of salt; it's only fair to inform you that they are anything but popular with the Fourth Estate. The only person that talks less in this world than Dudley Lambert is Daniel Farr; either of them would make a closed steel trap seem like a chatterbox. Stephen Bellamy's counsel is Lambert's junior partner and under both his thumbs; he'd be a nice chap if he didn't have lockjaw."

"Don't they tell you anything at all?" inquired the red-headed girl sympathetically.

"They tell us that there's been a murder," replied the reporter gloomily. "And I'm telling you that it's the only murder that ever took place in the United States of America where the press has been treated like an orphan child by everyone that knows one earthly thing about it. Not one word of the hearing before the grand jury has leaked out to anyone; we haven't been given the name of one witness, and whatever the state's case against Stephen Bellamy and Susan Ives may be, it's a carefully guarded secret between Mr. Daniel Farr and Mr. Daniel Farr. The defense is just as expansive. So don't believe all you hear from me. I'd boil the lot of 'em in oil. Here comes Ben Potts. To be continued in our next."

The red-headed girl wasn't listening to him; she was watching the dark figure of the prosecutor, moving leisurely forward toward the little space where twelve men were seating themselves quietly and unostentatiously in their stiff, uncomfortable chairs. Twelve men—twelve everyday, ordinary, average men——She drew a sharp breath and turned her face away for a minute. The curtain was going up.

"May it please Your Honour"—the prosecutor's voice was very low, but as penetrating as though he were a hand-breadth away—"may it please Your Honour and gentlemen of the jury: On the night of the nineteenth of June, 1926, a little less than four months ago, a singularly cruel and ruthless murder took place not ten miles from the spot in which we have met to try the two who are accused of perpetrating it. On that summer night, which was made for youth and love and beauty, a girl who was young and beautiful and most desperately in love came out through the starlight to meet her lover. She had no right to meet him. She was another man's wife, he was another woman's husband. But love had made her reckless, and she came, with a black cloak flung over her white lace dress, and silver slippers that were made for dancing on feet that were made to dance—and that had danced for the last time. She was bound for the gardener's cottage on one of the largest and oldest estates in the neighbourhood, known as Orchards. At the time of the murder, it was not occupied, and the house was for sale. She was hurrying, because she feared that she was late and that her lover might be waiting. But it was not love that waited for her in the little sitting room of the gardener's cottage.

"If you men who sit here in judgment of her murderers think harshly of that pretty, flushed, enchanted girl hurrying through the night to her tryst, remember that that tryst was with death, not with love, and be gentle with her, even in your thoughts. She has paid more dearly for the crime of loving not wisely but too well than many of her righteous sisters.

"Next morning, at about nine o'clock, Mr. Herbert Conroy, a real-estate agent, arrived at the gardener's cottage with a prospective client for the estate who wished to inspect the property. As he came up on the little porch he was surprised to see that the front door was slightly ajar, and thinking that sneak thieves might have broken in, he pushed it farther open and went in.

"The first floor at the right of the narrow hall was the sitting room—what was known by the people who had formerly used it as the front parlour. Mr. Conroy stepped across its threshold, and his eyes fell on a truly appalling sight. Stretched out on the floor before him was a young woman in a white lace evening gown. A table was overturned beside her. Either there had been a struggle or the table had been upset as she fell. At her feet were the fragments of a shattered lamp chimney and china shade and a brass lamp.

"The girl's white frock was stained with blood from throat to hem; her silk stockings were clotted with it; even her silver slippers were ruinously stained. She was known to have been wearing a string of pearls, her wedding ring, and three sapphire-and-diamond rings when she left home. These jewels were missing. The girl on the floor—the girl who had been wilfully and cruelly stabbed to death—the girl whose pretty frock had been turned into a ghastly mockery, was Madeleine Bellamy, of whose murder the two defendants before you are jointly accused.

"The man on trial is Stephen Bellamy the husband of the murdered girl. The woman who sits beside him is Susan Ives, the wife of Patrick Ives, who was the lover of Madeleine Bellamy and to whom she was going on that ill-starred night in June.

"Murder, gentlemen, is an ugly and repellent thing; but this murder, I think that you will agree, is a peculiarly ugly and repellent one. It is repellent because it is the State's contention that it was committed by a woman of birth, breeding, and refinement, to whose every instinct the very thought should have been abhorrent—because this lady was driven to this crime by a motive singularly sordid—because at her side stood a devoted husband, changed by jealousy to a beast to whom the death of his wife had become more precious than her life. It is peculiarly repellent because we propose to show that these two, with her blood still on their hands, were cool, collected, and deliberate enough to remove the jewels that she wore from her dead body in order to make this murder seem to involve robbery as a motive.

"In order to be able fully to grasp the significance of the evidence that we propose to present to you, it is necessary that you should know something of the background against which these actors played their tragic parts. As briefly as possible, then, I will sketch it for you.

"Bellechester County—your county, gentlemen, and thank God, my county—contains as many beautiful homes and delightful communities as any county in this state—or in any other state, for that matter—and no more delightful one exists than that of Rosemont, a small village about ten miles south of this courthouse. The village itself is a flourishing little place, but the real centre of attraction is the country club, about two miles from the village limits. About this centre cluster some charming homes, and in one of the most charming of them, a low, rambling, remodelled farmhouse, lived Patrick Ives and his wife. Patrick Ives is a man of about thirty-two who has made a surprising place for himself as a partner in one of the most conservative and successful investment banking houses in New York. I say surprising advisedly, for everyone was greatly surprised when about seven years ago he married Susan Thorne and settled down to serious work for the first time in his life. Up till that time, with the exception of two years at the front establishing a brilliant war record, he seems to have spent most of his time perfecting his golf game and his fox-trotting abilities and devoting the small portion of time that remained at his disposal to an anæmic real-estate business. According to all reports, he was—and is—likable, charming and immensely popular."

"Just one moment, Mr. Farr," Judge Carver's deep tones cut abruptly across the prosecutor's clear, urgent voice. "Do you propose to prove all these statements?"

"Certainly, Your Honour."

"I do not wish in any way to hamper you, but some of this seems a little far afield."

"I can assure Your Honour that the State proposes to connect all these facts with its case."

"Very well, you may proceed."

"At the time of the murder Mr. Ives's household consisted of his wife, Susan Thorne Ives; his two children, Peter and Polly, aged five and six; his mother, Mrs. Daniel Ives, to whom he has always been an unusually devoted son; a nursery governess, Miss Kathleen Page; and some six or seven servants. The only member of the household who concerns us immediately is Susan, or, as she is known to her friends, Sue Ives.

"Mrs. Ives is a most unusual woman. The youngest child and only daughter of the immensely wealthy Curtiss Thorne, she grew up on the old Thorne estate, Orchards, the idol of her father and her two brothers. Her mother died shortly after she was born. There was no luxury, no indulgence to which she was not accustomed from her earliest childhood. She was brilliantly intellectual and excelled at every type of athletics. Society, apparently, interested her very little; but there was not a trophy that she did not promptly capture at either golf or tennis. She was not particularly attractive to men, according to local gossip, in spite of being witty, accomplished, and charming—perhaps she was too witty and too accomplished for their peace of mind. At any rate, she set the entire community by the ears about seven years ago by running off with the handsome and impecunious Patrick Ives, just back from the war.

"Old Curtiss Thorne, who detested Patrick Ives and had other plans for her, cut her off without a cent—and died two years later without a cent himself, ruined by the collapse of his business during the deflation of 1921. Just what happened to Patrick and Susan Ives during the three years after the elopement, no one knows. They disappeared into the maelstrom of New York. Mrs. Daniel Ives joined them, and somehow they must have managed to keep from starving to death. Two children were born to Susan Ives, and finally Patrick persuaded this investment house to try him out as a bond salesman. It developed that he had a positive genius for the business, and his rise has been spectacular in the extreme. He is considered to-day one of the most promising young men in the Street.

"At the end of four years, the Iveses and their babies returned to Rosemont. They bought an old farmhouse with some seven or eight acres about a mile from the club, remodelled it, landscaped it, put in a tennis court, and became the most sought-after young couple in Rosemont. On the surface, they seemed ideally happy. Two charming children, a charming home, plenty of money, congenial enough tastes—such things should go far to create a paradise, shouldn't they? Well, down this smooth, easy, flower-strewn, and garlanded path Patrick and Susan Ives were hurrying straight toward hell. In order to understand why this was true, you must know something of two other people and their lives.

"About a mile and a half from the Ives house was another farmhouse, on the outskirts of the village, but this one had not been remodelled. It was small, shabby, in poor repair—no tennis court, no gardens, a cheap portable garage, a meagre half acre of land inadequately surrounded by a rickety fence. Everything is comparative in this world. To the dwellers in tenements and slums, that house would have been a little palace. To the dweller in the stone palaces that line the Hudson, it would be a slum. To Madeleine Bellamy, whose home it was, it was undoubtedly a constant humiliation and irritation.

"Mimi Bellamy—in all likelihood no one in Rosemont had heard her called Madeleine since the day that she was christened—Mimi Bellamy was an amazingly beautiful creature. 'Beauty' is a much cheapened and battered word; in murder trials it is loosely applied to either the victim or the murderess if either of them happened to be under fifty and not actually deformed. I am not referring to that type of beauty. Mimi Bellamy's beauty was of the type that in Trojan days launched a thousand ships and in these days launches a musical comedy. Hers was beauty that is a disastrous gift—not the common-place prettiness of a small-town belle, though such, it seems, was the rôle in which fate had cast her.

"I am showing you her picture, cut from the local paper—crudely taken, crudely printed, many times enlarged, yet even all these factors cannot dim her radiance. It was taken shortly before she died—not two months before, as a matter of fact. It cannot give the flowerlike beauty of her colouring, the red-gold hair, the sea-blue eyes, the exquisite flush of exultant youth that played about her like an enchantment; but perhaps even this cold, black-and-white shadow of a laughing girl in a flowered frock will give you enough of a suggestion of her warm enchantment to make the incredible disaster that resulted from that enchantment more credible. It is for that purpose that I am showing it to you now, and to remind you, if you feel pity for another woman, that never more again in all this world will that girl's laughter be heard, young and careless and joyous. I ask you most solemnly to remember that.

"Mimi Dawson Bellamy was the daughter of the village dressmaker, who had married Frederick Dawson, a man considerably above her socially, as he was a moderately successful real-estate broker in the village of Rosemont. He was by no manner of means a member of the local smart set, however, and was not even a member of the country club. They lived in a comfortable, unpretentious house a little off the main street, and in the boarding house next to them lived Mrs. Daniel Ives and her son Patrick.

"Mrs. Ives, a widow, was very highly regarded in the village, to which she had come many years previously, and was extremely industrious in her efforts to supplement their meagre income. She gave music lessons, did mending, looked after small children whose mothers were at the movies, and did everything in her power to assist her son, whose principal contribution to their welfare up to the time that he was twenty-one seemed to be a genuine devotion to his mother. At that age Mr. Dawson took him in to work with him in the real-estate business, hoping that his charm and engaging manners would make up for his lack of experience and industry. To a certain extent they did, but they created considerably more havoc with Mr. Dawson's beautiful daughter than they did with his clients. A boy-and-girl affair immediately sprang up between these two—the exquisite, precocious child of seventeen and the handsome boy of twenty-two were seen everywhere together, and it was a thoroughly understood thing that Mimi Dawson and Pat Ives were going together, and that one of these days they would go as far as the altar.

"A year later war was declared. Patrick Ives enlisted at once, and was among the first to reach France. The whole village believed that if he came back alive he would marry Mimi. But they were counting without Mimi.

"War, gentlemen, changed more things than the map of Europe. It changed the entire social map in many an American community; it changed, drastically and surprisingly, the social map of the community of Rosemont in the county of Bellechester. For the first time since the country club was built and many of the residents of New York discovered that it was possible to live in the country and work in the city, the barrier between the villagers and the country club members was lowered, and over this lowered barrier stepped Mimi Dawson, straight into the charmed sewing circles, knitting circles, Red Cross circles, bandage-making circles that had sprung up over-night—straight, moreover, into the charmed circle of society, about whose edges she had wistfully hovered—and straight, moreover, into the life of Elliot Farwell.

"Elliot Farwell was the younger brother of Mrs. George Dallas, at whose house met the Red Cross Circle of which Mrs. Dallas was president. Many of the village girls were asked to join her class in bandage making—after all, we were fighting this war to make the world safe for democracy, so why not be democratic? A pair of hands from the village was just as good as a pair of hands from the club—possibly better. So little Mimi Dawson found herself sitting next to the great Miss Thorne, wrapping wisps of cotton about bits of wood and going home to the village with rapidly increasing regularity in Mr. Elliot Farwell's new automobile, quite without the knowledge or sanction of Mr. Farwell's sister, whose democracy might not have stood the strain.

"Elliot Farwell was one of the two or three young men left in Rosemont. His eyes made it impossible for him to get into any branch of the service, so he remained peaceably at home, attending to a somewhat perfunctory business in the city as a promoter. He would have had to be blind enough to require the services of a dog and a tin cup not to have noted Mimi Dawson's beauty, however; as a matter of fact, he noted it so intently that three months after peace was declared and three weeks before Patrick Ives returned from the war, Mr. and Mrs. Frederick Dawson announced the engagement of their daughter Madeleine to Mr. Elliot Farwell—and a startled world. Not the least startled member of this world, possibly, was Susan Thorne, to whom young Farwell had been moderately attentive for several years.

"Such was the state of affairs when the tide of exodus to Europe turned, and back on the very crest of the incoming waves rode Major Patrick Ives, booted, spurred, belted, and decorated—straight over the still-lowered barrier into the very heart of the country-club set. He was, not unnaturally, charmed with his surroundings, and apparently the fact that he found Mimi Dawson already installed there with a fiancé did not dampen his spirits in the slightest. From the day that he first went around the golf course with Susan Thorne, he was as invariably at her side as her shadow. Mr. Curtiss Thorne's open and violent disapproval left them unchastened and inseparable. Apparently they found the world well lost, as did Farwell and his fiancée. And into the midst of this idyllic scene, a month or so later, wanders the last of our actors, Stephen Bellamy.

"Stephen Bellamy was older than these others—seven years older than Susan Thorne or Patrick Ives, twelve years older than the radiant Mimi. He was the best friend of Susan's elder brother Douglas, and a junior partner of Curtiss Thorne. He had done well in the war, as he had in his business, and he was generally supposed to be the best masculine catch in Rosemont—intelligent, distinguished, and thoroughly substantial. It was everybody's secret that Curtiss Thorne wanted him for his son-in-law, and he and Elliot Farwell were the nearest approaches to beaus that Susan Thorne had had before the war.

"Within a week of their respective returns, she had lost both of them. The sober, reserved, conservative Stephen Bellamy fell even more violently and abjectly a victim to Mimi Dawson's charms than had Elliot Farwell. The fact that she was engaged to another man who had been at least a pleasant acquaintance of his did not seem to deter Mr. Bellamy for a second. At any rate, the third week in June in 1919 brought three shocks to the conservative community of Rosemont that left it rocking for many moons to come. On Monday, after a violent and public quarrel with Farwell, Mimi Dawson broke her engagement to him; on Wednesday Sue Thorne eloped with Patrick Ives, and on Thursday Miss Dawson and Mr. Bellamy were married by the justice of the peace in this very courthouse.

"It is a long stride from that amazing week in June to another June, but I ask you to make it with me. In the seven years that have passed, the seeds that were sown in those far-off days—seeds of discord, of heartbreak, of envy and malice—have waxed and grown into a mighty vine, heavy with bitter fruit; and the day of harvest is at hand—and the hands of the harvesters shall be red. But on this peaceful sunny summer afternoon of the nineteenth of June, 1926, those who are sitting in the vine's shadow seem to find it a tranquil and a pleasant place.

"It is five o'clock at the Rosemont Country Club, and the people that I have brought before you in the brief time at my disposal are gathered on the lawn in front of the club; the golfers are just coming in; it is the prettiest and gayest hour of the day. Mimi Bellamy is there, waiting for her husband. She has driven over in their little car to take him home for supper; it is parked just now beside Sue Ives's sleek and shining car with its sleek and shining chauffeur, and possibly Mimi Bellamy is wondering what strange fate makes one man a failure in the world of business and another a success. For the industrious and intelligent Stephen Bellamy has never recovered from the setback that he received when Curtiss Thorne's business crashed; he is still struggling valiantly to keep a roof over his wife's enchanting head—he can do little more. True, they have a maid of all work and a man of all work; but Sue Ives, who married the village ne'er-do-well, has eight servants and three cars and the prettiest gardens in Rosemont. So does fate make fools of the shrewdest of us!

"Gathered about in little groups are the George Dallases, Elliot Farwell, and Richard Burgoyne, the man with whom he keeps bachelor hall in a small bungalow near the village; the Ned Conroys and Sue Ives, whose husband has been cheated out of golf by a business engagement in the city, in spite of the fact that it is Saturday afternoon. She has, however, found another cavalier. Seated on the club steps, a little apart from the others, she is deep in conversation with Elliot Farwell, who is consuming his third highball in rapid succession. Gentlemen, if I could let you eavesdrop on the seemingly casual and actually momentous discussion that is going on behind those amiable masks, much that is dark to you now would be clear as day. I ask your patient and intelligent interest until that moment arrives. It will arrive, I promise you.

"For here, on this sunlit lawn, I propose to leave them for the present. Others will tell you what happened from that sunlit moment until the dark and dreadful one in the gardener's little cottage, when a knife rose and fell. I have not gone thus exhaustively into the shadowy past from which these figures sprang in order to retail to you the careless chatter of a country club and a country village. I have gone into it because I have felt it entirely imperative that you should know the essential facts in the light of which you will be able to read more clearly the evidence that I am about to submit to you. It is inevitable that each one of you must say to himself as you sit there: 'How is it possible that this young woman seated before our eyes, charming, well bred, sheltered, controlled, intelligent—how is it possible that this woman can have wilfully, brutally, and deliberately murdered another woman? How is it possible that the man seated beside her, a gentleman born and bred, irreproachable in every phase of his past life, can have aided and abetted her in her project?'

"How are these things possible, you ask? Gentleman, I say to you that we expect to prove that these things are not possible—we expect to prove that these things are certain. I am speaking neither rashly nor lightly when I assure you that the state believes that it can demonstrate their certainty beyond the shadow of a possible doubt. I am not seeking a conviction; I am no bloodhound baying for a victim. If you can find it in your hearts when I have done with this case to hold these two guiltless, you will, indeed, be fortunate—and I can find in my heart no desire to deprive you of that good fortune. It is my most painful duty, however, to place the facts before you and to let them speak for themselves.

"I ask you, gentlemen, to bear these things in mind. Susan Ives is a woman accustomed to luxury and security; she has once before been roughly deprived of it. What dreadful scars those three years in New York left on the gallant and spirited girl who went so recklessly to face them we can only surmise. But perhaps it is sufficient to say that the scars seared so deep that they sealed her lips forever. I have not been able to discover that she has mentioned them to one solitary soul, and I have questioned many. She was threatened with a hideous repetition of this nightmare. Her religious principles, as you will learn, prevented her from ever accepting or seeking a divorce, and she was too intelligent not to be fully aware that if Patrick Ives ran away with Mimi Bellamy, he would inevitably have lost his position in the ultra-conservative house in which he was partner, and thus be absolutely precluded from providing for her or her children, even if he had so desired.

"The position of a young woman thrown entirely on her own resources, with two small children on her hands, is a desperate one, and it is our contention that Susan Ives turned to desperate remedies. Added to this terror was what must have been a truly appalling hatred for the girl who was about to turn her sunny and sheltered existence into a nightmare. Cupidity, love, revenge—every murder in this world that is not the result of a drunken blow springs from one of these motives. Gentlemen, the state contends that Susan Ives was moved by all three.

"As for Stephen Bellamy, his idolatry of his young and beautiful wife was his life—a drab and colourless life save for the light and colour that she brought to it. When he discovered that she had turned that idolatry to mockery, madness descended on him—the madness that sent Othello staggering to his wife's bed with death in his hands; the madness that has caused that wretched catch phrase 'the unwritten law' to become almost as potent as our written code—to our shame, be it said. Do not be deceived by the memory of that phrase, gentlemen. There was another law, written centuries ago in letters of flame on the peaks of a mountain—'Thou shalt not kill.' Remember that law written in flame and forget the one that has been traced only in the blood of its victims. These two before you stand accused of breaking that law, written on Sinai—that sacred law on which hangs all the security of the society that we have so laboriously wrought out of chaos and horror—and we are now about to show you why they are thus accused.

"From the first step that each took toward the dark way that was to lead them to the room in the gardener's cottage, we will trace them—to its very threshold—across its threshold. There I will leave them, my duty will have been done. Yours, gentlemen, will be yet to do, and I am entirely convinced that, however painful, however hateful, however dreadful, it may seem to you, you will not shrink from performing that duty."

The compelling voice with its curious ring fell abruptly to silence—a silence that lingered, deepened, and then abruptly broke into irrepressible and incautious clamour.

"Silence! Silence!"

Ben Potts's voice and Judge Carver's gavel thundered down the voices.

"Once and for all, this courtroom is not a place for conversation. Kindly remain silent while you are in it. Court is dismissed for the day. It will convene again at ten to-morrow."

The red-headed girl dragged stiffly to her feet. The first day of the Bellamy trial was over.