Calamity Town

excused the jury. Bradford said sternly to Judge Newbold: “Your Honor, it is important to the People to show that this witness, herself in badly reduced circumstances, was nevertheless somehow induced by the defendant to get money for him, thus indicating his basic character, how desperate he was for money?all part of the People’s case to show his gain motive for the poisoning.”

The jury was brought back. Bradford went at Lola once more, with savage persistence. Feathers flew again; but when it was over, the jury was convinced of Bradford’s point, juries being notoriously unable to forget what judges instruct them to forget.

But Judge Martin was not beaten. On cross-examination, he sailed in almost with joy.

“Miss Wright,” said the old lawyer, “you have testified in direct examination that on the night of New Year’s Eve last you called at the back door of your sister’s house. What time was that visit, do you recall?”

“Yes. I looked at my wristwatch, because I had a?a party of my own to go to in town. It was just before midnight?fifteen minutes before the New Year was rung in.”

“You also testified that you saw your brother-in-law go into the butler’s pantry, and after a moment or two you knocked and he came out to you, and you talked. Where exactly did that conversation take place?”

“At the back door of the kitchen.”

“What did you say to Jim?”

“I asked him what he was doing, and he said he was just finishing mixing a lot of Manhattan cocktails for the crowd. He’d about got to the maraschino cherries when I knocked, he said. Then I told him about the check?”

“Did you see the cocktails he referred to?”

The room rustled like an agitated aviary, and Carter Bradford leaned forward, frowning. This was important?this was the time the poisoning must have taken place. After that ripple of sound, the courtroom was very still.

“No,” said Lola. ”Jim had come from the direction of the pantry to answer the door, so I know that’s where he’d been mixing the cocktails. From where I was standing, at the back door, I couldn’t see into the pantry. So of course I couldn’t see the cocktails, either.”

“Ah! Miss Wright, had someone sneaked into the kitchen from the main hall or the dining room while you and Mr. Haight were talking at the back door, would you have been able to see that person?”

“No. The door from the dining room doesn’t open into the kitchen; it leads directly into the pantry. And while the door from the hall does open into the kitchen and is visible from the back door, I couldn’t see it, because Jim was standing in front of me, blocking my view.”

“In other words, Miss Wright, while you and Mr. Haight were talking?Mr. Haight with his back to the rest of the kitchen, you unable to see most of the kitchen because he was blocking your view?someone could have slipped into the kitchen through the hall door, crossed to the pantry, and retraced his steps without either of you being aware of what had happened or who it had been?”

“That’s correct, Judge.”

“Or someone could have entered the pantry through the dining room during that period, and neither you nor Mr. Haight could have seen him?”

“Of course we couldn’t have seen him. I told you that the pantry is out of sight of?”

“How long did this conversation at the back door take?”

“Oh, five minutes, I should think.”

“That will be all, thank you,” said the Judge triumphantly.

Carter Bradford climbed to his feet for a redirect examination. The courtroom was whispering, the jury looked thoughtful, and Carter’s hair looked excited. But he was very considerate in manner and tone.

“Miss Wright, I know this is painful for you, but we must get this story of yours straight. Did anyone enter the pantry either through the kitchen or the dining room while you were conversing at the back door with Jim Haight?”

“I don’t know. I merely said someone could have, and we wouldn’t have known the difference.”

“Then you can’t really say that someone did?”

“I can’t say someone did, but by the same token I can’t say someone didn’t. As a matter of fact, it might very easily have happened.”

“But you didn’t see anyone enter the pantry, and you did see Jim Haight come out of the pantry?”

“Yes, but?”

“And you saw Jim Haight go back into the pantry?”

“No such thing,” said Lola with asperity. ”I turned around and went away, leaving Jim at the door!”

“That’s all,” said Carter softly; he even tried to help her off the stand, but Lola drew herself up and went back to her chair haughtily.

“I should like,” said Carter to the Court, “to recall one of my previous witnesses. Frank Lloyd.”

As the bailiff bellowed: “Frank Lloyd to the stand!” Mr. Ellery Queen said to himself: “The build-up.”

Lloyd’s cheeks were yellow, as if something were rotting his blood. He shuffled to the stand, unkempt, slovenly, tight-mouthed. He looked once at Jim Haight, not ten feet away from him. Then he looked away, but there was evil in his green eyes.

He was on the stand only a few minutes. The substance of his testimony, surgically excised by Bradford, was that he now recalled an important fact which he had forgotten in his previous testimony. Jim Haight had not been the only one out of the living room during the time he was mixing the last batch of cocktails before midnight. There had been one other.

Q.?And who was that, Mr. Lloyd?

A.?A guest of the Wrights’. Ellery Smith.

You clever animal, thought Ellery admiringly. And now I’m the animal, and I’m trapped . . . What to do?

Q.?Mr. Smith left the room directly after the defendant?

A.?Yes. He didn’t return until Haight came back with the tray of cocktails and started passing them around.

This is it, thought Mr. Queen.

Carter Bradford turned around and looked directly into Ellery’s eyes.

“I call,” said Cart with a snap in his voice, “Ellery Smith.”

Chapter 24

Ellery Smith to the Stand

As Mr. Ellery Queen left his seat, and crossed the courtroom foreground, and took the oath, and sat down in the witness chair, his mind was not occupied with Prosecutor Bradford’s unuttered questions or his own unut-tered answers.

He was reasonably certain what questions Bradford intended to ask, and he was positive what answers he would give. Bradford knew, or guessed, from the scene opened up to him by Frank Lloyd’s delayed recollection, what part the mysterious Mr. ”Smith” had played that bitter night. So one question would lead to another, and suspicion would become certainty, and sooner or later the whole story would have to come out. It never occurred to Ellery that he might frankly lie. Not because he was a saint, or a moralist, or afraid of consequences; but because his whole training had been in the search for truth, and he knew that whereas murder will not necessarily out, the truth must. So it was more practical to tell the truth than to tell the lie. Moreover, people expected you to lie in court, and therein lay a great advantage, if only you were clever enough to seize it.

No, Mr. Queen’s thoughts were occupied with another question altogether. And that was: How turn the truth, so damning to Jim Haight on its face, to Jim Haight’s advantage? That would be a shrewd blow, if only it could be delivered; and it would have the additional strength of unexpectedness, for surely young Bradford would never anticipate what he himself, now, on the stand, could not even imagine.

So Mr. Queen sat waiting, his brain not deigning to worry, but flexing itself, exploring, dipping into its deepest pockets, examining all the things he knew for a hint, a clue, a road to follow.

Another conviction crept into his consciousness as he answered the first few routine questions about his