The Bellamy Trial

The Bellamy Trial

By Frances Noyes Hart.

Table of Contents

1. Titlepage
2. Imprint
3. Dedication
4. The Bellamy Trial
5. The Bellamy Trial
   1. I
   2. II
   3. III
   4. IV
   5. V
   6. VI
   7. VII
   8. VIII
6. Colophon
7. Uncopyright

Imprint

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To
my favorite lawyer
Edward Henry Hart

The Bellamy Trial

• The Judge

  Anthony Bristed Carver

• The Prosecutor

  Daniel Farr

• Counsel for the Defense

  Dudley Lambert

• The Defendants

  Susan Ives

  Stephen Bellamy

• First Day

  • Opening speech for the prosecution

• Second Day

  • Mr. Herbert Conroy, real estate agent

  • Dr. Paul Stanley, physician

  • Miss Kathleen Page, governess

• Third Day

  • Mr. Douglas Thorne, Susan Ives’s brother

  • Miss Flora Biggs, Mimi Bellamy’s schoolmate

  • Mrs. Daniel Ives, Susan Ives’s mother-in-law

  • Mr. Elliot Farwell, Mimi Bellamy’s ex-fiancé

  • Mr. George Dallas, Mr. Farwell’s friend

• Fourth Day

  • Miss Melanie Cordier, waitress

  • Miss Laura Roberts, lady’s maid

  • Mr. Luigi Orsini, handy man

  • Mr. Joseph Turner, bus driver

  • Sergeant Hendrick Johnson, state trooper

• Fifth Day

  Opening speech for defense

  • Mrs. Adolph Platz, wife of chauffeur

  • Mrs. Timothy Shea, landlady

  • Mr. Stephen Bellamy

  • Dr. Gabriel Barretti, fingerprint expert

• Sixth Day

  • Mr. Leo Fox, mechanician

  • Mr. Patrick Ives, Susan Ives’s husband

  • Susan Ives

• Seventh Day

  • Susan Ives⁠—conclusion

  • Stephen Bellamy⁠—recalled

  • Closing speech for the defense

  • Closing speech for prosecution

• Eighth Day

  • Mr. Randolph Phipps, high-school principal

  • Miss Sally Dunne, high-school pupil

  • The judge’s charge

  • The verdict

The Bellamy Trial

I

The redheaded 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 redheaded 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 halfway 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 redheaded 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