“You were in New York at this time?”
“Yes; and a dinner engagement there prevented me from taking him out to Rosemont that afternoon. He was extremely anxious, however, to see it as soon as possible, as he was leaving for the West the following afternoon. So I arranged to take him next morning at nine o’clock.”
“And did so?”
“And did so.”
“Now will you be good enough to tell us, Mr. Conroy, just what happened when you arrived with this gentleman at Orchards on the morning of the twentieth?”
“We drove out from New York in my roadster, arriving at the lodge gates of the property shortly after nine o’clock, I should say. I was to collect the keys under the doormat at the gardener’s cottage, which was halfway between the lodge and the main house—”
“Just a moment, Mr. Conroy. Was the lodge occupied?”
“No; at this particular time no building on the place was occupied. In Mr. Curtiss Thorne’s day, the lodge was occupied by the chauffeur and his family, the gardener’s cottage by the gardener and his family, and there was another cottage used by a farmer on the extreme western boundary. None of these had been occupied for some time, with the exception of the gardener’s cottage, whose occupants had been given a vacation of two months in order to visit their aged parents in Italy. Shall I go on?”
“Please.”
“The gardener’s cottage is a low five-room building at a bend of the road, and is practically concealed as you approach it from the main driveway by the very high shrubbery that surrounds it—lilacs, syringa, and the like. There is a little drive that shoots off from the main driveway and circles the cottage, and we drove in there, to the front of the house, and mounted the steps to the front porch, as my client wished to see the interior. Just as I bent down to secure the keys, I was surprised to see that the door was slightly ajar. I picked up the keys, pushed it farther open, and went in, rather expecting that sneak thieves might have preceded me.”
Mr. Conroy paused for a moment in his steady, precise narrative, his pale face a little paler. “Shall I continue?”
“Certainly.”
“On my left was the dining room, with the door closed; on my right, the room known as the parlour. The door was open, but only a small section of the room was visible from the corridor, and it was not until I had crossed the threshold that I realized that something frightful had occurred. In the corner of the room farthest from the door—”
“Just a minute, please. Was your client with you when you entered the room?”
“He was a step or so behind me, I believe. In the corner of the room was the—the body of a young woman in a white frock. A small table was overturned beside her, and at her feet was a lamp, the chimney and shade shattered and some oil spilled on the floor. The smell of the kerosene was very strong—very strong indeed.”
Mr. Conroy looked a little ill, as though the odour of that spilled kerosene were still about him.
“Was the girl’s head toward you, or her feet, Mr. Conroy?”
“Her feet. Her head was resting on the corner of a low fender—a species of steel railing—that circled the base of a Franklin stove.”
“Did you notice anything else?”
“Yes; I noticed that there was blood.” He glanced about him swiftly, as though he were startled by the sound of the word, and lowered his voice. “A great deal of blood.”
“On the dress?”
“Principally on the dress. I believe that there was also a little on the carpet, though I could not be sure of that. But principally it was on the dress.”
“Can you tell us about the dress?”
Again Mr. Conroy’s haunted eyes went wandering. “The dress? It was soaked in blood, sir—I think I may say that it was soaked in blood.”
“No, no—I mean what kind of a dress was it? An evening dress?”
“Well, I hardly know. I suppose you might call it that. Not a ball gown, you understand—just a thin lacy dress, with the neck cut out a little and short sleeves. I remember that quite well—the lady’s arms were bare.”
The prosecutor, who had been carelessly fingering some papers and pamphlets on the top of a small square box, brushed them impatiently aside and scooped something else out of its depths.
“Was this the dress, Mr. Conroy?”
The long screech of Mr. Conroy’s chair as he shoved it violently back tore through the courtroom like something human, echoing through every heart. The prosecutor was nonchalantly dangling before the broker’s staring eyes a crumpled object—a white dress, streaked and splotched and dotted with that most ominous colour known to the eyes of man—the curious rusted sinister red of dried blood.
“Yes,” said Mr. Conroy, his voice barely above a whisper—“yes, yes; that is it—that is the dress.”
The fascinated eyes of the spectators wrenched themselves from the dress to the two defendants. Susan Ives was not looking at it. Her head was as high as ever, her lips as steady, but her eyes were bent intently on a scrap of paper that she held in her gloved fingers. Apparently Mrs. Ives was deeply interested in the contents.
Stephen Bellamy was not reading. He sat watching that handful of lace and blood as though it were Medusa’s head, his blank, unswerving eyes riveted to it by something inexorable and intolerable. His face was as quiet as Susan Ives’s, save for a dreadful little ripple of muscles about the set mouth—the ripple that comes from clenched teeth, clenched harder, harder—harder still, lest there escape through them some sound not meant for decent human ears. Save for that ripple, he did not move a hairbreadth.
“Was
