The redheaded 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 redheaded 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 redheaded 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 redheaded 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 fingerprint expert?”
“I’m a—a writer,” said the redheaded 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 redheaded 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 redheaded 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 tomorrow 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 redheaded 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 redheaded 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 redheaded 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 redheaded 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
