The redheaded girl watched the lean, bronzed gentleman with sandy hair and a look of effortless distinction with approval. Nice eyes, nice hands.
“Mr. Thorne, what is your occupation?”
Nice voice: “I am a member of the New York Stock Exchange.”
“Are you a relative of the defendant, Susan Ives?”
“Her elder brother, I’m proud to say.”
His pleasant eyes smiled down at the slight figure in the familiar tweed suit, and for the first since she had come to court Sue Ives smiled back freely and spontaneously—a friendly, joyous smile, brilliant as a banner.
The prosecutor lifted a warning hand. “Please stick to the issue, Mr. Thorne, and we’ll take your affection for your sister for granted. Are you the proprietor of the old Thorne estate, Orchards?”
“Yes.”
“The sole proprietor?”
“The sole proprietor.”
“Why did your sister not share in that estate, Mr. Thorne?”
“My father no longer regarded my sister as his heir after she married Patrick Ives. He took a violent dislike to Mr. Ives from the first, and it was distinctly against his wishes that Sue married him.”
“Did you share this dislike?”
“For Patrick? Oh, no. At the time I hardly knew him, and later I became extremely fond of him.”
“You still are?”
The pleasant gray eyes, suddenly grave, looked back unswervingly into the hot blue fire of the prosecutor’s. “That is a difficult question to answer categorically. Perhaps the most accurate reply that I can give is that at present I am reserving an opinion on my brother-in-law and his conduct.”
“That’s hardly a satisfactory reply, Mr. Thorne.”
“I regret it; it is an honest one.”
“Well, let’s put it this way: You are devoted to your sister, aren’t you, Mr. Thorne?”
“Very deeply devoted.”
“You admit that her happiness is dear to you?”
“I don’t particularly care for the word ‘admit’; I state willingly that her happiness is very dear to me.”
“And you would do anything to secure it?”
“I would do a great deal.”
“Anything?”
Douglas Thorne leaned forward over the witness box, his face suddenly stern. “If by ‘anything,’ Mr. Farr, you mean would I commit murder, my reply is no.”
Judge Carver’s gavel fell with a crash. “That is an entirely uncalled for conclusion, Mr. Thorne. It may be stricken from the record.”
“Kindly reply to my question, Mr. Thorne. Would you not do anything in order to secure your sister’s happiness?”
“No.”
Once more Sue Ives’s smile flew like a banner.
“Mr. Thorne, did your sister ever speak to you about her first two or three years in New York?”
“I have a vague general impression that we discussed certain aspects of it, such as living conditions there at the time, and—”
“Vague general impressions aren’t what we want. You have no specific knowledge of where they were or what they were doing at the time?”
“I can recall nothing at the moment.”
“Your sister, to whom you are so devoted, never once communicated with you during that time?”
“I received a letter from her about a week after she left Rosemont, stating that she thought that for the time being it would be better to sever all connections with Rosemont, but that her affection for all of us was unchanged.”
“I haven’t asked you for the contents of the letter. Is that the only communication that you received from her during those years in New York?”
“With the exception of Christmas cards, I heard nothing more for a little over two years. Then she began to write fairly regularly.”
“Mr. Thorne, were you on the estate of Orchards at any time on ?”
“I was.”
There was a sudden stir and ripple throughout the court room. “Now!” said the ripple. “Now! At last!”
“At what time?”
“I couldn’t state the exact time at which I arrived, but I believe that it must have been shortly after nine in the evening.”
The ripples broke into little waves. Nine o’clock—nine—
“And at what time did you leave?”
“That I can tell you exactly. I left the main house at Orchards at exactly ten minutes to ten.”
The ripples broke into little waves. Ten o’clock—ten—
“Silence!” banged Judge Carver’s gavel.
“Silence!” sang Ben Potts.
“Please tell us what you were doing at Orchards during that hour.”
“It was considerably less than an hour. Mr. Conroy had telephoned me shortly before dinner, asking me to leave the keys at the cottage, which I gladly agreed to do, as I had been intending for some time to get some old account books I had left in my desk at the main house. I didn’t notice the exact time at which I left Lakedale, but it must have been about half-past eight, as we dine at half-past seven, and I smoked a cigar before I started. I drove over at a fair rate of speed—around thirty-five miles an hour, say—and went straight to the main house.”
“You did not stop at the gardener’s cottage?”
“No; I—”
“Yet you pass it on your way from the lodge to the houses don’t you?”
“No, coming from Lakedale I use the River Road; the first entrance off the road leads straight from the back of the place to the main house; the lodge gates are at the opposite end of the place on the main road from Rosemont. Shall I go on?”
“Certainly.”
“It was just beginning to get dark when I arrived, and the electricity was shut off, so I didn’t linger in the house—just procured the papers and cleared out. When I got back to the car, I decided to leave it there and walk over to the cottage and back. It was only a ten-minute walk each way, and it was a fine evening. I started off—”
“You say that it was dark at the time?”
“It was fairly dark when I started, and quite dark as I approached the cottage.”
“Was there a moon?”
“I don’t think so; I remember noticing the stars on the way home, but I am quite sure that there was no moon at that time.”
“You met no one on your way to the cottage?”
“No one at all.”
“You saw nothing to attract your attention?”
“No.”
“And heard nothing?”
“Yes,” said Douglas
