The prosecutor took a quick step forward. “You say you heard something? What did you hear?”
“I heard a woman scream.”
“Nothing else?”
“Yes, a second or so afterward I heard a man laugh.”
“A man laugh?” the prosecutor’s voice was rough with incredulity. “What kind of a laugh?”
“I don’t know how to characterize it,” said Mr. Thorne simply. “It was an ordinary enough laugh, in a rather deep masculine voice. It didn’t strike me as in any way extraordinary.”
“It didn’t strike you as extraordinary to hear a woman scream and a man laugh in a deserted place at that hour of the night?”
“No, frankly, it didn’t. My first reaction was that the caretaker and his wife had returned from their vacation earlier than we had expected them; or if not, that possibly some of the young people from the village were indulging in some romantic trespassing—that’s not unknown, I may state.”
“You heard no words? No voices?”
“Oh, no; I was about three hundred feet from the cottage at the time that I heard the scream.”
“You did not consider that that sound was the voice of a woman raised in mortal terror?”
“No,” said Douglas Thorne. “Naturally, if I had, I should have done something to investigate. I was somewhat startled when I first heard it, but the laugh following so promptly completely reassured me. A scream of terror, a scream of pain, a scream of surprise, a scream of more or less perfunctory protest—I doubt whether anyone could distinguish between them at three hundred feet. I certainly couldn’t.”
The prosecutor shook his head irritably; he seemed hardly to be listening to this lucid exposition. “You’re quite sure about the laugh—you heard it distinctly?”
“Oh, perfectly distinctly.”
“Could you see the cottage from where you stood at the time?”
“No; the bend in the road and the high shrubbery hide it completely until you are almost on top of it.”
“Then you don’t know whether it was lighted when you heard the scream?”
“No; I only know that it was dark when I reached it a moment or so later.”
“What did you do when you reached the cottage?”
“I noticed that it was dark as I ran up the steps, but on the off chance that it might have been the gardener that I had heard, I rang the bell half mechanically and tried the door, as I wanted to explain to him about Mr. Conroy’s visit in the morning. The door was locked.”
“You had the key on the ring, hadn’t you?”
“Yes; but I had no reason in the world for going in if the gardener wasn’t there.”
“You heard no sound from within?”
“Not a sound.”
“And nothing from without?”
“Everything was perfectly quiet.”
“No one could have passed you at any time?”
“Oh, certainly not.”
“Mr. Thorne, would it have been possible for anyone in the cottage to have heard you approaching?”
“I think that it might have been possible. The night was very still, and the main drive down which I was walking is of crushed gravel. The little drive off it that circles the house is of dirt; I don’t know how clear footsteps would be on that, but of course anyone would have heard me going up the steps. I have a vague impression, too, that I was whistling.”
“Could anyone have been concealed in the shrubbery about the house?”
“Oh, quite easily. The shrubbery is very high all about it.”
“But you noticed no one?”
“No one.”
“What did you do after you had decided that the house was empty?”
“I put the keys under the mat, as had been agreed, and returned to the main house. As I got into my roadster, I looked at my wristwatch by one of the headlights. It was exactly ten minutes to ten.”
“What caused you to consult your watch?”
“I’d had a vague notion that I might run over to see my sister for a few minutes, as I was in the neighbourhood, but when I discovered that it was nearly ten, I changed my mind and went straight back to Lakedale.”
“Mr. Thorne, you must have been perfectly aware when the news of the murder came out the next morning that you had information in your possession that would have been of great value to the state. Why did you not communicate it at once?”
Douglas Thorne met the prosecutor’s gaze steadily, with a countenance free of either defiance or concern. “Because, frankly, I had no desire whatever to be involved, however remotely, in a murder case. I was still debating my duty in the matter two days later, when my sister and Mr. Bellamy were arrested, and the papers announced that the state had positive information that the murder was committed between quarter to nine and quarter to ten on the night of the nineteenth. That seemed to render my meagre observations quite valueless, and I accordingly kept them to myself.”
“And I suppose you fully realize now that you have put yourself in a highly equivocal position by doing so?”
“Why, no, Mr. Farr; I may be unduly obtuse, but I assure you that I realize nothing of the kind.”
“Let me endeavour to enlighten you. According to your own story, you must have heard that scream between nine-thirty and twenty-five minutes to ten, granting that you spent three or four minutes on the cottage porch and took ten minutes to walk back to the house. According to you, you arrived at the scene of action within three minutes of that scream, to find everything dark, silent and orderly. It is the state’s contention that somewhere in that orderly darkness, practically within reach of your outstretched hand, stood your idolized sister. Quite a coincidence, isn’t it?”
“It is quite a coincidence that that should be your contention,” remarked Douglas Thorne, a dangerous glint in his eye. “But I know of no scandal attached to coincidence.”
“Well, this particular type of coincidence has landed more than one man in jail as accessory after the fact,” remarked the prosecutor grimly. “What time did you get back to Lakedale that night?”
“At ten-thirty.”
“Did anyone
