“I rather get you,” said the reporter thoughtfully. “And, strangely enough, there’s just a dash in what you say. It’s the same nice, creepy, luxurious feeling that you get when you pull up closer to a good roaring fire with carpet slippers on your feet and a glass of something hot and sweet in your hand and listen to the wind yowling outside and see the rain on the black windowpanes. Nothing in the world to make you feel warm and safe and sheltered and cozy like a good storm or a good murder—what?”
“Nothing in the world,” agreed the redheaded girl; and she added pensively, “It’s always interested me more than anything else.”
“Has it indeed? Well, don’t let it get you. I’d just keep it as a hobby if I were you. At your present gait you’re going to make some fellow an awfully happy widow one of these days. Are you a good marksman?”
“You think that murder’s frightfully amusing, don’t you?” The redheaded girl’s soft voice had a sudden edge to it.
The real reporter’s face changed abruptly. “No, I don’t,” he said shortly. “I think it’s rotten—a dirty, bloody, beastly business that used to keep me awake nights until I grew a shell over my skin and acquired a fairly workable sense of humour to use on all these clowns called human beings. Of course, I’m one of them myself, but I don’t boast about it. And if you’re suffering from the illusion that nothing shocks me, I’ll tell you right now that it shocks me any amount that a scrap of a thing like you, with all that perfectly good red hair and a rather nice arrangement in dimples, should be practically climbing over that rail in your frenzy to find out what it’s all about.”
“I think that men are the most amusing race in the world,” murmured the redheaded girl. “And I think that it’s awfully appealing of you to be shocked. But, you see, my grandfather—who was as stern and Scotch and hidebound as anyone that ever breathed—told me when I was fourteen years old that a great murder trial was the most superbly dramatic spectacle that the world afforded. And he ought to have known what he was talking about—he was one of the greatest judges that ever lived.”
“Well, maybe they were in his day. And you said Scotch, didn’t you? Oh, well, they do it better over there. England, too—bunches of flowers on the clerks’ tables and wigs on the judges’ heads, and plenty of scarlet and gold, and all the great lawyers in the land taking a whack at it, and never a cross word out of one of them—”
“He used to say that is was like a hunt,” interrupted the redheaded girl firmly, “with the judge as master of the hounds and the lawyers as the hounds, baying as they ran hot on the scent, and all the rest of us galloping hard at their heels—jury, spectators, public.”
“Sure,” said the reporter grimly. “With the quarry waiting, bound and shackled and gagged till they catch up with him and tear him to pieces—it’s a great hunt all right, all right!”
“It’s not a human being that they’re hunting, idiot—it’s truth.”
“Truth!” The reporter’s laugh was loud and long and free enough to cause a dozen heads to turn. “Oh, what you’re going to learn before you get out of here! A hunt for truth, is it? Well, now, you get this straight: If that’s what you’re expecting to find here, you’ll save yourself a whole lot of bad minutes by taking the next train back to Philadelphia. Truth! I’m not running down murder trials from the point of view of interest, you understand. A really good one furnishes all the best points of a first-class dog fight and a highly superior crossword puzzle, and that ought to be enough excitement for anyone. But if you think that the opposing counsel are honestly in pursuit of enlightenment—”
A clear high voice cut through the rustle and clatter like a knife.
“His Honour! His Honour the Court!” There was a mighty rustle of upheaval.
“Who’s that?” inquired a breathless voice at the reporter’s shoulder.
“That’s the tallest and nicest court crier in the United States of America. Name’s Ben Potts. Best falsetto voice outside the Russian Orthodox Church. Kindly notice the central hair part and spit curls. And here we have none other than His Honour himself, Judge Anthony Bristed Carver.”
“Hear ye! Hear ye! Hear ye!” chanted the court crier. “All those having business before this honourable court draw near, give your attention and you shall be heard!”
The tall figure in flowing black moved deliberately toward the chair on the dais, which immediately assumed the aspect of a throne. Judge Carver’s sleek iron-gray head and aquiline face were an adornment to any courtroom. He swept a pair of brilliant deep-set eyes over the room, seated himself, and reached for the gavel in one motion.
“And he’ll use it, too, believe you me,” murmured the reporter with conviction. “Sternest old guy on the bench.”
“Where are the prisoners—where do they come from?”
“The defendants, as they whimsically prefer to be called for the time being, come through that little door to the left of the judge’s room; that enormous red-faced, sandy-haired old duffer talking to the thin young man in the tortoiseshell glasses is Mrs. Ives’s counsel, Mr. Dudley Lambert; the begoggled one is Mr. Bellamy’s counsel, Harrison Clark.”
“Where’s the prosecutor?”
“Oh, well, Mr. Farr is liable to appear almost anywhere, like Mephistopheles in Faust or that baby that so obligingly came out of the everywhere into the here. He’s all for the unexpected—Ah, what did I tell you? There he is now, conferring with the judge and the defense counsel.”
The redheaded girl leaned forward eagerly. The slender individual, leaning with rather studied
