“Will you tell us why, Mr. Farwell?”
“Because I didn’t want anyone to know I’d been hanging round the cottage, and the lighter was marked on the inside.”
“Marked with your name?”
“Marked with an inscription—Elliot, from Mimi, Christmas, .”
The coarse voice was suddenly shaken, the coarse face suddenly pale—Elliot from Mimi, Christmas, .
“What did you do after you missed the lighter, Mr. Farwell?”
“Well, I cursed myself good and plenty and went on a hunt for matches downstairs. There wasn’t one in the whole darned place, and I was too lazy to get into my clothes again, so I called Dick at the Dallases’ and asked him to be sure to bring some home with him.”
“What time did you telephone?”
“I didn’t look at the time. It was half-past nine when I started to look for the matches. Quarter to ten—ten minutes to, maybe.”
“Did you go back to bed?”
“Yes; but I went on reading for quite a while. I’d dozed off by the time Dick came in, though the light was still burning.”
“What time was that?”
“A little after half-past eleven.”
The prosecutor stood eyeing the heavy countenance before him speculatively for a moment, and then, with a quick shake of his narrow, sleek, finely poised head, took his decision. “Mr. Farwell, when did you first tell the story that you have been telling us?”
“On .”
“Where did you tell it?”
“In your office.”
“At whose request?”
“At—”
Mr. Lambert, who had been sitting twitching in his chair, emitted a roar of protest as he bounded to his feet that effectually drowned out any information Mr. Farwell was about to impart. “I object, Your Honour! I object! What does it matter whether this witness told his story in the prosecutor’s office or the Metropolitan Opera House? The point is that he’s telling it here, and anything else is deliberately beside the mark. I—”
“The Court is inclined to agree with you, Mr. Lambert. What is the object of establishing when, where, and why Mr. Farwell told this story, Mr. Farr?”
“Because, Your Honour, it is entirely owing to the insistence of the state that Mr. Farwell is at present making a series of admissions that if misinterpreted by the jury might be highly prejudicial to Mr. Farwell. There is not one chance in a hundred that the defense would have brought out under cross-examination the fact that Mr. Farwell was at the gardener’s cottage on the —a fact that I have deliberately elicited in my zeal to set all the available facts before the jury. But in common fairness to Mr. Farwell, I think that I should be permitted to bring out the circumstances under which I obtained this information.”
Judge Carver paraded his fine, keen old eyes meditatively from the ruddy full moon of Mr. Lambert’s countenance to the black-and-white etching of the prosecutor’s, cold as ice, for all the fever of intensity behind it; on farther still to the bull-necked and blue-jowled occupant of the witness box. There was a faint trace of distaste in their depths as they returned to the prosecutor. Perhaps it was that distaste that swung back the pendulum. Judge Carver had the reputation of being as fair as he was hard.
“Very well, Mr. Farr. The Court sees no impropriety in having you state those circumstances as briefly as possible.”
“May I have an objection to that, Your Honour?” Lambert’s face had deepened to a fine claret.
“Certainly.”
“On the morning of the ,” said Mr. Farr, “I asked Mr. Farwell to come to my office. When he arrived I told him that we had information in our hands that definitely connected him with this atrocious crime, and that I sincerely advised him to make a clean breast of all his movements. He proceeded to do so promptly, and told me exactly the same story that he has told you. It came, frankly, as a surprise to me, but it in no way altered or modified the state’s case. I therefore decided to put Mr. Farwell on the stand in order to let you have all the facts.”
“Was the information that you possessed connecting Mr. Farwell with the crime the cigarette lighter, Mr. Farr?” inquired Judge Carver gravely.
“No, Your Honour; it was Mrs. Ives’s telephone conversation with Stephen Bellamy, asking whether Elliot had not told him anything. There was no other Elliot in Mrs. Ives’s circle of acquaintances.”
“Is the lighter in the possession of the state at present?”
“No, Your Honour,” remarked the prosecutor blandly. “The state’s case would be considerably simplified if it were.”
His eye rested, fugitive but penetrating, on Mr. Lambert’s heated countenance.
“That is all that you desire to state, Mr. Farr?”
“Yes, Your Honour. No further questions, Mr. Farwell. Cross-examine.”
“What kind of a cigarette lighter was this, Mr. Farwell?” There was an ominous rumble in Lambert’s voice.
“A little black enamel and silver thing that you could light with one hand. They brought a lot of them over from England in and .”
“Had anyone ever suggested to you that this lighter might possibly prove a dangerous weapon against you if it fell into the hands of the defense?” inquired Mr. Lambert, in what were obviously intended to be silken tones.
“No,” replied Mr. Farwell belligerently; “no one ever told me anything of the kind.”
Mr. Farr permitted himself a fleeting and ironic smile in the direction of his adversary before he turned a countenance lit with splendid indignation in the direction of the jury.
“Mr. Farwell, you told the prosecutor that you had had a couple of drinks before you confided this story about her husband to Mrs. Ives. Was that accurate, or had you had more?”
“I’d had three or four, maybe—I don’t remember.”
“Three or four after you came off the links?”
“Well, what of it?” Farwell’s jaw was jutting dangerously.
“Be
