“All right, three or four after I came off the links.”
“And three or four before you started?”
“I don’t remember how many; we all had something at lunch.”
“You had had too many, hadn’t you, Mr. Farwell?”
“Too many for what?”
“Too many for Mimi Bellamy’s good, let us say.” Mr. Lambert caught a menacing movement from the chair occupied by the prosecutor and hurried on: “Would you have been quite so explicit to Mrs. Ives if you had not had those drinks?”
“I don’t know whether I would or not.” The little beads of sweat on the low forehead were suddenly larger. “I’d been thinking for quite a while that she ought to know what was going on.”
“I see. And just what did you think was to be gained by her knowledge?”
“I thought she’d put a stop to it.”
“Put a stop to it with a knife, Mr. Farwell?” inquired Mr. Lambert, ferociously genial.
And suddenly there leaped from the dull eyes before him a flame of such raw agony that Mr. Lambert took a hasty and prudent step backward.
“What do you take me for? I thought she’d make him cut it out.”
“And it was absolutely essential to you that he should cut it out, wasn’t it, Mr. Farwell?”
“What?”
“You were endeavoring to persuade Mrs. Bellamy to divorce Mr. Bellamy and marry you, weren’t you, Mr. Farwell?”
Mr. Farwell sat glaring dumbly at his tormentor out of those strange eyes.
“Weren’t you?”
“Yes.” As baldly as though Mr. Farwell were stating that he had tried to get her to play a game of bridge.
“How long had it been since your affection for her had revived?”
“It hadn’t revived. My affection for her, if that’s what you want to call it, hadn’t ever stopped.”
“Oh, I see. And at the time of the murder you were not convinced that it was hopeless?”
“No.”
“I see. But you were a good deal disturbed over this affair with Mr. Ives, weren’t you?”
“Yes.”
“And when you went home you had a few more drinks just to celebrate the fact that you’d fixed everything up, didn’t you?”
“I had another drink or so.”
“And when you went up to bed with the detective story you took a full bottle of whisky with you, didn’t you?”
“I guess so.”
“And it was three quarters empty the next morning, wasn’t it?”
“How do I know?”
“Wasn’t it found beside your bed almost empty next morning, Mr. Farwell?”
“I don’t know. I’d taken a good deal of it.”
“Mr. Farwell, are you sure that you didn’t find that you had lost that cigarette lighter before nine-thirty—at a little after nine, say?”
“No, I told you that it was nine-thirty.”
“What makes you so sure?”
“I looked at my watch.”
“And just why did you do that?”
“Because I wanted to know the time.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know—I just wanted to know.”
“It was very convenient that it happened to be just nine-thirty, wasn’t it?”
“I don’t know what you mean; it wasn’t convenient at all, if it comes to that.”
“You don’t? And you don’t see why it was convenient that you happened to call up the Dallas house at about ten minutes to ten, assuring them thereby that you were safe at home in your pajamas?”
“No, I don’t.”
“You have a Filipino boy who works for you, haven’t you, Mr. Farwell?”
“Yes.”
“Was he in the house after Mr. Burgoyne went on to the poker party?”
“No; he goes home after he finishes the dinner things—around half-past eight usually.”
“So you were absolutely alone in the house?”
“Absolutely.”
“Your car was outside, wasn’t it?”
“It was in the garage.”
“It never entered your head when you missed that lighter, the loss of which concerned you so deeply, to get into that automobile and take the five- or ten-minute drive to Orchards to recover it?”
“It certainly didn’t.”
“You didn’t do anything of the kind?”
“Look here, I’ve already told you about twenty times that I didn’t, haven’t I?” Mr. Farwell’s voice was straining perilously at the leash.
“I didn’t remember that I’d asked you that before. At what time did you first hear of this tragedy, Mr. Farwell?”
“You mean the—murder?”
“Naturally.”
Once more the dull eyes were lit by that strange flare of stupefied agony. “At about twelve o’clock Sunday morning, I guess—or half-past eleven—I don’t know—sometime late that morning. George Dallas telephoned me. I was still half asleep.”
“What did you do?”
“Do? I don’t know what I did. It knocked me cold.”
Mr. Lambert suddenly thrust his beaming countenance into the stolid mask before him. “However cold it might have knocked you, Mr. Farwell, don’t you remember that within three quarters of an hour of the time that you received this news you locked yourself in the library and tried to blow your brains out?”
“Yes,” said Elliot Farwell, “I remember that.”
“You didn’t succeed because your friend Richard Burgoyne had previously emptied the pistol?”
“Correct.”
“And your Filipino boy, looking for you to announce lunch, noticed you through the window and set up the alarm, didn’t he?”
“So I understand.”
“What did you say to Mr. Burgoyne when he forced his way into the library, Mr. Farwell?”
“I don’t remember.”
“You don’t remember that you said, ‘Keep your hands off me, Dick; after what I’ve done, there’s no way out but this’?”
“No, I don’t remember it, but I probably said it. I don’t remember what I said.”
“What explanation do you offer for that remark, Mr. Farwell?”
“I’m not offering any explanations; if I said it, I said it. What difference does it make what I meant?”
“It makes quite a difference, I assure you. You have no explanation to offer?”
“No.”
“Mr. Farwell, for the last time I ask you whether you were not at the gardener’s cottage at Orchards on the night of ?”
“No.”
“At about nine-thirty?”
“No.”
Mr. Lambert, the ruddy moon of his countenance suddenly alive with malice, shot his question viciously into the tortured mask: “It was not your laugh that Mr. Thorne heard coming from the cottage, Mr. Farwell?”
“You—”
Over the gasp of the courtroom rose the bellow of rage from the witness box, the metallic ring of the prosecutor’s voice, the thunder of Judge Carver’s gavel and Ben Potts’s chant.
“Silence! Silence!”
“Your Honour, I would like to
