“This Court is not given to answering rhetorical questions, Mr. Farr. Mr. Lambert, Mr. Farwell has already told you several times that he was not at Orchards on the night of . The Court has given you great latitude in your cross-examination, but it does not propose to let you press it farther along those lines. If you have other questions to put, you may proceed.”
“No further questions, Your Honour.” Mr. Lambert’s voice remained buoyantly impervious to rebuke.
“One moment, Mr. Farwell.” The prosecutor moved swiftly forward. The man in the witness box, who had lurched to his feet at that last outrage from the exultant Lambert, turned smouldering eyes on him. On the rim of the witness box, his hands were shaking visibly—thick, well groomed, insensitive hands, with a heavy seal ring on one finger. “You admit that you had been drinking heavily before you spoke to Mrs. Ives, do you not?”
“Yes—yes—yes.”
“Did you regret that fact when you returned home that evening?”
“I knew I’d talked too much—yes.”
“Did you regret it still more deeply when you received the news of the murder the following morning?”
“Yes.”
“Wasn’t that the reason for your attempted suicide?”
A long pause, and then once more the heavy tortured voice: “Yes.”
“Because you realized that harm had come to her through your indiscretion?”
“Yes, I told you—yes.”
“Thanks, that’s all. Call Mr. Dallas.”
“Mr. George Dallas!”
A jaunty figure in blue serge, with a smart foulard tie and curly blond hair just beginning to thin, moved briskly forward. Mr. Dallas was obviously a good fellow; there was a hearty timbre to his rather light voice, his lips parted constantly in an earnestly engaging smile over even white teeth, and his brown eyes were the friendliest ever seen out of a dog’s head. If he had not had thirty thousand dollars a year, he would have been an Elk, a Rotarian, and the best salesman on the force.
He cast an earnestly propitiatory smile at Sue Ives, who smiled back, faintly and gravely, and an even more earnestly propitiatory one at the prosecutor, who returned it somewhat perfunctorily.
“Mr. Dallas, you were giving a poker party on the night of the , were you not?”
“I was indeed.”
Mr. Dallas’s tone implied eloquently that it had been a highly successful party, lacking only the prosecutor’s presence to make it quite flawless.
“You were present when Mr. Farwell telephoned Mr. Burgoyne?”
“Oh, yes.”
“The telephone was in the room in which you were playing?”
“Yes, sir.”
“About what time did the call come in?”
“Well, now let’s see.” Mr. Dallas was all eager helpfulness. “It must have been about quarter to ten, because every fifteen minutes we were making a jack pot, and I remember that we’d had the first and another was just about due when the phone rang and Dick held up the game for a while.”
“Did you get Mr. Burgoyne’s end of the conversation?”
“Well, not all of it. We were all making a good deal of a racket—just kidding along, you know—but I heard Dick say, ‘Oh, put on your clothes and come over and we’ll give you enough of ’em to start a bonfire.’ ”
“Did Mr. Burgoyne make any comments after he came back?”
“He said, ‘Boys, don’t let me forget to take some matches when I go. Farwell hasn’t got one in the house.’ ”
“What time did he leave?”
“Oh, around eleven-fifteen, I guess; we broke up earlier than usual.”
“Did you call Mr. Farwell up the following day around noon?”
“Yes, I did.” Mr. Dallas’s jaunty accents were suddenly tinged with gravity.
“Can you remember that conversation?”
“Well, I remember that when Elliot answered he still sounded half asleep and rather put out. He said, ‘What’s the idea, waking a guy up at this time of day?’ And I said, ‘Listen, Elliot, something terrible’s happened. I was afraid you’d see it in the papers. Mimi Bellamy’s been murdered in the gardener’s cottage at Orchards.’ He made a queer sort of noise and said, ‘Don’t, George! Don’t, George!’ Don’t—don’t—over and over again, as though he were wound up. I said, ‘Don’t what?’ But he’d hung up, I guess; anyway he didn’t answer.”
“He seemed startled?”
“Oh, rather—he seemed absolutely knocked cuckoo.” The voice hung neatly between pity and regret, the sober eyes tempering the flippant words.
“All right, Mr. Dallas—thanks. Cross-examine.”
As though loath to tear himself from this interesting and congenial chatter, Mr. Dallas wrenched his expressive countenance from the prosecutor and turned it, flatteringly intent, on the roseate Lambert.
“Did other people overhear Mr. Burgoyne’s remarks, Mr. Dallas?”
“Oh, I’m quite sure that they must have. We were all within a foot or so of each other, you know.”
“Who was in the room?”
“Well, there was Burgoyne, and I had Martin and two fellows from New York who were out for the weekend, and—let’s see—”
“Wasn’t Mr. Ives in the room at the time?”
“Well, no,” said Mr. Dallas, a curious, apprehensive shadow playing over his sunny countenance. “No, he wasn’t.”
“I see. What time had he arrived, Mr. Dallas?”
“Mr. Ives?”
“Yes.”
Mr. Dallas cast a fleeting and despairing glance at the white-faced figure in the corner by the window, and Patrick Ives returned it with a steady, amused, indifferent air. “Oh—oh, well, he hadn’t.”
Mr. Lambert stopped, literally transfixed, his eyes bulging in his head. “You mean that he hadn’t arrived at a quarter to ten?”
“No, he hadn’t.”
For the first time since the trial opened, Sue Ives stirred in her seat. She leaned forward swiftly, her eyes, urgent and imperious, on her stupefied counsel. Her lifted face, suddenly vivid with purpose, her lifted hand, cried a warning to him clearer than words. But Mr. Lambert was heeding no warnings.
“What time did he get there?”
“He—well, you see—he didn’t get there.”
Mr. Dallas again turned imploring eyes on the gentleman in the corner, whose own eyes smiled back indulgently, a little more indifferent, a little more amused.
“Had he let you know of this change of plans?”
“No,” said Mr. Dallas wretchedly. “No, he hadn’t—exactly.”
“He
