“I propose to attack the credibility of this witness,” said Mr. Lambert unctuously. “I propose to prove by this witness, that while she is posing here as a correct young person and a model servant she is actually living a highly incorrect life as a supposedly married woman. … Miss Cordier, I ask you whether for the past three months you have not been passing as the wife of Adolph Platz, having persuaded him to abandon his own wife?”
In the pale oval of her face the black eyes flamed and smoked. “And I tell you no, no, and again no, monsieur!”
“You do not go under the name of Mrs. Adolph Platz?”
“I do not persuade him to abandon that stupid doll, his wife. Long before I knew him, he was tired and sick of her.”
“You do not go under the name of Mrs. Adolph Platz?”
“That is most simple. Monsieur Platz he have been to me a excellent friend and adviser. When I explain to him that I am greatly in need of rest he suggest to me that a woman young, alone, and of not an entire lack of attraction would quite possibly find it more restful if the world should consider her married. So he is amiable enough to suggest that if it should assist me, I might for this small vacation use his name. It is only thing I have take from him, monsieur may rest assured.”
“You remove a great weight from my mind,” Mr. Lambert assured her, horridly playful; “and from the minds of these twelve gentlemen as well, I am sure.” The twelve gentlemen, who had been following the lady’s simple and virtuous explanation of her somewhat unconventional conduct with startled attention, smiled for the first time in four days, shifting stiffly on their chairs and exchanging sidelong glances, skeptically jocose. “It is a pleasure to all of us to know that such chivalry as Mr. Platz has exhibited is not entirely extinct in this wicked workaday world. I hardly think that we can improve on your explanation as to why you are known in Atlantic City as Mrs. Adolph Platz, Miss Cordier. That will be all.”
The prosecutor, who did not seem unduly perturbed by these weighty flights of sarcasm, continued to lean on his chair, though he once more lifted his voice: “You had saved quite a sum of money during these past years, hadn’t you, Miss Cordier?”
“Yes, monsieur.”
“It proved ample for your modest needs on this long-planned and greatly needed vacation, did it not?”
“More than ample—yes.”
“Mr. Platz had left his wife some time before these unhappy events caused you to leave Mrs. Ives, hadn’t he?”
“Of a surety, monsieur.”
“That’s all, thank you, Miss Cordier.”
Miss Cordier moved leisurely from the stand, chic and poised as ever, disdaining even a glance at the highly gratified Lambert, and bestowing the briefest of smiles on Mr. Farr, who responded even more briefly. Many a lady, trailing sable and brocade from an opera box, has moved with less assurance and grace than Mrs. Ives’s onetime waitress, the temporary Mrs. Adolph Platz. The eyes of the courtroom, perplexed, diverted, and faintly disturbed, followed her balanced and orderly retreat, the scarlet camellia defiant as a little flag.
“Call Miss Roberts.”
“Miss Laura Roberts!”
Miss Laura Roberts also wore black, but she wore her black with a difference. A decent, sober, respectful apparel for a decent, sober, respectful little person—Miss Roberts, comely, rosy-faced, gray-eyed, fawn-haired and soft-voiced, had all the surface qualifications of an ideal maid, and she obviously considered that those qualifications did not include scarlet lips and scarlet flowers. Under the neat black hat her eyes met the prosecutor’s shyly and bravely.
“Miss Roberts, what was your occupation on ?”
“I was maid and seamstress to Mrs. Patrick Ives, sir.”
The pretty English voice, with its neat, clipped accent, fell pleasantly and reassuringly on the ears of the courtroom, which relaxed with unfeigned relief from the tensity into which her Gallic colleague had managed to plunge it during her tenure of the witness box.
“Did you see Mrs. Ives on the evening of the nineteenth?”
“Not after dinner—no, sir. I asked her before dinner if it would be quite all right for cook and me to go down to the village to church that night, and she said quite, and not to bother about getting home early, because she wouldn’t be needing me again. So after church we met two young gentlemen that we knew and went across to the drug store and had some ices, and sat talking a bit before we walked home, so that it was well on to eleven when we got in, and all the lights were out except the one in the kitchen, so I knew that Mrs. Ives was in bed.”
“What time did you leave the house for church, Miss Roberts?”
“Well, I couldn’t exactly swear to it, sir, but it must have been around half-past eight; because service was at nine, and it’s a good bit of a walk, and I do remember hurrying with dinner so that I could turn down the beds and be off.”
“Were you chambermaid in the household as well as seamstress-maid?”
“Oh, no, sir; only it was the chambermaid’s night off, you see, and then it was my place to do it.”
“I see. So on this night you turned down all the beds before eight-thirty?”
“Yes, sir—all but Miss Page’s, that is.”
“That wasn’t included in your duties?”
“Oh, yes, sir, it was. But that night when I got to the day nurse’s door it was locked, and when I knocked, no one didn’t answer at first, and then Miss Page called out that she had a headache and had gone to bed already—”
Miss Roberts hesitated and looked down at the prosecutor with honest, troubled eyes.
“Nothing extraordinary about that, was there?”
“Well, yes, sir, there was. You see, when I was coming down the hall I heard what I thought were voices coming out of those rooms, and crying, and I was afraid that the little
