“No; because then I wake only half up from sleep when I hear him drive that car into the garage, and I do not turn to look at the clock.”
“It was some time later?”
“Some time—yes. But whether one hour—three hours—five hours, that I cannot say. What I am not sure of like my life, that I do not say.”
“Exactly; very commendable. That’s all, thanks. Cross-examine.”
Orsini wheeled his lustrous orbs in the direction of Mr. Lambert, whose ruddy countenance had assumed an expression of intense inhospitality, though he managed to inject an ominous suavity into his ample voice. “With those vigilant and all-seeing eyes of yours, Mr.—er—Mr. Orsini, were you able to note the garments that Mrs. Bellamy was wearing when she went past you at the gate?”
“Oh, positive. A white dress, all fluffy, and a black cape, quite thin, so that almost you see through it—not quite, maybe, but almost.”
“Any hat?”
“On the head a small black scarf that she have wrap’ also around her neck, twice or mebbe three time. The eyes of Luigi—”
“Exactly. Could you see whether she had on her jewels?”
“Positive. Always like that in the evening, moreover, she wear her jewels.”
“You noticed what they were?”
“Same like always—same necklace out of pearls, same rings, diamond and sapphire, two on one hand, one the other—I see them when she open that bag.”
“Mr. Bellamy was a person of moderate means, wasn’t he, as far as you know?”
“Oh, everybody what there is around here knows he wasn’t no John P. Rockfeller, I guess.”
“Do you believe that the stones were genuine?”
Mr. Orsini, thus appealed to as an expert, waxed eloquent and expansive. “Oh, positive. That I know for one absolute sure thing.”
“Tell us just how, won’t you?”
“Well, that house girl, Nellie, one night she tell me that Miz’ Bell’my have left one of her rings at the club where she wash her hands, but that Miz’ Bell’my just laugh and say she should worry herself, because all those rings and her pearls they are insure big, and if she lose those, she go out and buy herself a new house and a auto car, and maybe a police dog too.”
“I see. Had it ever occurred to you that Mrs. Bellamy was using the cottage at Orchards for other purposes than piano practice, Mr. Orsini?”
Orsini’s smile flashed so generously that it revealed three really extravagant gold fillings. “Well, me, I don’t miss many things, maybe you guess. After she get that key three-four times, I think to myself, ‘Luigi, it is funny thing that nevair she give you back that key until the day after, and always those evenings she go out by herself—most generally when Mr. Bell’my he stay in town to work.’ So one of those nights when she ask for that key I permit myself to take a small little stroll up the road in Orchards, and sure thing, there is a light in that cottage and a auto car outside the door. Sufficient! I look no further. Me, I am a man of the world, you comprehend.”
“Obviously.”
“Just a moment, Mr. Lambert,” interrupted Judge Carver. “Is your cross-examination going to take some time?”
“Quite a time, I believe, Your Honour.”
“Then I think it best that we adjourn for the noon recess, as it is already after twelve. The Court stands adjourned until one-ten.”
“Well, here’s where we get our comic relief,” said the reporter with unction. “That son of sunny Italy is going to give us an enviable imitation of a three-ringed circus and a bag of monkeys before he and Lambert get through with each other, or I miss my guess. He’s got a look in his eye that is worth the price of admission alone. What’s your mature opinion of him?”
“I think that he’s beguiling,” said the redheaded girl somewhat listlessly. Little shadows were under her gray eyes, and she curled small limp paws about a neglected notebook. Something in the drooping shoulders under the efficient jacket suggested an exhausted baby in need of a crib and a bottle of hot milk and a firm and friendly tucking in. She made a halfhearted effort to overtake an enormous yawn that was about to engulf her, and then surrendered plaintively.
“Bored?” inquired the real reporter, his countenance illuminated by an expression of agreeable surprise.
“Bored?” cried the lady beside him in a voice at once scornful and outraged. “Bored? I’m half destroyed with excitement. I can’t sleep anymore. I go back to the boarding house every night and sit up in front of a gas stove with an orange-and-magenta comforter over my shoulders that ought to warm the dead, writing up my notes until all hours; and then I put a purple comforter over my knees and a muffler over my nose, and get an apple and sit there alternately gnawing the apple and my fingers and trying to work out who did it until even the cats stop singing under my window and the sky begins to get that nice, appealing slate colour that’s so prettily referred to as dawn. And even then I don’t know who did it.”
“Don’t you, indeed?” inquired the reporter severely, looking irritated and anxious. “Haven’t you any sense at all, you little idiot? Listen, I know a place just two blocks down where you can get some fairly decent hot soup. You go and drink about a quart of it and then trot along home and turn in, and I’ll do your notes for you tonight so well that your boss will double your salary in the morning—and if you’re very good and sleep eighteen hours, I may tell you who did the murder.”
The redheaded girl, who had shuddered fastidiously at the offer of fairly decent soup, eyed him ungratefully as she extracted a packet of salted peanuts from the capacious pouch that served her as handbag, commissary, and dressing table.
“Thank you kindly,” she said. “My boss wrote me two special-delivery letters yesterday to say that I was doing far the best stuff
