Judge Carver’s gavel fell with a crash over the enraptured roar that swept the courtroom. “One more demonstration of this kind and I clear the Court. This is a trial for murder, not a burlesque performance. You, sir, answer the questions that are put to you, when they are put. What’s that object in your hand?”
Mr. Orsini dangled the limp yellow article hopefully under the judge’s fine nose. “The instrument with which I make the measure,” he explained, all modest pride. “What you call a measure of tape. The card on which I make the notes as well.”
Judge Carver schooled his momentarily shaken countenance to its customary rigidity and turned a lion tamer’s eye on the smothered hilarity of the press. The demoralized Lambert pulled himself together with a mighty effort; a junior counsel emitted a convulsive snort; only Mr. Farr remained entirely unmoved. Pensive, nonchalant and mildly sardonic, he bestowed a perfunctory glance on the measure of tape and returned to a critical perusal of some notes of his own, which he had been studying intently since he had surrendered his witness to his adversary. The adversary, his eyes still bulging, returned once more to the charge.
“May I ask you what caused you to burden yourself with this invaluable mass of information?”
“Surest thing you may ask. I do it because me, I am well familiar with the questions what all smart high-grade lawyers put when in the court—like, could you then tell us how high were those steps, and how many were those minutes, and how far were those walls—all things like that they like to go and ask, every time, sure like shooting.”
“I see. A careful student of our little eccentricities. How has it happened that your crowded life has afforded you the leisure to make so exhaustive a study of our habits?”
“Once again, more slow?” suggested the student affably.
“How have you happened to become so familiar with court life?”
“Oh, me, I am not so familiar with it as that. Once—twice—that is enough for one who know how to use his eyes and ear—more is not necessary.”
“No, as you say, once or twice ought to be enough; it’s a pity that you’ve found it necessary to extend your experience. Orsini, have you ever been in jail?”
“Who—me?” The glittering smile with which Mr. Orsini was in the habit of decorating his periods was not completely withdrawn, but it became slightly more reticent. His lambent eyes roved reproachfully in the direction of Mr. Farr, who seemed more absorbed than ever in his notes. “In what kind of a jail you mean?”
Mr. Lambert looked obviously disconcerted. “I mean jail—any kind of a jail.”
“Was it up on a hill, perhaps, this jail?” inquired his victim helpfully.
“On a hill? What’s that got to do with it? How should I know whether it was on a hill?”
“A high hill, mebbe, with trees all about it?” Once more Orsini’s hands were eloquent.
“All right, all right, were you ever in a jail on a hill with trees around it?”
Orsini gazed blandly into the irate and contemptuous countenance thrust toward him. “No, sair,” he replied regretfully. “If that jail was up on a hill with trees around it, then I was not in that jail.”
Once more the courtroom, reckless of the gavel, yielded to helpless and hilarious uproar, and for this time they were spared. One look at Mr. Lambert’s countenance, a full moon in the throes of apoplexy, had undermined even Judge Carver’s iron reserves. The gavel remained idle while he indulged himself in a severe attack of coughing behind a large and protective handkerchief. The redheaded girl was using a more minute one to mop her eyes when she paused, startled and incredulous. Across the courtroom, Patrick and his wife Susan were laughing into each other’s eyes, for one miraculous moment the gay and carefree comrades of old; for one moment—and then, abruptly, memory swept back her lifted veil and they sat staring blankly at the dreadful havoc that lay between them, who had been wont to seek each other in laughter. Slowly, painfully, Sue Ives wrenched her eyes back to their schooled vigilance, and after an interminable breath, Pat Ives turned his haunted ones back to the window, beyond which the sky was still blue. Only in that second’s wait the redheaded girl had seen the dark flush sweep across his pallor, and the hunger in those imploring eyes, frantic and despairing as those of a small boy who had watched a beloved hand slam a heavy door in his face.
“Why, he loves her!” thought the redheaded girl. “He loves her dreadfully!” Those few scattered seconds when laughter and hope and despair had swept across a court—how long—how long they seemed! And yet they would have scantily sufficed to turn a pretty phrase or a platitude on the weather. They had just barely served to give the portly Lambert time to recover his breath, his voice, and his venom, all three of which he was now proceeding to utilize simultaneously and vigorously.
“I see, I see. You’re particular about your jails—like them in valleys, do you? Now be good enough to answer my question without any further trifling.”
“What question is that?”
“Have you ever been in jail?”
Mr. Orsini’s expression became faintly tinged with caution, but its affability did not diminish. “When?” he inquired impartially.
“When? Any time! Will—you—answer—my—question?”
Thus rudely adjured, his victim yielded to the inevitable with philosophy, humour, and grace. “Not any time—no, no! That is too exaggerate’. But sometimes—yes—I do not deny that sometimes I have been in jail.”
Under the eyes of the entranced spectators, Mr. Lambert’s rosy jowls darkened to a fine, deep, full-bodied maroon. “You don’t deny it, hey? Well, that’s very magnanimous and gratifying—very gratifying indeed. Now will you
