“What did you do next, Mr. Bellamy?”
“Well, for a minute I didn’t know what to do—I was too absolutely dumbfounded by the entire performance. And then, quite suddenly, I had a horrible conviction that something had happened to Mimi, and that Sue was trying to break it to me. I felt absolutely mad with terror, and then I thought that if I could get Mrs. Conroy on the telephone there was just a chance that they mightn’t have left yet, or that maybe some of the servants might have seen Mimi come in and could tell me that she was all right.
“Anyway, I rang up, and Nell Conroy answered the phone, and said no, that Mimi hadn’t turned up; and that anyway they had told her not to meet them till eight-thirty, because the feature film didn’t go on till then. I said that Mimi must have made a mistake—that she’d probably gone to the theatre—something—anything—I don’t remember. All that I do remember is that I rang off somehow and stood there literally sweating with terror, trying to think what to do next. I remember putting my hand up to loosen my collar and finding it drenched; I’d forgotten all about Sue. All I could remember was that something must have happened to Mimi, and that she might need me, and that I didn’t know where she was. And then I remembered that Sue had told me to hurry and that she could explain everything. I tore out to the garage and went at the new tire like a maniac; it didn’t take me more than about eight minutes to get it on, and not more than three or four more to get over to the back road where I was to meet Sue. I didn’t pay much attention to speed limits.”
“Just where is this road, Mr. Bellamy?”
“Well, I don’t know whether I can make it clear. It’s a connecting road out of Rosemont between the main highway—the Perrytown Road, you know—and a parallel road about five miles west, called the River Road, that leads to Lakedale. It runs by about a quarter mile back of the Ives’ house.”
“Did you arrive at this back road before Mrs. Ives?”
“No. Mrs. Ives was waiting for me when I got there. I asked her whether she had been there long, and she said only a minute or two. I asked her then whether anything had happened to Mimi. She said, ‘What do you mean—happened to her?’ I said an accident of any kind, and added that I’d been practically off my head ever since she had telephoned, as I had called up the Conroys and discovered that she wasn’t there. Sue said, ‘So Elliot was right!’ She had been standing by the side of the car, talking, but when she said that, she looked around her quickly and stepped into the seat beside me. She said, ‘I’d rather not have anyone see us just now. Let’s drive over to the River Road. Mimi hasn’t been hurt, Steve. She’s gone to meet Pat at Orchards.’ I was so thunderstruck, and so immensely, so incalculably, relieved that Mimi wasn’t hurt that I laughed out loud. That sounds ridiculous, but it’s true. I laughed, and Sue said, ‘Don’t laugh, Steve; Mimi’s having an affair with Pat—she’s been having one for weeks. They don’t love us—they love each other.’ I said, ‘That’s a damned silly lie. Who told it to you—Elliot Farwell?”
“Were you driving at the time that this conversation took place?”
“Oh, yes, we were well up the back road. I’d started the minute she asked me to. Shall I go on?”
“Please.”
“Do you want the whole conversation?”
“Everything that was said as to the relations of Mrs. Bellamy and Mr. Ives.”
“Very well. She told me that unfortunately it was no lie; that for several weeks they had been using the gardener’s cottage at Orchards for a place of rendezvous, and that Farwell had even seen them going there. I said that it made no difference to me whatever what Farwell had seen—that I wouldn’t believe it if I had seen it myself. I asked her if Farwell hadn’t been drinking when he told her this, and she said yes—that unless he had been he wouldn’t have told her. I asked her if she didn’t know that Elliot Farwell was an abject idiot about Mimi, and she said, ‘Oh, Stephen, not so abject an idiot as you—you who won’t even listen to the truth that you don’t want to hear.’ I said ‘I’ll listen to anything that you want to tell me, but truth isn’t what you hear—it’s what you believe. I don’t believe that Mimi doesn’t love me.’
“She said, ‘Where is she now, Steve?’ And I said, ‘At the movies. She probably met someone on the road who gave her a lift; or else she decided to walk straight there, as she knew that the Conroys’ car would be crowded.’ She said, ‘She’s not at the movies. She’s waiting for Pat in the gardener’s cottage.’ I said, ‘And has Pat gone to meet her?’ And she said, ‘No, this time he hasn’t gone to meet her.’ I said, ‘What makes you think that?’ Sue said, ‘I don’t think it; I know it.’ I said, ‘Oh, yes, he was going to Dallases to play poker, wasn’t he?’ And after a moment she said, ‘Yes, that’s where he said he was going. I happened to know that there’s been a slip in their plan to meet tonight.’
“Then she told me that she believed they were planning to run away, and that the reason she had wanted to see me was to tell me that
