“It’s a matter of supreme indifference to me what you believe,” said Patrick Ives. “I don’t regard fidelity to Sue as particularly creditable. The fool of the world would have enough sense for that.”
“You are saying that you never ceased to love her?”
“I am saying that since I met her I’ve never given another woman two thoughts except to wish to God that she was somewhere else.”
“That was why you went to meet Madeleine Bellamy at the gardener’s cottage?”
“That,” said Mr. Ives imperturbably, “is precisely why I went to meet Madeleine Bellamy at the gardener’s cottage.”
Before the cool indifference of his eye the ugly sneer on Lambert’s countenance wavered for a moment, deepened. “You deny that you wrote these letters?”
Pat Ives bent on the small packet flourished beneath his eye a careless glance. “Not for a moment.”
“Were they or were they not written after rendezvous had taken place between you and Mrs. Bellamy?”
“Two of them were written after what you are pleased to describe as rendezvous had taken place—one before.”
“And where, Mr. Ives, was your wife at the time of these meetings—on , and ?”
“I don’t know.”
“She was in New York, wasn’t she?”
“I haven’t the faintest idea. I’d never met her, you see.”
Lambert goggled at him above his sagging jaw. “You’d never met her?”
The courtroom throng blinked, shivered, stared wildly into one another’s eyes. No, no, that wasn’t what he had said—that couldn’t be what he had said. Or perhaps he was going mad before their eyes, sitting there with those reckless eyes dark in his white face. …
“No; those letters were written in . I didn’t meet Sue until the spring of .”
“Ha!” exhaled Lambert in a great breath of contemptuous relief. “Written in , eh? And may I ask why Mrs. Bellamy was carrying them around in her bag in ?”
“You may ask,” Pat Ives assured him, “and what’s more, I’ll tell you. She was selling them to me.”
“Selling them to you? What for?”
“For a hundred thousand dollars,” said Patrick Ives.
Over the stupefied silence of the courtroom soared Lambert’s incredulous voice: “You expect us to believe that?”
“I wish to the Lord you’d stop asking me that,” said his witness with undisguised irritation. “It’s not my business to decide what you’ll believe or what you won’t believe. What I’m telling you is the truth.”
“It is your contention that these letters of yours, which you now claim were written in , were being used for purposes of blackmail by Mrs. Bellamy?”
“You choose your own words,” said Pat Ives. “Personally, I’d chose prettier ones. Mimi undoubtedly considered that I would be getting value received in the letters. She was right. She also may have considered that I owed her something. She was right again.”
“You owed her something?”
“I owed her a great deal for not having married me,” said Pat Ives. “As she didn’t, I owe her more happiness than most men even dream of.”
Lambert made a sound that strongly suggested a snort. “Very pretty—very pretty indeed. What it comes down to, however, is that you accuse this dead girl, who is not here to defend herself, of deliberately stooping to blackmailing the man she loved for a colossal sum of money—that’s it, isn’t it?”
“Well, hardly. She didn’t love me, of course—she never loved anyone in her life but Steve. She told me that she wanted the money because she thought that he was sick; that he was working himself to death and getting nothing out of it. She was going to persuade him that an aunt in Cheyenne had left her the money, and that she wasn’t happy here, and that they ought to start out again in a place that she’d heard of in California. She had it all worked out very nicely.”
“One moment, Mr. Ives.” Judge Carver lifted an arresting hand. “As it is after twelve, the Court will at this time take its customary recess for luncheon. We will reconvene at one-fifteen.”
The reporter viewed the recessional through the doors behind the witness box with an expression of unfeigned diversion. “Watch Uncle Dudley,” he adjured the redheaded girl. “He’s not going to have any luncheon; he’s going to stay right here where nobody can get at him to give him any unwelcome instructions before he gets through with Mr. Patrick Ives. There, what did I tell you?”
Mr. Lambert, who had followed somewhat perfunctorily in the wake of his clients, now wheeled about briskly and returned to his well-laden desk, where he proceeded to plunge into a large stack of papers before him with virtuous abandon. He apparently found them of the most absorbing interest, although from time to time he permitted himself a slightly apprehensive glance at the closed door.
Finally it opened, and one of the amiable and harassed-looking young men who shared the desk with him entered purposefully. An animated though inaudible colloquy ensued, punctuated by much emphatic head wagging by Lambert. Finally the young man departed more precipitately than he had come, Mr. Lambert returned to his studies, and the reporter and the redheaded girl emerged from the fascinated hush in which they had been contemplating this silent drama.
“Ten to one she doesn’t get in a syllable to him before he gets through with Ives,” said the reporter.
“Who doesn’t?” The redheaded girl’s tone was a trifle abstracted. She was wondering if her nose was still pink, and if the young man beside her was one of the young men who consider face powder more immoral than tooth powder.
“Sue Ives, goose! What were you screaming about?”
“I was screaming,” said the redheaded girl, memory lighting a reminiscent glitter in her eye, “because they wouldn’t let me in, and I thought that if I made enough noise they might.”
“Why wouldn’t they let you in?”
“Because a fat fiend made a snatch at my ticket and
