“I could have saved my breath. He didn’t even hear me. He did finally rouse himself to telephone the police and the hospital; the rest of the time he just sat there staring and shivering. He wanted me to call up Pat and the Dallases, and of course I knew that that wouldn’t do any good—Pat was locked up two stories away from a telephone. Finally I asked, ‘Did you see what direction she was going in when she left?’ He shook his head. I said, ‘But she told you that she was going toward the Conroys’?’ He nodded. I said, ‘Well, maybe she turned her ankle and fainted somewhere along the side of the road—she always wears such dreadfully high heels. We might take the car and turn the headlights along the edge of the road and see if we can get any trace of her. Come on!’
“I knew that that was perfect nonsense, but I was desperate, and I thought that there was just a chance that it might rouse him. It did. It was exactly as though you’d put a galvanic shock through him. He jerked out of his chair. He was out in the hall without even waiting to look back at me, and I had to run to get to the car before he started it.
“We got off with such a jerk that it nearly threw me out of the car, and I was really afraid that he was going to dash us against one of the gateposts. I said, ‘If we’re going to find Mimi, Steve, we must go slowly, mustn’t we? We must look carefully.’ He said, ‘That’s right!’ And after that we literally crept, all the way to the Conroys’.”
“How far was that?”
“Oh, not far—not half a mile—just a little way. It wasn’t until after we got past their entrance that we decided that—” She paused for a moment, her eyes dilated strangely in her small pale face; then she wrung her hands together more closely as though in that hard contact she found comfort, and continued steadily in her low voice. “We decided that we might as well go on.”
Lambert, paler than she, said just as steadily, “Might as well go on where, Mrs. Ives?”
“Go on to the gardener’s cottage at Orchards,” said Susan Ives.
In the gray light of the courtroom, the faces of the occupants looked gray, too—sharpened, fearful, full of an ominous unease. More than one of them glanced swiftly over a hunched shoulder at the blue-coated guardians of the door, and then back again, with somewhat pinched and rueful countenance, at the slight occupant of the witness box. The figure sat so quietly there in the gathering shadows; to many who watched it seemed that there slanted across her lifted face another shadow still—the shadow of the block, of the gallows, of the chair. …
“Is she confessing?” asked the redheaded girl in a small colourless voice.
“Wait!” said the reporter. “God knows what she’s doing.”
Judge Carver leaned suddenly toward Lambert.
“Mr. Lambert, it is already considerably past four. Is this testimony likely to continue for some time?”
“For some time, Your Honour.”
“In that case,” said Judge Carver gravely, “the Court considers it advisable to adjourn until ten tomorrow. Court is dismissed.”
The small figure moved lightly down from the witness stand into the deeper shadows—deeper still—she was gone. The sixth day of the Bellamy trial was over.
VII
The reporter cast an anxious eye at the redheaded girl.
“You’ve been crying,” he said accusingly.
The redheaded girl looked unrepentant.
“Of all the little idiots! What’s Sue Ives to you?”
“Never mind,” said the redheaded girl with dignity. “I can cry if I want to. I can cry all night if I want to. Keep quiet. Here she is!”
“Mrs. Ives, what made you decide to go on to the cottage?” Lambert’s voice was very gentle.
“I think that it was Stephen’s idea, but I’m not absolutely sure. I was at my wit’s end by this time, you see. But I believe that it was Steve who suggested that maybe she had been taken ill or perhaps even fallen asleep at the cottage. I remember agreeing that it was stupid of us not to have thought of that before. At any rate, we both agreed to go on to the cottage.”
She stopped again and sat for a moment locking and unlocking her fingers, her eyes fixed on something far beyond the courtroom door.
“What time did you arrive at the cottage?”
“At about quarter past ten, I believe—twenty minutes past perhaps. It isn’t more than a five-minute drive. We drove the car up through the lodge gates and then turned off the little dirt road to the cottage. We drove it right up to the front steps, and then I said, ‘It’s no good; there’s no light in the place. She isn’t here.’ Steve said, ‘Maybe she left a note saying where she was going,’ and I said, ‘That’s perfectly possible. Let’s go in and see.’ He helped me out, and just as we got to the door, I said, ‘Well, we’ll never know. The place will be locked, of course.’ Steve had his hand on the doorknob, and he pushed it a little. He said, ‘No, it’s open. That’s
