Mr. Lambert rose slowly to his feet. “The defense rests,” he said.
The redheaded girl watched them filing out through the door at the back without comment, and without comment she accepted the cake of chocolate and the large red apple. She consumed them in the same gloomy silence, broken only by an occasional furtive sniff and the application of a minute and inadequate handkerchief.
“You promised me last night,” said the reporter accusingly, “that if I’d go home you’d stop crying and be reasonable and sensible and—”
“I’m not crying,” said the redheaded girl—“not so that anybody would notice anything at all if they weren’t practically spying on me. It’s simply that I’m a little tired and not exactly cheerful.”
“Oh, it’s simply that, is it? Would you like my handkerchief too?” The redheaded girl accepted it ungratefully.
“The worst thing about a murder trial,” she said, “is that it practically ruins everybody’s life. It’s absolutely horrible. They’re all going along peacefully and quietly, and the first thing they know they’re jerked out of their homes and into the witness box, and things that they thought were safe and hidden and sacred are blazoned out in letters three inches tall in every paper in the … That poor little Platz thing, and that wretched Farwell man, and poor little Mrs. Ives with her runaway husband, and Orsini with his jail sentence—it isn’t decent! What have they done?”
The reporter said, “What, indeed?” in the tone of one who has not heard anything but the last three words. After a moment he inquired thoughtfully. “Have you ever thought about getting married?”
The redheaded girl felt her heart miss two beats and then race away like a wild thing. She said candidly, “Oh, often—practically all the time. All nice girls do.”
“Do they?” inquired the reporter in a tone of genuine surprise. “Men don’t—hardly ever.” He continued to look at her abstractedly for quite a long time before he added, “Only about once in their lives.”
He was looking at her still when the door behind the witness box opened.
“Your Honour”—the lines in Mr. Lambert’s face stood out relentlessly, but his voice was fresh and strong—“gentlemen of the jury, it is not my intention to take a great amount of your time, in spite of the fact that there devolves on me as solemn a task as falls to the lot of any man—that of pleading with you for the precious gift of human life. I do not believe that the solemnity of that plea is enhanced by undue prolixity, by legal hairsplitting or by a confusion of issues essentially and profoundly simple. The evidence in the case has been intricate enough. I shall not presume to analyze it for you. It is your task, and yours alone, to scrutinize, weigh, and dispose of it. On the other hand, the case presents almost no legal intricacies; any that are present will be expounded to you by Judge Carver when the time comes.
“When all is said and all is done, gentlemen, it is a very simple question that you have to decide—as simple as it is grave and terrible. The question is this: Do you believe the story that Stephen Bellamy and Susan Ives have told you in this courtroom? Is their story of what happened on that dreadful night a reasonable, a convincing and an honest explanation as to how they became involved in the tragic series of events that has blown through their peaceful homes like a malignant whirlwind, wrecking all their dearest hopes and their dearest realities? I believe that there can be but one answer to that question, and that not so long from now you will have given that answer, and that every heart in this courtroom will be the lighter for having heard it.
“These two have told you precisely the same story. That Stephen Bellamy did not go quite to the end with it in the first instance is a circumstance that I deplore as deeply as any one of you, but I do not believe that you will hold it against him. He did not, remember, utter one syllable that was not strictly and accurately truthful. It had been agreed between them that if it were necessary to swerve one hairbreadth from the truth, they would not swerve that hairbreadth.
“In persuading Mrs. Ives that her only safety lay in not admitting that she had been in the cottage that night, Mr. Bellamy made a grave mistake in judgment, but it was the mistake of a chivalrous and distraught soul, literally overwhelmed at the ghastly situation into which the two of them had been so incredibly precipitated.
“As for Susan Ives, she was so shaken with horror to the very roots of her being—so stunned, so confused and confounded—that she was literally moving through a nightmare during the few days that preceded her arrest; and, gentlemen, in a nightmare the best of us do not think with our accustomed clarity and cogency. She did what she was told to do, and she was told that it would make my task easier if I did not know that she had been near the cottage that night. That, alas, settled it for her once and for all. She has always sought to make my tasks easier.
“Stephen Bellamy undoubtedly remembered the old precept that it takes two to tell the truth—one to speak it and one to hear it. Possibly he believed that if there were two to speak it and twelve to hear it, it would be a more dangerous business. I do not agree with him. I believe that twelve attentive and intelligent listeners—as you have amply proved yourselves to be—make the best of all forums at which to present the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. That is my belief, that was my considered advice, and it is my profound conviction that before many hours have passed I shall be justified of my belief.
“Perhaps you have
