“How far is it from there to Miss Dunne’s home in Rosemont?”
“Just short of four miles.”
“It took you an hour and three-quarters to traverse four miles?”
“Yes. The last bus from Perrytown to Rosemont goes by Orchards at about quarter to eleven. We missed it by five or six minutes and were obliged to walk.”
“It took you over an hour and three quarters to walk less than four miles?”
“We walked slowly,” said Mr. Phipps.
“So it would seem. Now, did anyone see you leave Miss Dunne at her door, Mr. Phipps?”
“No one.”
“You simply said good night and left her there?”
“I said good night,” said Mr. Phipps, “and left her at her door.”
“You did not go inside at all?”
Mr. Phipps met the suave challenge with unflinching eyes. “I did not set my foot inside her house that night.”
“Your Honour,” asked Mr. Lambert, in a voice shaken with righteous wrath, “may I ask where these questions are leading?”
“The Court was about to ask the same thing. … Well, Mr. Farr?”
“I respectfully submit that it is highly essential to test the accuracy of Mr. Phipps’ memory as to the rest of the events on the night which he apparently remembers in such vivid detail,” said Mr. Farr smoothly. “And I assume that he is open to as rigorous an inspection as to credibility as the defense has seen fit to lavish on the state’s various witnesses. If I am in error, Your Honour will correct me.”
“The Court wishes to hamper you as little as possible,” said Judge Carver wearily. “But it fails to see what is to be gained by pressing the question further.”
“I yield to Your Honour’s judgment. Did anyone that you know see you after you left Miss Dunne that night, Mr. Phipps?”
“Unfortunately, no,” said Mr. Phipps, in that low, painful voice. “I saw no one until I reached my wife in Blue Bay at about eleven o’clock the following morning.”
“Did you tell your wife of the events of the night?”
“No. I told my wife that I had spent the night in New York with an old classmate and gone to the theatre.”
“That was not the truth, was it, Mr. Phipps?” inquired the prosecutor regretfully.
“That was a falsehood,” said Mr. Phipps, his eyes on his locked hands.
Mr. Farr waited a moment to permit this indubitable fact to sink in. When he spoke again, his voice was brisker than it had been in some time. “How did you recognize Mr. Bellamy and Mrs. Ives, Mr. Phipps?”
“They were standing in the circle of light cast by their headlights. I could see them very distinctly.”
“No, I mean where had you seen them before.”
“Oh, I had seen them quite frequently before. Mrs. Ives I saw often when she was Miss Thorne and I was tutoring at Orchards, and I had seen her several times since as well. Indeed, I had been in her own house on two occasions in regard to some welfare work that the school was backing.”
“You were aware then that Mrs. Ives was a very wealthy woman?”
Mr. Phipps looked at him wonderingly. “Aware? I knew of course that—”
“Your Honour, I object to that question as totally improper.”
“Objection sustained,” said Judge Carver, eyeing the prosecutor with some austerity.
“And as to Mr. Bellamy?” inquired that gentleman blandly.
“Mr. Bellamy was a director of our school board,” said Mr. Phipps. “I was in the habit of seeing him almost weekly, so I naturally recognized him.”
“Oh, you knew Mr. Bellamy, too, did you?” Mr. Farr’s voice was encouragement itself.
“I knew him—not intimately, you understand, but well enough to admire him as deeply as did all who came in contact with him.”
“He was deeply admired by all the members of the board?”
“Undoubtedly.”
“It will do you no damage with the board, then, when they learn of your testimony in this case?”
“Your Honour—”
“Please,” said Mr. Phipps quietly, “I should like to answer that. Whether it would do me damage or not is slightly academic, as I have already handed in my resignation as principal of the Eastern High School. I do not intend to return to Rosemont; my wife, my children, and I are leaving for Ohio tomorrow.”
“You have resigned your position? When?”
“Last night. My wife agreed with me that my usefulness here would probably be seriously impaired after I had testified.”
“You are a wealthy man, Mr. Phipps?”
“On the contrary, I am a poor man.”
“Yet you are able to resign your position and go West as a man of independent means?”
“Are you asking me whether I have been bribed, Mr. Farr?” asked Mr. Phipps gravely.
“I am asking you nothing of the kind. I am simply—”
“Your Honour! Your Honour!”
“Because if you are,” continued Mr. Phipps clearly over the imperious thunder of the gavel, “I should like to ask you what sum you yourself would consider sufficient to reimburse you for the loss of your private happiness, your personal reputation, and your public career?”
“I ask that that reply be stricken from the record, Your Honour!”
The white savagery of Mr. Farr’s face was not an agreeable sight.
“Both your question and the witness’s reply may be so stricken,” said Judge Carver sternly. “They were equally improper. You may proceed, Mr. Farr.”
Mr. Farr, by a truly Herculean effort, managed to reduce both voice and countenance to a semblance better suited to so ardent a seeker for truth. “You wish us to believe then, Mr. Phipps, that on the night of the nineteenth of June, for the first time in over ten years, you went to the gardener’s cottage at Orchards at the precise moment that enabled you to recognize Susan Ives and Stephen Bellamy standing in the circle of their automobile lights?”
“That is exactly what I wish you to believe,” said Mr. Phipps steadily. “It is the truth.”
Mr. Farr bestowed on him a long look in which irony, skepticism, and contemptuous pity were neatly blended. “No further questions,” he said briefly. “Call Miss Dunne.”
“Miss Sally Dunne!”
Miss Sally Dunne came quickly, so tall, so brave, so young and pale in her blue serge dress with its
