“I said through with the evidence, and so he is. This is just a backfire. If you’ll keep quiet a minute you’ll see.”
“I wish simply, therefore, to remind you,” the weary voice was saying, “that however unusual, arresting and dramatic the circumstances surrounding the testimony of these last two witnesses may have been, you should approach this evidence in precisely the same spirit that you approach all the other evidence that has been placed before you. It should be submitted to exactly the same tests of credibility that you apply to every word that has been uttered before you—no more and no less.
“One more word and I have done. The degrees of murder I have defined for you. You will govern your verdict accordingly. The sentence is not your concern; that lies with the Court. It is your duty, and your sole duty, to decide whether Susan Ives and Stephen Bellamy are either or both of them guilty of the murder of Madeleine Bellamy. I am convinced that you will perform that duty faithfully. Gentlemen, you may consider your verdict.”
Slowly and stiffly the twelve men rose to their feet and stood staring about them uncertainly, as though loath to be about their business.
“If you desire further instruction as to any point that is not quite clear to you,” said Judge Carver gravely, “I may be reached in my room here. Any of the exhibits that you desire to see will be put at your disposal. You may retire, gentlemen.”
They shuffled solemnly out through the little door to the right of the witness, the small, beady-eyed bailiff with the muttonchop whiskers and the anxious frown trotting close at their heels. The door closed behind them with a gentle, ominous finality, and someone in the courtroom sighed—loudly, uncontrollably—a prophecy of the coming intolerable suspense.
The redheaded girl wrung her hands together in a despairing effort to warm them. Twelve men—twelve ordinary, everyday men, whose faces looked heavy and stupid with strain and fatigue … She pressed her hands together harder and turned a pale face toward the other door.
Susan Ives and Stephen Bellamy had just reached it; they lingered there for a moment to smile gravely and reassuringly at the hovering Lambert, and then were gone, as quietly as though they were about to walk down the steps to waiting cars instead of to a black hell of uncertainty and suspense.
Those in the courtroom still sat breathlessly silent, held in check by Judge Carver’s stern eye. After a moment he, too, rose; for a moment, it seemed that all the room was filled with the rustle of his black silk robes, and then he, too, was gone, with decorum following hard on his heels.
In less than thirty seconds, the quiet, orderly room was transformed into something rather less sedate than the careless excitement of a Saturday-afternoon crowd at a ball park—psychologically they were reduced to shirt sleeves and straw hats tilted well back on their heads. The redheaded girl stared at them with round, appalled eyes.
Just behind her they were forming a pool. Someone with a squeaky voice was betting that they would be back in twenty minutes; someone with an Oxford accent was betting that they’d take two hours; a girl’s pleasant tones offered five to one that it would be a hung jury. Large red apples were materializing, the smoke of a hundred cigarettes filled the air, and rumour’s voice was loud in the land:
“Listen, did you hear about Melanie Cordier? Someone telephoned that she’d collapsed at the inn in Rosemont and confessed that Platz had done it, and about one o’clock this morning every taxicab in Redfield was skidding around corners to get there first. And she hadn’t been there since last Friday, let alone collapsed!”
“Well, you wouldn’t get me out of my bed at one in the morning to hear Cal Coolidge say he’d done it.”
“Did you hear the row that Irish landlady was setting up about a state witness taking her seat? Oh, boy, what an eye that lady’s got! It sure would tame a wildcat!”
“Anyone want to bet ten to one that they’ll be out all night?”
The voice of an officer of the court said loudly and authoritatively, “No smoking in here! No smoking, please!”
There was a temporary lull, and a perfunctory and irritable tapping of cigarettes against chair arms. The clock over the courtroom door said four.
“Have some chocolate?” inquired the reporter solicitously. The redheaded girl shuddered. “Well, but, my good child, you haven’t had a mouthful of lunch, and if you aren’t careful you won’t have a mouthful of dinner either. Lord knows how long that crew will be in there.”
“How long?” inquired the redheaded girl fiercely. “Why, for heaven’s sake, should they be long? Why, for heaven’s sake, can’t they come out of there now and say, ‘Not guilty’?”
“Well, there’s a good old-fashioned custom that they’re supposed to weigh the evidence; they may be celebrating that.”
“What have they to weigh? They heard Mr. Phipps, didn’t they?”
“They did indeed. And what they may well spend the next twenty-four hours debating is whether they consider Mr. Phipps a long-suffering martyr or a well-paid liar.”
“Oh, go away—go away! I can’t bear you!”
“You can’t bear me?” inquired the reporter incredulously. “Me?”
“No—yes—never mind. Go away; you say perfectly horrible things.”
“Not as horrible as you do,” said the reporter. “Can’t bear me, indeed! I didn’t say that I thought that Phipps was a liar. As a matter of fact, I thought he was as nice a guy as I ever saw in my life, poor devil, even if he did read the Idylls of the King aloud. … Can’t bear me!”
“I can’t bear anything,” said the redheaded girl despairingly. “Go away!”
After he had gone, she had a sudden overwhelming impulse to dash after him and beg him to take her with him, anywhere he went—everywhere—always. She was still
