The Bellamy trial

by Frances Noyes Hart

Chapter VIII

The red-headed girl had not realized how tired she was until she heard Ben Potts’s voice. He stood there as straight as ever, but where were the clear bugle tones that summoned the good burghers of Redfield morning after morning? A faint, a lamentable, echo of his impressive “Hear ye! Hear ye!” rang out feebly, and the red-headed girl slumped back dispiritedly in her chair, consumed with fatigue as with a fever.

“Sleep well?” inquired the reporter with amiable anxiety.

The red-headed girl turned on him eyes heavy with scorn. “Sleep?” she repeated acidly. “What’s that?”

Judge Carver looked as weary as Ben Potts sounded, and the indefatigable Mr. Farr looked blanched and bitten to the bone with something deeper than fatigue. Only Mr. Lambert looked haler and heartier than he had for several interminable days; and the faces of Stephen Bellamy and Susan Ives were as pale, as controlled, and as tranquil as ever.

Judge Carver let his gavel fall heavily. “The Court has given careful consideration as to the advisability of admitting the evidence in question last night, and has decided that it may be admitted. Mr. Lambert!” Mr. Lambert bounded joyfully forward. “Is the Court correct in understanding that Mr. Phipps is your witness?”

“Quite correct, Your Honour.”

“Let him be called.”

“Mr. Randolph Phipps!”

The principal of Eastern High School was a tall man; there was dignity in the way he held his head and moved his long, loose limbs, but all the dignity in the world could not still the nervous tremor of his hands or school the too sensitive mouth to rigidity. Under straight, heavy brows, the eyes of a dreamer startled from deep sleep looked out in amazement at a strange world; the sweep of dark hair above the wide brow came perilously close to being Byronic; only the height of his cheek bones and the width of his mouth saved him from suggesting a matinée idol of some previous era. He might have been thirty-five, or forty, or forty-five. His eyes were eighteen.

“Mr. Phipps, it is the understanding of this court that you have a communication to make of peculiar importance. You understand that in making that statement you will, of course, be subject to the usual course of direct and cross-examination?”

“I understand that—yes.”

“Very well. You may proceed with the examination, Mr. Lambert.”

“Mr. Phipps, where were you on the night of the nineteenth of June?”

“On the night of the nineteenth of June,” said Mr. Phipps, in the clear, carrying voice of one not unaccustomed to public speaking, “I spent about three hours on the Thorne estate at Orchards. Some things occurred during that time that I feel it my duty to make known to the jury in this case.”

“What were you doing on the Thorne place?”

“I suppose that I was doing what is technically known as trespassing. It did not occur to me at the time that it was a very serious offense, as I knew the place to be uninhabited—still, I suppose that I was perfectly aware that I had no business there.”

“You had no especial purpose in going there?”

“Oh, yes; I went there because I had selected it as a pleasant place for a picnic supper.”

“You were alone?”

“No—no, I was not alone.” Mr. Phipps suddenly looked forty-five and very tired.

“Other people were accompanying you on this—this excursion?”

“One other person.”

“Who was this other person?”

“A friend of mine—a young lady.”

“What was the name of this young woman?”

“Is it necessary to give her name? I hope—I hope with all my heart—that that will not be necessary.” The low, urgent, unhappy voice stumbled in its intensity. “My companion was quite a young girl. We both realize now that we committed a grave indiscretion, but I shall never forgive myself if my criminal stupidity has involved her.”

“I am afraid that we shall have to have her name.”

“I am a married man,” said Mr. Phipps, in a clear voice that did not stumble. “I am placing this information before the Court at no small sacrifice to myself. It seems to me to place too heavy a penalty on my decision to come forward at this moment if you ask me to involve another by so doing. The girl who was with me that evening was one of my pupils; she is at present engaged to a young man to whom she is entirely devoted; publicity of the type that this means is in every way abhorrent to her. I request most urgently that she shall not be exposed to it.”

“Mr. Phipps,” said Judge Carver gravely, “you have been permitted to take the stand at your own request. It is highly desirable that any information, of the importance that you have implied that in your possession to be, should be as fully corroborated as possible. It is therefore essential that we should have the name of this young woman.”

“Her name is Sally Dunne,” said Mr. Phipps.

“Is she also prepared to take the stand?”

“She is prepared to do whatever is essential to prevent a miscarriage of justice. She is naturally extremely reluctant to take the stand.”

“Is she in court?”

“She is.”

“Miss Dunne will be good enough not to leave the courtroom without the Court’s permission. You may proceed, Mr. Phipps.”

“We arrived at Orchards at a little after eight,” said Mr. Phipps. “Miss Dunne took the half-past-seven bus from Rosemont, left it a short distance beyond Orchards, and walked back to the spot where I had arranged to meet her, just inside the gate. We did not arrive together, as I was apprehensive that it might cause a certain amount of gossip if we were seen together.”

“How had you come to choose Orchards, Mr. Phipps?”

“Miss Dunne had on several occasions commented on the beauty of the place and expressed a desire to see it more thoroughly, and it was in order to gratify that desire that the party was planned. As I say, we met at the gate and walked on up the drive past the lodge and the little driveway that leads to the gardener’s cottage to a small summerhouse, about five hundred feet beyond the cottage itself. It contained a little furniture—a table and some chairs and benches—and it was there that we decided to have our supper. Miss Dunne had brought a luncheon box with her containing fruit and sandwiches, and we spread it on the table and began to eat. Neither of us was particularly hungry, however, and we decided to keep what remained of the food—about half the contents of the box, I think—in case we wanted it later, and to do some reading before it got too dark to see. I had brought with me the Idylls of the King, with the intention of reading it aloud.”

“The book is of no importance, Mr. Phipps.”

“No,” said Mr. Phipps, in a tone of slight surprise. “No, I suppose not. You are probably quite right. Well, in any case, we read for quite a while, until it began to get too dark to see, and after that we sat there conversing.”

The fluent voice with its slightly meticulous pronunciation paused, and Lambert moved impatiently. “And then, Mr. Phipps?”

“Yes. I was trying to recollect precisely what it was that caused us to move from the summerhouse. I think that it was Miss Dunne who suggested that it was rather close and stuffy there, because of the fact that the structure was smothered in vines; she asked if there wasn’t somewhere cooler that we could go to sit. I said: ‘There’s the gardener’s cottage. We might try the veranda there.’ You could just see the roof of it through the trees. I pointed it out to her, and we started——”

“You were familiar with the layout of the estate?”

“Oh, quite. That was one of the principal reasons why we had gone there. I had once done some tutoring in Latin and physics with Mr. Thorne’s younger son Charles—the one who was killed in the war. We had been in the habit of using the summerhouse, which was his old playhouse, as a schoolroom.”

“That was some time ago?”

“About fifteen years ago—sixteen perhaps. I had just graduated from college myself, and Charles Thorne was going to Princeton that fall.”

“But you still remembered your way about?”

“Oh, perfectly. I was about to say that we did not approach it from the main drive, but cut across the lawns, pushed through the shrubbery at the back and came up to it from the rear. We had just reached the little dirt drive back of the cottage, and were perhaps a hundred feet away from the house itself, when we heard voices, and Miss Dunne exclaimed: ‘There’s someone in the cottage. Look, the side window is lighted.’ I was considerably startled, as I had made inquiries about the gardener and knew that he was in Italy.

“I stood still for a moment, debating what to do next, when one of the voices in the cottage was suddenly raised, and a woman said quite clearly, ‘You wouldn’t dare to touch me—you wouldn’t dare!’ Someone laughed and there was a little scuffling sound, and a second or so after that a scream—a short, sharp scream—and the sound of something falling with quite a clatter, as though a chair or a table had been overturned.

“I was in rather a nervous and overwrought state of mind myself that evening, and before I thought what I was doing I laughed, quite loudly. Miss Dunne whispered, ‘Be careful! They’ll hear you.’ Just as she spoke, the light went out in the cottage and I said, ‘Well, Sally, evidently we aren’t the only indiscreet people around here this evening. I’d better get you out of this.’

“Just as I was speaking I heard steps on the main driveway and the sound of someone whistling. The whistling kept coming closer every second, and I whispered, ‘Someone’s coming in here. We’d better stand back in those bushes by the house.’ There were some very tall lilacs at the side of the house under the windows, and we tiptoed over and pushed back into them. After a minute or so, we heard someone go up the steps, and then a bell rang inside the house. There wasn’t any sound at all for a minute; then we could hear the steps coming down the porch stairs again, and a moment later heard them on the gravel, and a moment later still they had died away.

“I said, ‘That was a close call—too many people around here entirely. Let’s make it two less.’ We tiptoed out past the cottage to the main road and started back toward the lodge gates, walking along the grass beside the road in order not to make any noise. We were almost back to the gates when Miss Dunne stopped me.”

“Do you know what time it was, Mr. Phipps?”

“I am not sure of the time. I looked at my watch last when it began to get too dark to read—shortly before nine. We did not start for the cottage until a few minutes later, and it is my impression that it must have been between quarter to ten and ten. We had been walking very slowly, but even at that pace it should not take more than twenty minutes.”

“It was dark then?”

“Oh, yes; it had been quite dark for some time, though it was possible to distinguish the outline of objects. It was a very beautiful starlight night.”

“Quite so. What caused Miss Dunne to stop you?”

“She exclaimed suddenly, ‘Oh, good heavens, I haven’t got my lunch box! I must have left it in the bushes by the cottage.’ I said, ‘Perhaps you left it in the summerhouse,’ but she was quite sure that she hadn’t, as she remembered distinctly thinking just before we reached the cottage that it was a nuisance lugging it about. She was very much worried, as it had her initial stenciled on it in rather a distinctive way, and she was afraid that someone that she knew might possibly find it and recognize it, and that if they returned it, her parents might learn that she had been at Orchards that night.”

“Her parents were not aware of this expedition?”

“They were not, sir. They had both gone to New Hampshire to attend the funeral of Mr. Dunne’s mother.”

“Proceed, Mr. Phipps.”

“Miss Dunne seemed so upset over the loss of the box that I finally agreed to go back with her to look for it, though there seemed to me a very slight chance of anyone identifying it, and I did not particularly care to risk arousing anyone who still might be in the cottage. I had a flashlight, however, and we decided to make a hurried search as quietly as possible; so we started back, retracing our steps and keeping a sharp lookout for the box.

“When we got to the dirt cut-off leading to the cottage from the main driveway, we took it and approached as quietly as possible, standing for a moment just at the foot of the steps where the lilac bushes began and listening to see whether we could hear anything within. Miss Dunne said, ‘There’s not a sound, and no light either. I don’t believe there’s a soul around.’

“I said, ‘Someone has closed the windows and pulled down the shades in this front room. It was open when we were here before.’ Sally said, ‘Well, never mind—let’s look quickly and get away from here. I think it’s a horrid place.’ I turned on the flashlight and said, ‘We were much farther back than this.’ She said, ‘Yes; we were beyond these windows. Look! what’s this?’

“Something was glittering in the grass at the side of the steps, and I bent down and picked it up. It was a small object of silver and black enamel. I turned the light on it, and Miss Dunne said, ‘It’s one of those cigarette lighters. Look, there is something written on it. It says, Elliot from Mimi, Christmas.’

“Just then I heard a sound that made me look up. I said, ‘Listen, that’s a car.’ And I no more than had the words out of my mouth when I saw its headlights coming around the corner of the cut-off. I whispered, ‘Stand still—don’t move!’ because I could see that the headlights wouldn’t catch us, as we were standing far back from the road; but Miss Dunne had already pushed back into the shrubbery about the house. I stood stock-still, staring at the car, which had drawn up at the steps. It was a small car—a runabout, I think you call it——”

“Could you identify the make, Mr. Phipps?”

“No, sir; I am not familiar with automobiles. Just a small dark, ordinary-looking car. Two people got out of it—a man and a woman. They stood there for a moment on the steps, and when I saw who they were I came very close to letting out an exclamation of amazement. They went up the steps toward the front door.”

“Were they conversing?”

“Yes, but in low voices. I couldn’t hear anything until he said quite clearly, ‘No, it’s open—that’s queer.’ They went in, and I whispered to Miss Dunne, ‘Do you know who that was? That was Stephen Bellamy, with Mrs. Patrick Ives.’ Just as I spoke I saw a light go on in the hall, and a second or so later it disappeared and one sprang up behind the parlour shades. I was just starting over toward Miss Dunne when there was a crash from the parlour—a metallic kind of a crash, like breaking glass, and the light went out. I whispered, ‘Come on Sally; I’m going to get out of this!’ She started to come toward me, and someone inside screamed—a most appalling sound, as though the person were in mortal terror. I assure you that it froze me to the spot, though it was only the briefest interval before I again heard voices on the porch.”

“Could you see the speakers, Mr. Phipps?”

“No; not until they were getting into the car. I was at this time standing just around the corner of the house, and so could not see the porch.”

“Could you distinguish what they were saying?”

“Not at first; they were both speaking together, and it was very confusing. It wasn’t until they appeared again in the circle of the automobile lights that I actually distinguished anything more than a few fragmentary words. Mr. Bellamy had his hand on Mrs. Ives’s wrist and he was saying——”

Mr. Farr was on his feet, but much of the tiger had gone out of his spring. “Does the Court hold that what this witness claims that he heard one person say to another person is admissible evidence?”

“Of course it is admissible evidence!” Lambert’s voice was frantic with anxiety. “Words spoken on the scene of the crime, within a few minutes of the crime——What about the rule of res gestæ?”

Mr. Farr made an unpleasant little noise. “A few minutes? That’s what you call three quarters of an hour? When ejaculations made within two minutes have been ruled out after res gestæ has been invoked?”

“It has been interpreted to admit whole sentences at a much——”

“Gentlemen”—Judge Carver’s gavel fell with an imperious crash—“you will be good enough to address the Court. Am I correct in understanding that what you desire is a ruling on the admissibility of this evidence, Mr. Farr?”

“That is all that I have requested, Your Honour.”

“Very well. In view of the gravity of this situation and the very unusual character of the testimony, the Court desires to show as great a latitude as possible in respect to this evidence. It therefore rules that it may be admitted. Is there any objection?”

“No objection,” said Mr. Farr, with commendable promptness, rallying a voice that sounded curiously flat. “It has been the object—and the sole object—of the state throughout this case to get at the truth. It is entirely willing to waive technicalities wherever possible in order that that end may be obtained. . . . No objection.”

“You may proceed, Mr. Phipps.”

“Mr. Bellamy was saying, ‘It makes no difference how innocent we are. If it were ever known that we were in that room tonight, you couldn’t get one person in the world to believe that we weren’t guilty, much less twelve. I’ve got to get you home. Get into the car.’ And they got into the car and drove off.”

“And then, Mr. Phipps?”

“And then, sir, I said to Miss Dunne, ‘Sally, that sounds like the voice of prophecy to me. If no one would believe that they were innocent, no one would believe that we are. Never mind the lunch box; I’m going to get you home too.’ ”

“You were aware that a murder had been committed?”

“A murder? Oh, not for one moment!” The quiet voice was suddenly vehement in its protest. “Not for one single moment! I thought simply that for some inexplicable reason Mr. Bellamy and Mrs. Ives had been almost suicidally indiscreet and had fortunately become aware of it at the last moment. It brought my own most culpable indiscretion all too vividly home to me, and I therefore proceeded to escort Miss Dunne back to her home, where I left her.”

“Yes—exactly. Now, Mr. Phipps, just one or two questions more. On your first visit to the cottage, when you heard the woman’s voice cry, ‘Don’t dare to touch me,’ both the front and the rear of the cottage were under your observation, were they not?”

“At different times—yes.”

“Would it have been possible for an automobile to be at any spot near the cottage while you were there without your attention being drawn to the fact?”

“It would have been absolutely impossible.”

“It could not have stood there without your seeing it?”

“Not possibly.”

“Nor have left without your hearing it?”

“Not possibly.”

“Did you hear or see such a car on that visit to the cottage, Mr. Phipps?”

“I saw no car and heard none.”

“Thank you, Mr. Phipps; that will be all.”

“Well, not quite all,” said Mr. Farr gently. Mr. Phipps shifted in his chair, his eyes under their dark brows luminous with apprehension. “Mr. Phipps, at what time did you reach your home on the night of the nineteenth of June?”

“I did not return to my home. It was closed, as my family—my wife and my two little girls—were staying at a little place on the Jersey coast called Blue Bay. I had taken a room at the Y. M. C. A.”

“At what time did you return to the Y. M. C. A.?”

“I did not return there,” said Mr. Phipps, in a voice so low that it was barely audible.

“You did not return to the Y. M. C. A.?”

“No. By the time that I had left Miss Dunne at her home I decided that it was too late to return to the Y. M. C. A. without rendering myself extremely conspicuous, and as I was not in the least sleepy, I decided that I would take a good walk, get a bite to eat at one of the hand-out places in the vicinity of the station, and catch the first train—the four-forty-five—to New York, where I could get a boat to Blue Bay and spend Sunday with my family.”

“You mean that you did not intend to go to bed at all?”

“I did not.”

“And you carried out this plan?”

“I did.”

“What time did you leave Miss Dunne at her home, Mr. Phipps?”

“At about quarter to one.”

“What time did you start from the Orchards for home?”

“We started from the lodge gates at a little before eleven.”

“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 to-morrow.”

“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 neat little white collar and cuffs, that more than one person in the dark courtroom caught themselves wondering with a catch at the heart how long it had been since she had coiled those smooth brown braids over her ears and smoothed the hair ribbons out for the last time. She was not pretty. She had a sad little heart-shaped face and widely spaced hazel eyes, candid and trustful. These she turned on Mr. Lambert, and steadied her lips, which were trembling.

“Miss Dunne, I just want you to tell us one or two things. You heard Mr. Phipps’ testimony?”

“Yes, sir.” A child’s voice, clear as water, troubled and innocent.

“You were with him on the night of June nineteenth from eight until one or thereabouts?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Was his testimony as to what happened accurate?”

“Oh, yes, indeed, sir. Mr. Phipps,” said the little voice proudly, “has a very wonderful memory.”

“You were with him on his first visit to the cottage?”

“I was with him every minute of the evening.”

“You saw no car near the cottage?”

“There wasn’t any car there,” said Miss Dunne.

“You saw Mr. Bellamy and Mrs. Ives on your second visit to the cottage, some time after ten o’clock?”

“Just when they came out,” said Miss Dunne conscientiously. “I didn’t see their faces when they went in.”

“Did you hear them speak?”

“I heard Mr. Bellamy say, ‘Sue, no matter how innocent we are, we’ll never get one person to believe that we aren’t guilty if they know that we were in that room, much less twelve. I’ve got to get you home.’ ”

“Yes. Are you engaged to be married, Miss Dunne?”

“I don’t know,” said Miss Dunne simply. “I was engaged, but my—my fiancé didn’t want me to testify in this case. You see, he’s studying for the ministry. I think perhaps that he doesn’t consider that he’s engaged any longer.”

“Were you yourself anxious to testify?”

“I was anxious to do what Mr. Phipps thought was right for us to do,” said Miss Dunne. “But I am afraid that I was not very brave about wanting to testify.”

“Were you in the habit of going on these—these picnic expeditions with Mr. Phipps?”

“Oh, no, sir. We had taken only two or three quite short little walks—after school, you know. He was helping me with my English literature because I wanted to be a writer. The party that night was a farewell party.”

“A farewell party?”

“Yes. School had closed on Friday, and we—Mr. Phipps thought that perhaps it would be better if we didn’t see each other any more. It was my fault that we went to Orchards that night. It was all my fault,” explained Miss Dunne carefully in her small, clear voice.

“Your fault?”

“Yes. You see, Mr. Phipps thought that I was very romantic indeed, and that I was getting too fond of him, so that we had better stop seeing each other. I am very romantic,” said Sally Dunne gravely, “and I was getting too fond of him.”

“How often have you seen Mr. Phipps since that evening, Miss Dunne?”

“Twice; once on the Tuesday following the—the murder—only for about five minutes in the park. I begged him not to say anything about our having been there unless it was absolutely necessary. And again last night when he said that it was necessary.”

“Yes, exactly. Thank you, Miss Dunne; that will be all. Cross-examine.”

“It was not the state that is responsible for the pitiless publicity to which this unfortunate young girl has been exposed,” said Mr. Farr, looking so virtuous that one sought apprehensively for the halo. “And it is not the state that proposes to prolong it. I ask no question.”

Judge Carver said, in answer to the look of blank bewilderment in the clear eyes, “That will be all. You may step down, Miss Dunne.”

---

The red-headed girl, who thought that nothing in the world could surprise her any more, felt herself engulfed in amazement.

“Well, but what did he let her go for?”

“He let her go,” explained the reporter judicially, “because he’s the wiliest old fox in Bellechester County. He knows perfectly well that while he has a fair sporting chance of instilling the suspicion in the twelve essential heads that Mr. Phipps is a libertine and a bribe taker and a perjurer, he hasn’t the chance of the proverbial snowball to make them believe that Sally Dunne could speak anything but the truth to save her life or her soul. That child could make the tales of Munchausen sound like the eternal verities. The quicker he can get her off the stand, the more chance he has of saving his case.”

“Save it? How can he save it?”

“Well, that’s probably what he’d like to know. As the prosecutor is supposed to be a seeker after truth, rather than a blood-hound after blood, he has rather a tough row to hoe. And here’s where he starts hoeing it.”

“The state has no comment to make on the testimony that you have just heard,” Mr. Farr was saying to the twelve jurors with an expression of truly exalted detachment, “other than to ask you to remember that, after all, these two last witnesses are no more than human beings, subject to the errors, the frailties, and the weaknesses of other human beings. If you will bear that in mind in weighing their evidence, I do not feel that it will be necessary to add one other word.”

Judge Carver eyed him thoughtfully for a moment over the glasses that he had adjusted to his fine nose. Then, with a perfunctory rap of his gavel, he turned to the papers in his hand.

“Gentlemen of the jury, the long and anxious inquiry in which we have been engaged is drawing to a close, and it now becomes my duty to address you. It has been, however painful, of a most absorbing interest, and it has undoubtedly engaged the closest attention of every one of you. You will not regret the strain that that attention has placed upon you when it shortly becomes your task to weigh the evidence that has been put before you.

“At the very outset of my charge I desire to make several things quite clear. You and you alone are the sole judges of fact. Any comment that the Court may make as to the weight or value of any features of the evidence is merely his way of suggestion, and is in no possible way binding on the jury. Nor do statements made by counsel as to the innocence or guilt of the defendants, or as to any other conclusions or inferences drawn by them, prove anything whatever or have any effect as evidence.

“It is not necessary for any person accused in a court in this county to prove that he is not guilty. It devolves on the state to prove that he is. If you have a reasonable doubt as to whether the state has proved his guilt, it is your duty to return a verdict of not guilty. That is the law of the land.

“Now, having a reasonable doubt does not mean that by some far-fetched and fantastic hypothesis you can arrive at the conclusion of not guilty because any other conclusion is painful and distasteful and abhorrent to you. There is hardly anything that an ingenious mind cannot bring itself to doubt, granted sufficient industry and application. A reasonable doubt is not one that you would conjure up in the middle of a dark, sleepless, and troubled night, but one that would lead you to say naturally when you went about your business in clear daylight, ‘Well, I can’t quite make up my mind about the real facts behind that proposition.’ Not beyond any possible doubt—beyond a reasonable doubt—bear that in mind.

“To convict either of the defendants under this indictment, the state must prove to your satisfaction beyond reasonable doubt:

“First, that Madeleine Bellamy is dead and was murdered.

“Second, that this murder took place in Bellechester County.

“And third, that such defendant either committed that murder by actually perpetrating the killing or by participating therein as a principal.

“That Madeleine Bellamy is dead is perfectly clear. That she was murdered has not been controverted by either the state or the defense. That the murder took place in Bellechester County is not in dispute. The only actual problem that confronts you is the third one: Did Mrs. Ives and Mr. Bellamy participate in the murder of this unfortunate girl?

“The state tells you that they did, and in support of that statement they advance the following facts:

“They claim that on Saturday the nineteenth of June, 1926, at about five o’clock in the afternoon, Mrs. Ives received information from Mr. Elliot Farwell as to relations between Mr. Ives and Mrs. Bellamy that affected her so violently and painfully that she thereupon——”

---

“I can’t stand hearing it all over again,” remarked the red-headed girl in a small ominous whisper. “I can’t stand it, I tell you! If he starts telling us again that Sue Ives went home and called up Stephen Bellamy, I’ll stand up and scream so that they’ll hear me in Philadelphia. I’ll——”

“Look here, you’d better get out of here,” said the reporter in tones of unfeigned alarm. “Tell you what you do. You crawl out very quietly to that side door where the fat officer with the sandy moustache is standing. He’s a good guy, and you tell him that I told you that he’d let you out before you fainted all over the place. You can sit on the stairs leading to the third floor; I’ll get word to you when he’s through with the evidence, and you can crawl back the same way.”

“All right,” said the red-headed girl feebly.

The reporter glanced cautiously about. “It’ll help if you can go both ways on four paws; the judge doesn’t like to think that he’s boring any member of the press, and if he sees one of us escaping, he’s liable to call out the machine guns. Take long, deep breaths and pretend that it’s day after tomorrow.”

The red-headed girl gave him a look of dazed scorn and moved toward the left-hand door at a gait that came as close to being on four paws as was compatible with the dignity of the press. The fat officer gave one alarmed look at her small, wan face and hastily opened the door. She crawled through it, discovered the stairs, mounted them obediently and sank somewhat precipitately to rest on the sixth one from the top.

Down below, she could hear the mob outside of the great centre doors, shuffling and grunting and yapping—— Ugh! Ugh! She shuddered and propped up her elbows on her knees and her head on her hands, and closed her eyes and closed her ears and breathed deeply and fervently.

“If ever I go to a murder trial again—— What happens to you when you don’t sleep for a week? . . . If ever—I—go——”

Someone was saying, “Hey!” It was a small, freckled boy in a messenger’s cap, and he had evidently been saying it for some time, as his voice had a distinctly crescendo quality. He extended one of the familiar telegraph blanks and vanished. The red-headed girl read it solemnly, trying to look very wide awake and intelligent, as is the wont of those abruptly wakened.

The telegram said: “Come home. All is forgiven, and he’s through with the evidence. It’s going to the jury in a split second. Hurry!”

She hurried. Quite suddenly she felt extraordinarily wide awake and amazingly alert and frantically excited. She was a reporter—she was at a murder trial—they were going to consider the verdict. She flew down the white marble stairs and around the first corner and through the crack of the door proffered by the startled guard. There were wings at her heels and vine leaves in her hair. She felt like a giant refreshed—that was it, a giant. . . .

The reporter eyed her with his mouth open. “Well, for heaven’s sake, what’s happened to you?”

“Everything’s all right, isn’t it?” she demanded feverishly. “They won’t be out long, will they? There’s nothing——” A familiar voice fell ominously on her ears and she jerked incredulous eyes toward the throne of justice. “Oh, he’s still talking! You said he was through—you did! You said——”

“I said through with the evidence, and so he is. This is just a back fire. 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 mutton-chop 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 red-headed 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 red-headed 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 red-headed 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 red-headed 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 red-headed 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 contemplating the impulse with horrified amazement when the girl from the Louisville paper who sat three seats down from her leaned forward. She was a nice, cynical, sensible-looking girl, but for the moment she was a little pale.

“There’s not a possibility that they could return a verdict of guilty, is there?” she inquired in a carefully detached voice.

“Oh, juries!” said the red-headed girl drearily. “They can do anything. They’re just plain, average, everyday, walking-around people, and average, everyday people can do anything in the world. That’s why we have murders and murder trials.”

The girl from the Louisville paper stood up abruptly. “I think I’ll get a little air,” she said, and added in a somewhat apologetic voice, “It’s my first murder trial.”

“It’s my last,” said the red-headed girl grimly.

The officer of the court had disappeared, and all about her there were rising once more the little blue coils of smoke—incense on the altars of relaxation. Why didn’t he come back. . . . The clock over the courtroom door said five.

On the courtroom floor there was a mounting tide of newspapers, telegraph blanks, leaves from notebooks and ruled pads—many nervous hands had made light work, tearing, crumpling, and crushing their destructive way through the implements of their trade. There was an empty pop bottle just by the rail, apple cores and banana skins were everywhere, clouds of smoke, fragments of buns, a high, nervous murmur of voices; a picnic ground on the fifth of July would have presented a more appetizing appearance. Over all was a steady roar of voices, and one higher than the rest, lamenting: “Over two hours—that’s a hung jury as sure as shooting! I might just as well kiss that ten dollars good-bye here and now. Got a light, Larry?”

The door to the left of the witness box opened abruptly, and for a moment Judge Carver stood framed in it, tall and stern in his black robes. Under his accusing eye, apples and cigarettes were suddenly as unobtrusive as the skin on a chameleon, and voices fell to silence. He stood staring at them fixedly for a moment and then withdrew as abruptly as he had come. While you could have counted ten, silence hung heavy; then once more the smoke and the voices rose and fell. . . . The clock over the courtroom door said six.

The red-headed girl moved an aimless pencil across an empty pad with unsteady fingers. There were quite a lot of empty seats. What were those twelve men doing now? Weighing the evidence? Well, but how did you weigh evidence? What was important and what wasn’t? . . . And suddenly she was back in the only courtroom that she could remember clearly—the one in Alice in Wonderland, and the King was saying proudly, “Well, that’s very important.” “Unimportant, Your Majesty means.” And she could hear the poor little King trying it over to himself to see which sounded the best. “Important—unimportant—important——” There was the lamp—and the date on the letters—and the note that nobody had found—unimportant—important. . . . There was a juryman called Bill the Lizard. She remembered that he had dipped his tail in ink and had written down all the hours and dates in the case on his slate, industriously adding them up and reducing the grand total to pounds, shillings, and pence. Perhaps that was the safest way, after all.

June 19, 1926, and May 8, 1916. . . . A boy came running down the aisle with a basketful of sandwiches and chewing gum; there was another one with pink editions of the evening papers; it was exactly like a ball game or a circus. . . . Where was he? Wasn’t he coming back at all? . . . Outside the snow was falling; you could see it white against the black windowpanes, and all the lights in the courtroom were blazing. . . . Well, but where was he?

A voice from somewhere just behind her said ominously, “Can’t bear me, can’t she? I’ll learn her!”

The red-headed girl screwed around in her seat. He was leaning over the back of the chair next to her with a curious expression on his not unagreeable countenance.

The red-headed girl said in a small, abject voice that shocked her profoundly, “Don’t go away—don’t go away again.”

The reporter, looking startlingly pale under the glaring lights, remarked casually, “I don’t believe that I’ll marry you after all.”

The red-headed girl could feel herself go first very white and then very red and then very white again. She could hear her heart pounding just behind her ears. In a voice even more casual than the reporter’s she inquired, “After all what?”

“After all your nonsense,” said the reporter severely.

The red-headed girl said in a voice so small and abject that it was practically inaudible, “Please do!”

“What are we doing in here?” inquired the reporter in a loud clear voice. “What are we doing in a courtroom at a murder trial, with two hundred and fifty-four people watching us? Where’s a beach? Where’s an apple orchard? Where’s a moonlit garden with a nightingale? You get up and put your things on and come out of this place.”

The red-headed girl rose docilely to her feet. After all, what were they doing there? What was a murder trial or verdict or a newspaper story compared to—— She halted, riveted with amazement.

Suddenly, mysteriously, incredibly, the courtroom was all in motion. No one had crossed a threshold, no one had raised a voice; but as surely as though they had been tossed out of their seats by some gigantic hand, the crowd was in flight. One stampede toward the door from the occupants of the seats, another stampede from the occupants of the seats toward the door, a hundred voices calling, regardless of law and order.

“Keep that ’phone line open!”

“They’re coming!”

“Dorothy! Dorothy!”

“Have Stan take the board!”

“Where’s Larry? Larry!”

“Get Red—get Red, for God’s sake!”

“That’s my chair—snap out of it, will you?”

“Watch for that flash—Bill’s going to signal.”

“Dorothy!”

“Get to that door!”

And silence as sudden as the tumult. Through the left-hand door were coming two quiet, familiar figures, and through the right-hand door one robed in black. The clock over the courthouse door stood at a quarter to seven.

“Is there an officer at that door?” Judge Carver’s voice was harsh with anger. “Officer, take that door. No one out of it or in it until the verdict has been delivered.”

Despairing eyes exchanged frantic glances. Well, but what about the last edition? They’re holding the presses until seven. What about the last edition? Hurry, hurry!

But the ambassador of the majestic law was quite unhurried. “I have a few words to say to the occupants of this courtroom. If at the conclusion of the verdict there is a demonstration of any kind whatsoever, the offenders will be brought before me and promptly dealt with as being in contempt of court. Officers, hold the doors.”

And through another door—the little one behind the seat of justice—twelve tired men were filing, gaunt, solemn eyed, awkward—the farmers, merchants, and salesmen who held in their awkward hands the terrible power of life and death. The red-headed girl clutched the solid, tweed-covered arm beside her as though she were drowning.

There they stood in a neat semicircle under the merciless glare of the lights, their upturned faces white and spent.

“Gentlemen of the jury, have you agreed on a verdict?”

A deep-voiced chorus answered solemnly, “We have.”

“Prisoner, look upon the jury. Jury, look upon the prisoners.”

Unflinching and inscrutable, the white faces obeyed the grave voice.

“Foreman, how do you find as to Stephen Bellamy, guilty or not guilty?”

“Not guilty.”

A tremor went through the court and was stilled.

“How do you find as to Susan Ives?”

“Not guilty.”

For a moment no one moved, no one stirred, no one breathed. And then, abruptly, the members of the fourth estate forgot the majesty of law and remembered the majesty of the press. Three minutes to seven—three minutes to make the last edition! The mad rush for the doors was stoutly halted by the zealous guardians, who clung devoutly to their posts, and the air was rent with stentorian shouts: “Sit down there!” “Keep quiet!” “Order! Order!” “Take your hands off of me!”—and the thunder of Judge Carver’s gavel.

And caught once more between the thunder of the press and the law, two stood oblivious of it. Stephen Bellamy’s haunted face was turned steadfastly toward the little door beyond which lay freedom, but Susan Ives had turned away from it. Her eyes were on a black head bent low in the corner by the window, and at the look in them, so fearless, so valiant, and so eager, the red-headed girl found suddenly that she was weeping, shamelessly and desperately, into something that smelt of tweed—and tobacco—and heaven. . . . The clock over the door said seven. The Bellamy trial was over.

---

The judge came into the little room that served him as office in the courthouse with a step lighter than had crossed its threshold for many days. It was a good room; the dark panelling went straight up to the ceiling; there were two wide windows and two deep chairs and a great shining desk piled high with books and papers. Against the walls rose row upon row of warm, pleasant-coloured books, and over the door hung a great engraving of Justice in her flowing robes of white, smiling gravely down at the bandage in her hands that man has seen fit to place over her eyes. Across the room from her, between the two windows, his robes flowing black, sat John Marshall, that great gentleman, his dark eyes eternally fixed on hers, as though they shared some secret understanding.

Judge Carver looked from one to the other a little anxiously as he came in, and they smiled back at him reassuringly. For thirty years the three of them had been old friends.

He crossed to the desk with a suddenly quickened step. The lamps were lighted, and reflected in its top as in a mirror he could see the short, stubby, nut-coloured pipe, the huge brass bowl into which a giant might have spilled his ashes, the capacious box of matches yawning agreeably in his tired face. The black robes were heavy on his shoulders, and he lifted an impatient hand to them, when he paused, arrested by the sight of the central stack of papers.

“Gentlemen of the jury, the long and anxious inquiry in which we have been engaged——”

Now just what was it that he’d said to them about a principal and an accessory before the fact being one and the same in a murder case? Of course, as a practical matter, that was quite accurate. Still—He ran through the papers with skilled fingers—there! “An accessory after the fact is one who——”

There was a knock on the door and he lifted an irritated voice: “Come in!”

The door opened cautiously, and under the smiling Justice in her flowing robes a little boy was standing, freckle-faced, blue-eyed, black-haired, in the rusty green of the messenger’s uniform. Behind him the judge could see the worried face of old Martin, the clerk of the court.

“I couldn’t do anything with him at all, Your Honour. I told him you were busy, and I told him you were engaged, and I told him you’d given positive orders not to be disturbed, and all he’d say was, ‘I swore I’d give it into his hands, and into his hands it goes, if I stay in this place until the moon goes down and the sun comes up.’ ”

“And that’s what I promised,” said the small creature at the door in a squeak of terrified obstinacy. “And that’s what I’ll do. No matter what——”

“All right, all right, put it down there and be off.” The judge’s voice was not too long-suffering.

“Into his hands is what I said, and into his hands——”

The judge stretched out one fine lean hand with a smile that warmed his cold face like a fire. The other hand went to his pocket. “Here, if you keep on being an honourable nuisance, you may have a career ahead of you. Good-night, Martin; show the young gentleman to the door. If any one else disturbs me to-night, he’s fired.”

“Oh, by all means, Your Honour. Good-night, Your Honour.”

The door closed reverently, and His Honour stood staring absently down at the letter in his hand, the smile still in his eyes. A fat, a plethoric, an apoplectic letter; three red seals on the flap of the envelope flaunted themselves at him importantly. He turned it over carelessly. The clear, delicate, vigorous writing greeted him like a challenge:

“Judge Carver.

“To be delivered to him personally without fail.”

Very impressive! He tore open the sealed flap with irreverent fingers and shook the contents out on to the desk. Good Lord, it was a three-volume novel! Page after page of that fine writing, precise and accurate as print. He lifted it curiously, and something fluttered out and lay staring up at him from the table. A piece of blue paper, flimsy, creased and soiled, the round childish writing sprawled recklessly across its battered surface:

10 A. M., June 19th.

Pat, I’ll catch either the eight or eight-thirty bus——

Very slowly, very carefully, he picked it up, the smile dying in his incredulous eyes.

Pat, I’ll catch either the eight or eight-thirty bus. That will get me to the cottage before nine, at the latest. I’ll wait there until half past. You can make any excuse that you want to Sue, but get there—and be sure that you bring what you promised. I think you realize as well as I do that there’s no use talking any more. We’re a long way beyond words, and from now on we’ll confine ourselves to deeds. It’s absurd to think that Steve will suspect anything. I can fool him absolutely, and once we settle the details to-night, we can get off any moment that we decide on. California! Oh, Pat, I can’t wait! And when you realize how happy we’re going to be, you won’t have any regrets either. You always did say that you wanted me to be happy—remember?

Mimi.

Judge Carver pushed the deep chair closer to the lamp and sat down in it heavily, pulling the closely written pages toward him. He looked old and tired.

“Midnight.

“My dear Judge Carver:

“I am fully aware of the fact that I am doing a cowardly thing in writing you this letter. It is simply an attempt on my part to shift my own burden to another’s shoulders, and my shoulders should surely be sufficiently used to burdens by this time. But this one is of so strange, awkward, and terrible a shape that I must get rid of it at any cost to my pride or sense of fair play—or to your peace of mind. If the verdict to-morrow is guilty, of course, I’ll not send the letter, but simply turn the facts over to the prosecutor. I am spending to-night writing you this in case it is not guilty.

“It was I who killed Madeleine Bellamy. It seems simply incredible to me that everyone should not have guessed it long before now.

“Kathleen Page, Melanie Cordier, Laura Roberts, Patrick, Sue, I myself—we told you so over and over again. That singularly obnoxious and alert Mr. Farr—is it possible that he has never suspected—not even when I explained to him that at ten o’clock I was in the flower room, washing off my hands? And yet a few minutes later he was asking me if there wasn’t a sink in the pantry where my poor Sue might have cleansed her own hands of Mimi Bellamy’s blood—and every face in the court was sick with the horror of that thought.

“We told you everything, and no one even listened.

“Who knew about the path across the meadow to the summerhouse? I, not Sue. Who could see the study window clearly from the rose garden? I, not Sue. Who had that hour and a half between 8:30 and ten absolutely alone and unobserved? I, not Sue. Who had every motive that was ascribed to Sue multiplied ten times over? I, who had known poverty beside which Sue’s years in New York were a gay adventure; who had not only a child to fight for, but that child’s children; who, after a lifetime of grim nightmare, had found paradise; and who saw coming to thrust me out from that paradise not an angel with a flaming sword, but a little empty-headed, empty-hearted chit, cheap, mercenary, and implacable, as only the empty-headed can be.

“I know, Judge Carver, that the burden that I am trying to shift to your shoulders should be heaviest of all with the weight of remorse; and there is in it, I can swear to you, enough remorse to bow stronger shoulders than either yours or mine—but none, none for the death of Mimi Bellamy.

“Remorse for these past weeks has eaten me to the bone—for the shame and terror and peril that I have brought to my children, for the sorrow and menace that I have brought to that gentle soul, Stephen Bellamy—even for the death of poor Elliot Farwell; that was my doing, too, I think. I do not shirk it.

“I am rather an old-fashioned person. I believe in hell, and I believe that I shall probably go there because I killed Mimi Bellamy and because I’m not sorry for it; but the hell that I’ve been living through every day and every night since she died is not one shadow darker because it was I who gave her the little push that sped her from one world to another.

“When that unpleasant Mr. Farr was invoking the vengeance of heaven and earth on the fiend who had stopped forever the silver music of the dead girl’s laughter, I remembered that the last time that she laughed it had been at an old woman on her knees begging for the happiness and safety of two babies—and the world did not seem to me to have lost much when that laughter ceased. That is frightful, isn’t it? But that is true.

“I’ll try to go back so that you can understand exactly what happened; then you can tell better, perhaps, what I should do and what you should do with me. First of all, I must go very far back, indeed—back thirty years, to a manufacturing town in northern New York.

“Thirty-one years ago last June, my husband left me with the nineteen-year-old daughter of my Norwegian landlady. You couldn’t exactly blame him, of course. Trudie was as pretty as the girl on the cover of the most expensive candy box you ever saw, and as unscrupulous as Messalina—and I wasn’t either.

“I was much too busy being sick and miserable and cross and sorry for myself to be anything else at all, so he walked off with Trudie and nineteen dollars and fifty cents out of the teapot and left me with a six-weeks-old baby and a gold wedding ring that wasn’t exactly gold. And my landlady wouldn’t give me even one day’s grace rent free, because she was naturally a little put out by her daughter’s unceremonious departure, and quite frankly held me to blame for it, as she said a girl who couldn’t hold her own man wasn’t likely worth her board and keep.

“So, just like the lady in the bad melodramas, I wrapped my baby up in a shawl and started out to find work at the factory. Of course I didn’t find it. It was a slack season at the factories, and I looked like a sick little scarecrow, and I hadn’t even money for car fare. I spent the first evening of my career as a breadwinner begging for pennies on the more prominent street corners. It’s one way to get bread.

“In the next twenty years I tried a great many other ways of getting it, including, on two occasions, stealing it. But that was only the first year; after that we always had bread, though often there wasn’t enough of it, and generally it was stale, and frequently there wasn’t anything to put on it.

“When people talk about the fear of poverty, I wonder whether they have the remotest idea of what they’re talking about. I wasn’t rich when I married Dan; I was the daughter of a not oversuccessful lawyer, and I thought that we were quite poor, because often we went through periods where pot roast instead of chicken played a prominent part in the family diet, and my best dress had to be of tarlatan instead of taffeta, and I possessed only two pairs of kid gloves that reached to my elbow, and one that reached to my shoulder.

“I was very, very sorry for myself during those periods, and used to go around with faintly pink eyes and a strong sense of martyrdom. I wasn’t at all a noble character. I liked going to cotillions at night and staying in bed in the morning, and wringing terrified proposals from callow young men who were completely undone by the combination of moonlight and mandolin playing. Besides playing the mandolin, I could make two kinds of candy and feather-stitch quite well and dance the lancers better than anyone in town—and I knew most of Lucile by heart. Thus lavishly equipped for the exigencies of holy matrimony, I proceeded to elope with Mr. Daniel Ives.

“I won’t bother you much with Dan. He was the leading man in a stock company that came to our town, and three weeks after he saw me sitting worshipping in the front row we decided that life without each other would be an empty farce and shook the dust of that town from our heels forever. It was very, very romantic, indeed, for the first six days—and after that it wasn’t so romantic.

“Because I, who could feather-stitch so nicely, was a bad cook and a bad manager and a bad housewife and a bad sport—a bad wife, in short. I wasn’t precisely happy, and I thought that it was perfectly safe to be all those things, because it simply never entered my head that one human being could get so tired of another human being that he could quietly walk out and leave her to starve to death. And I was as wrong about that, as I’d been about everything else.

“I’m telling you all this not to excuse myself, but simply to explain, so that you will understand a little, perhaps, what sent my feet hurrying across the meadow path, what brought them back to the flower room at ten o’clock that night. I think that two people went to meet Madeleine Bellamy in the cottage that night—a nice, well-behaved little white-headed lady and the wilful, spoiled, terrified girl that the nice old lady thought that she had killed thirty years ago. It’s only fair to you that I should explain that, because of what I’m going to ask you to decide. And it is only fair to myself that I should say this.

“For twenty years I was too cold, too hot, too tired and sick and faint ever to be really comfortable for one moment. And I won’t pretend that I looked forward with equanimity to surrendering one single comfort or luxury that had finally come to make life beautiful and gracious. But that wasn’t why I killed Madeleine Bellamy. I ask you to believe that.

“The real terror of poverty isn’t that we ourselves suffer. It is that we are absolutely and utterly powerless to lift one finger to protect and defend those who are dearest to us in the world. Judge Carver, when Pat was sick when he was a baby I didn’t have enough money to get a doctor for him; I didn’t have enough money to get medicine. When I went to work I had to leave him with people who were vile and filthy and debased in body and soul, because they were the only people that I could afford to leave him with.

“Once when I came home I couldn’t wake him up, and the woman who was with him was terrified into telling me that he’d been crying so dreadfully that she’d given him some stuff that a Hungarian woman on the next floor said was fine for crying babies. I carried him and the bottle with the stuff in it ten blocks to a drug store—and they told me that it had opium in it. She’d given him half the bottle—to my Pat. And another time the woman with him got drunk and—— But I can’t talk about that, not even to make you understand. He never had any toys in his life but some tin cans and empty spools and pieces of string. He never had anything but me.

“And I swore to myself that as long as he had me he should have everything. I would be beauty to him, and peace and gentleness and graciousness and gaiety and strength. I wasn’t beautiful or peaceful or gentle or gracious or gay or strong, but I made myself all those things for him. That isn’t vanity—that’s the truth. I swore that he should never see me shed one tear, that he should never hear me lift my voice in anger, that he should never see me tremble before anything that fate should hold in store for either of us. He never did—no, truly, he never did. That was all that I could give him, but I did give him that.

“It took me seventeen years to save up enough railway fare to get out of that town. Then I came to Rosemont. A nice woman that I did some sewing for in the town had a sister in Rosemont. She told me that it was a lovely place and that she thought that there was a good opening there for some work, and that her sister was looking for boarders. So I took the few dollars that I’d saved and went, and you know the rest.

“Of course there are some things that you don’t know—you don’t know how brave and gay and gentle Pat has always been to me; you don’t know how happy we all were in the flat in New York, after he married Sue and the babies came. Sue helped me with the housekeeping, and Sue did some secretarial work at the university, and Pat did anything that turned up, and did it splendidly. We always had plenty to eat, and it was really clean and sunny, and we were all perfectly healthy and happy. Only, Sue never did talk about it much, because she is a very reserved child, in any case, and in this case she was afraid that it might seem a reflection on the Thornes that she had to live in a little walk-up flat in the Bronx, with no servants and pretty plain living.

“And Mr. Lambert was nervous about bringing out anything about it in direct examination for fear that in cross-examination Mr. Farr would twist things around to make it look as though Sue had undergone the tortures of the damned. Of course, we didn’t have much, but we had enough to make it seem a luxurious and care-free existence in comparison to the one that Pat and I had lived for over fifteen years.

“Those things you don’t know—and one other. You don’t know Polly and Pete, do you, Judge Carver?

“They are very wonderful children. I suppose that every grandmother thinks that her grandchildren are rather wonderful; but I don’t just think it about them; they are. Anyone would tell you that—anyone who had ever seen them. They’re the bravest, happiest, strongest little things. You could be with them for weeks and never once hear them cry. Of course, once in a very long while—if you have to scold them, for instance—because Pete is quite sensitive; but then you almost never have to scold them, and when Pete broke his leg last winter and Dr. Chilton set it he said that he had never seen such courage in a child. And when Polly was only two years old, she walked straight out into the ocean up to her chin, and she’d have gone farther still if her father hadn’t caught her up. She rides a pony better than any seven-year-old child in Rosemont, too, and she isn’t five yet—not until January—and the only time that she ever fell off the pony she never even whimpered—not once.

“They are very beautiful children too. Pete is quite fair and Polly is very dark, but they both have blue eyes and very dark eyelashes. They are so brown, too, and tall. It doesn’t seem possible that either of them could ever be sick or unhappy; but still, you have to be careful. Polly has been threatened twice with mastoiditis, and Pete has to have his leg massaged three times a week, because he still limps a little.

“That’s why I killed Madeleine Bellamy.

“The first time I realized that there was anything between her and Pat was almost a month before the murder, some time early in May, I think. Sue had been having quite a dinner party, and I’d slipped out to the garden as usual as soon as I could get away. I decided to gather some lilacs, and I came back to the house to get the scissors from the flower room. As I passed the study I saw Pat and Mimi silhouetted against the study window; she was bending over, pretending to look at the ship he was making, but she wasn’t looking at it—she was looking at Pat.

“I’d always thought that she was a scatterbrained little goose, and I had never liked her particularly; even in the old days in the village I used to worry about her sometimes. She used too much perfume and too much pink powder, and she had an empty little voice and a horrid, excited little laugh. But I thought that she was good-natured and harmless enough, when I thought about her at all, and I was about to pass on, when she said something that riveted me in my footsteps.

“She said, ‘Pat, listen, did you get my note?’ He said, ‘Yes.’ She asked, ‘Are you coming?’ And he said, ‘I don’t know. I’m not sure that I can make it.’ She said, ‘Of course you can make it. We can’t talk here. It doesn’t take ten minutes to get to the cottage. You’ve got to make it.’ He said, ‘All right, I’ll be there. Look out; someone’s coming.’ They both of them turned around, and I could hear him calling to someone in the hall to come in and look at the ship.

“I stood there, leaning my head against the side of the house and feeling icy cold and deathly—deathly sick. It was as though I had heard Dan calling to me across thirty years.

“From that moment until this one I have never known one happy hour, one happy moment, one happy second. I spent my life spying on him—on my Pat—trying to discover how far he had gone, how far he was prepared to go. I never caught them together again, in spite of the fact that I fairly haunted the terrace under the study window, thinking that some afternoon or evening they might return. They never did. Mimi didn’t come very often to the house, as a matter of fact.

“But on the evening of the nineteenth of June, at a little after half-past six, someone did come to the study window, who gave me the clew that I had been seeking so long. It was Melanie Cordier, of course. I was just coming back from the garden, where I had been tying up some climbing roses, when I saw her there by the corner near the bookcase. She had a book in her hands—quite a large, thick book in a light tan cover, and she was looking back over her shoulder with a queer, furtive look while she put something in it. She shoved it back onto the shelf and was starting toward the hall, when she drew back suddenly and stood very quiet. I thought: ‘There is someone in the hall. When Melanie goes out it will mean that the coast is clear.’

“It wasn’t more than a minute later that she left, and I started around to the front of the house to get to the study and see what she had put in that book. I was hurrying so that I almost ran into Elliot Farwell, who was coming down the front steps and not looking any more where he was going than if he had been stone blind. He said, ‘Beg pardon’ and brushed by me without even lowering his eyes to see who it was, and I went on across the hall into the study, thinking that never in my life had I seen a man look so wretchedly and recklessly unhappy.

“No one was in the hall; they were all in the living room, and I could hear them all laughing and talking—and I decided that if I were to find what Melanie had put in the book I’d better do it quickly, as the party might break up at any minute. I had noticed just where the book was—on the third shelf close to the wall—but there were three volumes just alike, and that halted me for a minute.

“The note was in the second volume that I opened. It was addressed to ‘Mr. Patrick Ives. Urgent—Very Urgent.’ I stood looking at that ‘Urgent—Very Urgent’ for a minute, and then I put it in the straw bag that I carry for gardening and went out through the dining room to the pantry to get myself a drink of water, because I felt a little faint.

“No one was in the pantry. I let the water run for a minute so that it would get cold, and then I drank three glasses of it, quite slowly, until my hand stopped shaking and that queer dizzy feeling went away. Then I started back for the hall. I got as far as the dining room, when I saw Pat standing by the desk in the corner.

“There’s a screen between the dining-room door and the study, but it doesn’t quite cut off the bit near the study window. I could see him perfectly clearly. He had quite a thick little pile of white papers in his hand, and he was counting them. They were long, narrow papers, folded just like the bond that he’d given me for Christmas, a year ago—just exactly like it. And while I was standing there staring at them, Sue called to him from the hall to come out on the porch and see his guests off, and he gave a little start and shoved the papers into the left-hand drawer and went out toward the hall.

“I gave him a few seconds to get to the porch, before I crossed through the study. I was terrified that if he came back and found me there he’d know I had the note and accuse me of it—and I knew that when he did that all the life that I’d died twenty lives to build for us would crumble to pieces at the first word he spoke. I couldn’t bear to have Pat know that I suspected how base he was—that I knew that he was Dan all over again—a baser, viler Dan, since Dan had only had me to keep him straight, and Pat had Sue. I felt strong enough and desperate enough to face almost anything in the world except that Pat should know that I had found him out. So I went through the study and the hall and up the stairs to my room in the left wing without one backward look.

“Once in my room, I locked the door and bolted it—and pushed a chair against it, too, to make assurance triply sure. That’s the only thing that I did that entire evening that makes me think I must have been a little mad. Still, even a biased observer could hardly regard that as homicidal madness.

“I went over to the chintz wing chair by the window and read the note. The chair was placed so that even in my room I could see the roses in the garden, and a little beyond the garden, the sand pile under the copper beech where the children played. They weren’t there now; I’d said good-night to them outside just a minute or so before I finished tying up the roses. I read the note through three times.

“Of course, I completely misread it. I thought that what she was proposing was an elopement with Pat to California. It never once entered my head that she was referring to money that would enable Steve and herself to live a pleasanter life in a pleasanter place, and that her talk of hoodwinking Steve simply meant that she could conceal the source of the money from him.

“If I had realized that, I’d never have lifted my finger to prevent her getting it. I thought she wanted Pat. I’d have given her two hundred thousand dollars to go away and leave him alone. The most ghastly and ironical thing about this whole ironical and ghastly business is that if Mimi Bellamy hadn’t been as careless and slip-shod with her use of the word ‘we,’ as she was with everything else in her life, she would be alive this day under blue skies.

“Of course it was stupid of me, too, and the first time that I read it I was bewildered by the lack of endearments in it. But there was all that about her hardly being able to wait, and how happy they would be; and the note was obviously hastily written—and I had always thought she had no depth of feeling. I suppose that all of us read into a letter much what we expect to find there, and what I expected to find was a twice-told tale. I expected to find that Pat was so mad about this girl that he was willing to wreck not only his own life for her but mine and Sue’s and Polly’s and Pete’s. And I couldn’t to save my soul think of a way to stop him.

“I was reading it for the third time when Melanie knocked at the door and announced dinner, and I put it back in my bag and pushed back the chair and unlocked the door and went down.

“When I heard Pat and Melanie and Sue all tell you that dinner was quite as usual that night, I wondered what strange stuff we weak mortals are made of. When I think what Sue was thinking and what Pat was thinking and what I was thinking, and that we could laugh and chat and breathe as usual—no, that doesn’t seem humanly possible. Yet that’s exactly what we did.

“Afterward, when they went into the study to look at the ship, I decided that I might just as well go into the rose garden and finish the work that I’d started out there. I’d noticed some dead wood on two of the plants, so I went to the flower room and got out the little knife that I kept with some other small tools in a drawer there. It’s a very good one for either budding or pruning, but I keep it carefully put away for fear that the children might cut their fingers. Then I went out to the garden.

“For a while I didn’t try to think at all: I just worked. I saw Miss Page coming back from the sand pile, and a minute or so later Sue came by, running toward the back gate. She called to me that she was going to the movies and that Pat was going to play poker. I was glad that they were not going to be there; that made it easier to think—and to breathe.

“As you know, she returned to the house. I don’t believe she was there more than five minutes before she came running by again and disappeared through the back gate. I sat down on the little bench at the end of the rose garden and tried to think.

“I was desperately anxious to keep my head and remain cool and collected, because one thing was perfectly clear. If something wasn’t done immediately, it would be too late to do anything. The question was what to do.

“I didn’t dare to go to Pat. At bottom, I must be a miserable coward; that was the simple, straightforward, and natural thing to do, and I simply didn’t dare to do it. Because I thought that he would refuse me, and that fact I couldn’t face. I was the person in all the world who should have had most trust in him, and I didn’t trust him at all. I remember that when I lie awake in the night. I didn’t trust him.

“I didn’t dare to go to Sue, either, because I was afraid that if she knew the truth—or what I was pleased to consider the truth—she would leave him, at any cost to Polly and Peter or herself. I knew that she was possessed of high pride and fine courage; I didn’t know that they would be chains to bind her to Pat. I didn’t trust her either.

“It wasn’t Pat and Sue and Mimi Bellamy that I was looking at, you see. It was Dan and I and the boarding-house keeper’s Trudie.

“I sat on the bench in the rose garden and watched the sunlight turning into shadow and felt panic rising about me like a cold wind. I knew that Sue hadn’t a cent; her father had left her nothing at all, and she had refused to let Pat settle a cent on her, because she said that she loved to ask him for money.

“And I remembered . . . I remembered that Dan had taken nineteen dollars and fifty cents out of the tea-pot. I remembered that I had learned only a few weeks before that I could only hope at best for months instead of years to live. I remembered that Sue couldn’t cook at all, and that it was I who had done up all the children’s little dresses in those New York days because she couldn’t iron, and made them, because she couldn’t sew—and I wouldn’t be there. I remembered that the only relation that she had in the world was Douglas Thorne, and that he had four children and a wife who liked jewellery and who didn’t like Sue. I remembered that the massage for Pete’s knee cost twenty dollars a week, and that when Polly had had trouble with her ear last winter the bill for the nurses and the doctors and the operation had come to seven hundred and fifty dollars. I remembered the way Polly looked on the black pony and Pete’s voice singing in the sand pile. . . .

“And then suddenly everything was perfectly clear. Mimi, of course—I’d forgotten her entirely. She was waiting in the gardener’s cottage now, probably, and if I went to her there and explained to her all about Polly and Pete, and how frightfully important it was that they should be taken care of until they could take care of themselves, she would realize what she was doing. She was so young and pretty and careless that she probably hadn’t ever given them a thought. It wasn’t cruelty—it was just a reckless desire to be happy. But once she knew—— I’d tell her all about Pat’s ghastly childhood and the nightmare that my own life had been, and I’d implore her to stop and think what she was doing. Once she had stopped—once she had thought—she wouldn’t do it, of course. I felt fifty years younger, and absolutely light-headed with relief.

“I looked at my little wrist watch; it said ten minutes to nine. If I waited until nine it would be almost dark, and would still give me plenty of time to catch her before she left. It wouldn’t take me more than fifteen minutes to get to the cottage, and I much preferred not to have anyone know what I was planning to do. No one would miss me if I got back by ten; I often sat in the garden until then, and I had a little flashlight in the straw bag that I used at such times, and that would serve my purpose excellently coming home across the meadows.

“I decided not to go back to the house at all, but simply to slip out by the little gate near the sand pile and strike out on the path that cut diagonally across the fields to the Thorne place. There were no houses between us and Orchards, so I would be perfectly safe from observation. By the time I had gathered up my gardening things and looked again at my watch it was a little after nine, and I decided that it wouldn’t be safe to wait any longer.

“It was a very pleasant walk across the fields; it was still just light enough to see, and the clover smelled very sweet, and the tree toads were making a comforting little noise, and I walked quite fast, planning just what I would say to Mimi—planning just how reasonable and gentle and persuasive and convincing I was going to be.

“The path comes out at an opening in the hedge to the left of the gardener’s cottage. I pushed through it and came up to the front steps; there was a light in the right-hand window. I went straight up the steps. The front door was open a little, and I pushed it open farther and went in. There was a key on the inside of the door. I hesitated for a moment, and then I closed it and turned the key and dropped it into my bag. I was afraid that she might try to leave before I’d finished explaining to her; I didn’t want her to do that.

“She heard me then, and called out from the other room, ‘For heaven’s sake, what’s been the matter? I didn’t think that you were ever coming.’

“She had her back turned as I came into the room; she was looking into the mirror over the piano and fluffing out her hair. There was a lamp lit on the piano and it make her hair look like flames—she really was extraordinarily beautiful, if that red-and-white-and-gold-and-blue type appeals to you. Trudie’d had a mouth that curled just that way, and those same ridiculous eyelashes. And then she saw me in the mirror and in three seconds that radiant face turned into a mask of suspicion and cruelty and malice. She whirled around and stood there looking me over from head to foot.

“After a moment she said, ‘What are you doing here?’

“I said, ‘I came about Pat, Madeleine.’

“She said, ‘Oh, you did, did you? So that’s his game—hiding behind a woman’s skirts! Well, you can go home and tell him to come out.’

“I said, ‘He doesn’t know that I’m here. I found the note.’

“Mimi said, ‘They can send you to jail for taking other people’s letters. Spying and stealing from your own son! I should think you’d be ashamed. And what good do you think it’s going to do you?’

“I came closer to her and said, ‘Never mind me, Madeleine, I came here to-night to implore you to leave my son alone.’

“And she laughed at me—she laughed! ‘Well, you could have saved yourself the walk. When he gets here, I’ll tell him what I think of the two of you.’

“I said, ‘He’s not coming. He’s playing poker at the Dallases.’

“She went scarlet to her throat with anger, and she called out, ‘That’s a lie! He’s coming and you know it. Will you get out of here?’

“I said, ‘Madeleine, listen to me. I swear to you that any happiness you purchase at the price that you’re willing to pay for it will rot in your hands, no matter how much you love him.’

“And she laughed! ‘Love him? Pat? I don’t care two snaps of my fingers for him! But I’m going to get every cent of his that I can put my hands on, and the quicker both of you get that straight, the better it will be for all of us.’

“I said, ‘I believe that is the truth, but I never believed that you would dare to say so. You can’t—you can’t realize what you are doing. You can’t purchase your pleasure with the comfort and security and health and joy of two little babies who have never harmed you once in all their lives. You can’t!’

“She laughed that wicked, excited little laugh of hers again, and said through her teeth, ‘Oh, can’t I, though? Now get this straight too: I don’t care whether your precious little babies die in a gutter. Now, will you get out?’

“I couldn’t breathe. I felt exactly as though I were suffocating, but I said, ‘No. I am an old woman, Madeleine, but I will go on my knees to you to beg you not to ruin the lives of those two babies.’

“She said, ‘Oh, I’m sick to death of you and your babies and your melodramatics. For the last time, are you going to get out of this house or am I going to have to put you out?’

“She came so close to me that I could smell the horrid perfume she wore—gardenia, I think it was—something close and sweet and hateful. I took a step back and said, ‘You wouldn’t dare to touch me—you wouldn’t dare!’

“And then she did—she gave that dreadful, excited little laugh of hers and put both hands on my shoulders and pushed me, quite hard—so hard that I stumbled and went forward on my knees. I tried to catch myself, and dropped the bag and all the things in it fell out on the carpet. I knelt there staring down at them, with the blood roaring in my head and singing in my ears.

“Judge Carver, what is it in our blood and bones and flesh that rises shrieking its outrage in the weakest and meekest of us at the touch of hands laid violently on our rebellious flesh? I could hear it—I could hear it crying in my ears—and there on the flowered carpet just in reach of my hand something was shining. It was the little knife that I’d been using to cut the dead wood out so that the live roses would grow better. I knelt there staring at it. That story of how all their lives flash by drowning eyes—I always thought that was an old wives’ tale—no, that’s true, I think. I could see the rose garden with all the green leaves glossy on the big Silver Moon. . . . I could see Pat and Sue laughing on the terrace, with his arm across her shoulders and the sun in their eyes and the wind in their hair. . . . I could see the children’s blue smocks through the branches of the copper beech. . . . I stood up with the knife in my hand. . . .

“She screamed only once—not a very loud scream, either, but she caught at the table as she fell, and it made a dreadful crash. I heard someone laugh outside, quite loudly, and I leaned forward and blew out the lamp on the piano. There was someone coming up the front steps; I stood very still. A bell rang far back in the house, and then someone tried the door.

“I thought: ‘This is the end—they have known what has happened. If no one answers, they will batter down the door. But not till they batter down the door will I move one hairbreadth from where I stand—and not then.’

“After a moment I heard the feet going down the steps, then again on the gravel of the main drive, getting fainter and fainter. I waited for a moment longer, because I thought that I heard something moving in the bushes outside the window, but after a minute everything was perfectly still, and I went over to the window and shut it and pulled down the shade.

“I knew that I was in great danger, and that I must think very quickly—and act quickly too. I found the little flashlight almost immediately, and lit it, and pushed down the catch and put it beside me on the floor. I wanted to have both hands free, and I didn’t dare to take the time to light the lamp. I was afraid that the person who tried the door would come back. I had realized at once, of course, that if I took the jewels the murder would look like robbery—and I had to make sure that she was dead.

“That took only a minute; the rings came off quite easily, but the catch of the necklace caught, and I had to break the string. I knotted the things all into my handkerchief and put them into the bag, and the trowel and a ball of string that had fallen out, too, and the note, and a little silver box of candy that I kept for the children. There was the key to the front door too. I remembered that I must leave it in the lock as I went out. I used the flashlight to make sure that I wasn’t leaving anything, and I was—the knife was still lying there beside her.

“It’s curious—of all the things that happened that night, that’s the only one that I can’t account for. I don’t remember how it got there at all—whether I placed it there or whether I dropped it or whether it fell—that’s curious, don’t you think? Anyhow, I picked it up and wiped it off very carefully on one of her white lace frills and put it back in the bag. And then I tried to get up, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t move. I knelt there, leaning forward against the cold steel of the little Franklin stove, feeling so mortally, so desperately sick that for a moment I thought I should never move again. It wasn’t the blood; it was that perfume, like dead flowers—horribly sweet and strong. . . . After a minute I got up and went out of the room and out of the house and back across the meadow to the garden gate.

“I stopped only once. I followed the hedge a little way before I came to the path, and I stooped down and dug out two or three trowelfuls of earth close in to the roots and shook the pearls and the rings out of my handkerchief into the hole and covered it up and went on. At first I thought of putting the knife there, too, and then I decided that someone might have noticed it in the drawer and that it would be safer to be put back where it had come from.

“How are they ever able to trace people by the weapons they have used? It seems to me that it should be so simple to hide a little thing no longer than your hand, with all the earth and the waters under the earth to hide it in.

“It was the knife that I was washing in the flower room; it still had one or two little stains near the handle, but there wasn’t any blood on my hands at all. I’d been very careful.

“After I’d put everything away I took the note and went upstairs. At first I thought that I’d tear it up, but then I decided that someone might find the scraps, and that the safest thing to do would be to keep it until the next day and burn it. And before the next day I knew that Sue and Stephen had no actual alibi for that night, and so I never burned the note.

“That’s all. While I lay there in the dark that night—and every night since—I’ve tried saying it over and over to myself: ‘Murderess—murderess.’ A black and bloody and dreadful word; does it sound as alien to the ears of all the others whose title it is as it does to mine? Murderess! We should feel differently from the rest of the world once we have earned that dreadful title, should we not? Something sinister, something monstrous and dark should invest us, surely. It seems strange that still we who bear that name should rise to the old familiar sunlight and sleep by the old familiar starlight; that bread should still be good to us, and flowers sweet; that we should say good-morning and good-night in voices that no man shudders to hear. The strangest thing of all is to feel so little strange.

“Judge Carver, I have written to you because I do not know whether any taint of suspicion still clings to any of those who have taken part in this trial. If in your mind there does, I will promptly give myself up to the proper authorities and tell them the essential facts that I have told you.

“But if, in your opinion, suspicion rests on no man or woman, living or dead, I would say only this: I am not afraid to die—indeed, indeed, I am rather anxious to die. Life is no longer very dear to me. Two physicians have told me this last year that I will not live to see another. I can obtain from them a certificate to that effect, if you desire. And I have already sent to my lawyers a sealed envelope containing a full confession, marked, ‘To be sent to the authorities in case anyone should be accused of the death of Mrs. Stephen Bellamy, either before or after my death.’ I would not have any human being live through such days as these have been—no, not to save my life, or what is dearer to me than my life.

“But, Judge Carver, will the ends of justice be better served if that boy who believes that my only creed is gentleness and kindness and mercy, and who has learned therefore to be merciful and gentle and kind—if that boy learns that now he must call me murderess? If those happy, happy little children who bring every bumped head and cut finger to me to kiss it and make it whole must live to learn to call me murderess?

“I don’t want Polly and Pete to know—I don’t want them to know—I don’t want them to know.

“If you could reach me without touching them I would not ask you to show me mercy. But if no one else need suffer for my silence, I beg of you—I beg you—forget that you are only Justice, and remember to be merciful.

“Margaret Ives.”

For a long time the judge sat silent and motionless, staring down at that small mountain of white pages. In his tired face his dark eyes burned, piercing and tireless. Finally they moved, with a curious deliberation, to that other pile of white pages that he had been studying when the messenger boy had come knocking at the door. Yes, there it was:

“An accessory after the fact is one who while not actually participating in the crime, yet in any way helps the murderer to escape trial or conviction, either by concealing him or by assisting him to escape or by destroying material evidence or by any other means whatever. It is a serious crime in itself, but does not make him a principal——”

He sat motionless, his unwavering eyes fixed on the words before him as though he would get them by heart. . . . After a long moment, he stirred, lifted his head, and drew the little pile of papers that held the life of Patrick Ives’s mother toward him.

The blue paper first; the torn scraps settled down on the shining surface as lightly and inconsequently as butterflies. Then the white ones—a little mound of snow-flakes that grew under the quick, sure fingers to a little mountain—higher—higher—blue and white, they were swept into that great brass bowl that had been so conveniently designed for ashes. A match spurted, and little flames leaped gaily, and a small spiral of smoke twisted up toward the white-robed lady above the door. Across the room, between the windows beyond which shone the stars, John Marshall was smiling above the dancing flames—and she smiled back at him, gravely and wisely, as though they shared some secret understanding.

The End