Both Dr. Jarvis and the inspector looked keenly at the girlish figure which mounted to the witness box. She was tall, well formed, with a wealth of blond hair which surrounded a very beautiful, expressive face, now drawn with worry and late vigils.
“You nursed Mr. Craighead during his last illness, did you not, Miss Prettyman?” asked the lawyer, after the usual preliminaries were over.
“Ross and I took turns, and sometimes both of us sat with him together,” said the girl. “He grew fretful when one or the other of us was away for even a minute.”
“Did you give him his medicines?” continued the lawyer.
“Sometimes I did and sometimes it was Ross,” said the girl in a low voice, in which a slight catch of emotion was discernible.
“Gad, Doc,” snapped the inspector, “where is this young chap? If he knows anything we can sweat both him and Tessie.”
“There he is, three seats over,” replied Dr. Jarvis. “One look at him ought to satisfy you.”
They looked at the tall, well dressed youth—about twenty-two he was—a sincere, dreamy looking chap, yet now with his lips tightly compressed, evidently resentful of the way the girl he loved was being prodded.
“Miss Prettyman,” queried the lawyer, who as yet had not caught the drift of Dr. Jarvis’s prompting, “how did Mr. Craighead die? Describe his symptoms.”
“I can hardly tell you that,” answered the girl without hesitation. “Ross would lie down for awhile in the adjoining room, with the door open, whenever Mr. Craighead dozed off late at night. Mr. Craighead died very suddenly, for I ran in a very few seconds after Ross had cried that he was in danger. Ross, of course, saw him die but would tell me nothing about it. He said it was too awful.”