“Ah, well, in that case, not more than one thousand thanks,” said the reporter—“and those somewhat tempered. Look alive, do we? There’s a glowing tribute for you! I trust that you’ll be profoundly ashamed of yourself when I inform you that I meant nothing of the kind when I extolled the appearance of lady authoresses. Dead or alive, I like the way their hair grows over their ears, and their discreet use of dimples, and the useless length of their eyelashes. Meditate on that for a while!”
The red-headed girl meditated, while both her colour and her dimples deepened. At the end of her meditations she inquired politely, “Is it true that Mr. Bellamy’s counsel broke his leg?”
“Couldn’t be truer. Fell down the Subway stairs at eleven-forty-five last night and is safe in the hospital this morning. Lambert’s taking over Bellamy’s defense; he and those two important, worried-looking kids who sit beside him at the desk down there reading great big enormous law books and are assistant counsel—whatever that means. . . . Ah, here’s Ben Potts! Fine fellow, Ben. . . . We’re off!”
“Mr. Elliot Farwell!”
A thickset, broad-shouldered individual, with hair as slick as oiled patent leather, puffy eyes, and overprominent blue jowls, moved heavily toward the witness box. An overgaudy tie that looked as though it came from the ten-cent store and had actually come from France, a waistcoat that made you think vaguely of checks, though it was quite guiltless of them; a handkerchief with an orange-and-green monogram ramping across one corner—the stuff of which con men and race-track touts and ham actors and men about town are made. The red-headed girl eyed him severely. Thus she was wont to regard his little brother and big brother at the night clubs, as they leaned conqueringly across little tables, offering heavily engraved flasks to limp chits clad in shoulder straps and chiffon handkerchiefs.
“Mr. Farwell, where were you on the afternoon of the nineteenth of June at about five o’clock?”
“At the Rosemont Country Club.”
Not a pleasant voice at all, Mr. Farwell’s; a heavy, sullen voice, thickened and coarsened with some disreputable alchemy.
“What were you doing?”
“I was just hanging around after golf, having a couple of drinks.”