Judge Carver paraded his fine, keen old eyes meditatively from the ruddy full moon of Mr. Lambert’s countenance to the black-and-white etching of the prosecutor’s, cold as ice, for all the fever of intensity behind it; on farther still to the bull-necked and blue-jowled occupant of the witness box. There was a faint trace of distaste in their depths as they returned to the prosecutor. Perhaps it was that distaste that swung back the pendulum. Judge Carver had the reputation of being as fair as he was hard.
“Very well, Mr. Farr. The Court sees no impropriety in having you state those circumstances as briefly as possible.”
“May I have an objection to that, Your Honour?” Lambert’s face had deepened to a fine claret.
“Certainly.”
“On the morning of the twenty-first of June,” said Mr. Farr, “I asked Mr. Farwell to come to my office. When he arrived I told him that we had information in our hands that definitely connected him with this atrocious crime, and that I sincerely advised him to make a clean breast of all his movements. He proceeded to do so promptly, and told me exactly the same story that he has told you. It came, frankly, as a surprise to me, but it in no way altered or modified the state’s case. I therefore decided to put Mr. Farwell on the stand in order to let you have all the facts.”
“Was the information that you possessed connecting Mr. Farwell with the crime the cigarette lighter, Mr. Farr?” inquired Judge Carver gravely.
“No, Your Honour; it was Mrs. Ives’s telephone conversation with Stephen Bellamy, asking whether Elliot had not told him anything. There was no other Elliot in Mrs. Ives’s circle of acquaintances.”
“Is the lighter in the possession of the state at present?”
“No, Your Honour,” remarked the prosecutor blandly. “The state’s case would be considerably simplified if it were.”
His eye rested, fugitive but penetrating, on Mr. Lambert’s heated countenance.