“I propose to attack the credibility of this witness,” said Mr. Lambert unctuously. “I propose to prove by this witness, that while she is posing here as a correct young person and a model servant she is actually living a highly incorrect life as a supposedly married woman. . . . Miss Cordier, I ask you whether for the past three months you have not been passing as the wife of Adolph Platz, having persuaded him to abandon his own wife?”
In the pale oval of her face the black eyes flamed and smoked. “And I tell you no, no, and again no, monsieur!”
“You do not go under the name of Mrs. Adolph Platz?”
“I do not persuade him to abandon that stupid doll, his wife. Long before I knew him, he was tired and sick of her.”
“You do not go under the name of Mrs. Adolph Platz?”
“That is most simple. Monsieur Platz he have been to me a excellent friend and adviser. When I explain to him that I am greatly in need of rest he suggest to me that a woman young, alone, and of not an entire lack of attraction would quite possibly find it more restful if the world should consider her married. So he is amiable enough to suggest that if it should assist me, I might for this small vacation use his name. It is only thing I have take from him, monsieur may rest assured.”
“You remove a great weight from my mind,” Mr. Lambert assured her, horridly playful; “and from the minds of these twelve gentlemen as well, I am sure.” The twelve gentlemen, who had been following the lady’s simple and virtuous explanation of her somewhat unconventional conduct with startled attention, smiled for the first time in four days, shifting stiffly on their chairs and exchanging sidelong glances, skeptically jocose. “It is a pleasure to all of us to know that such chivalry as Mr. Platz has exhibited is not entirely extinct in this wicked workaday world. I hardly think that we can improve on your explanation as to why you are known in Atlantic City as Mrs. Adolph Platz, Miss Cordier. That will be all.”
The prosecutor, who did not seem unduly perturbed by these weighty flights of sarcasm, continued to lean on his chair, though he once more lifted his voice: “You had saved quite a sum of money during these past years, hadn’t you, Miss Cordier?”
“Yes, monsieur.”
“It proved ample for your modest needs on this long-planned and greatly needed vacation, did it not?”