“You never saw Mrs. Bellamy again?”
“Not evair—no, no more—not evair.”
For a moment the warm blood under the swarthy Southern skin seemed to run more slowly and coldly; but after a hasty glance at the safe, reassuring autumn sunlight slanting across the crowded room, the colour flowed boldly back to cheek and lip.
“You say that you missed the train to New York. What did you do then?”
“Then I curse myself good all up and down for a fool that is a fool all right, and I go back to my room in the garage and get into my bed and begin to read a story in a magazine that call itself Honest Confession about a bride what——”
“Never mind what you were reading. Did you notice anything unusual on your return?”
“Well, maybe you don’t call it nothing unusual, but I notice that the car of Mr. Bell’my it is no longer in the garage. That make me surprise’ for a minute, because I have heard Mr. Bell’my tell Nellie, the house girl, that it is all right for her to go home early to her mother, where she sleep, because he will be there to answer the telephone if it should ring. But all the same, I go on to bed. I just think he change his mind, maybe.”
“What time did you get back to the garage?”
“At twenty-two minutes before nine I am in my room. That I verify by the alarm clock that repose on the top of my bureau, and which is of an entire reliability; I note it expressly, because I am enrage’ that I have miss’ that train by so small an amount.”
“Orsini, do you know what kind of tires Mr. Bellamy was using on his car?”