“Now you’ve just told us, Mr. Orsini, that you were able to see Mrs. Ives’s face when you looked down from your window in the garage as clearly as you see mine. Can you give us an idea of the approximate distance from the garage to the house?”
“Positive. The distance from the middle of the garage door to the middle of the front porch step, it is”—he glanced earnestly at a small slip of paper hitherto concealed in one massive paw, and divulged a portion of its contents to his astounded interrogator—“it is forty-seven feet five inches and one half inch.”
“What?”
Mr. Orsini contemplated with pardonable gratification the unfeigned stupor that adorned the massive countenance now thrust incredulously forward. “Also I can now tell you the space between the front gate and the door—one hunnerd forty-three feet and a quarter of a inch,” he announced rapidly and benevolently. “Also from the fence out to the road—eleven feet nine inch and a——”
Judge Carver’s gavel fell with a crash over the enraptured roar that swept the courtroom. “One more demonstration of this kind and I clear the Court. This is a trial for murder, not a burlesque performance. You, sir, answer the questions that are put to you, when they are put. What’s that object in your hand?”
Mr. Orsini dangled the limp yellow article hopefully under the judge’s fine nose. “The instrument with which I make the measure,” he explained, all modest pride. “What you call a measure of tape. The card on which I make the notes as well.”
Judge Carver schooled his momentarily shaken countenance to its customary rigidity and turned a lion tamer’s eye on the smothered hilarity of the press. The demoralized Lambert pulled himself together with a mighty effort; a junior counsel emitted a convulsive snort; only Mr. Farr remained entirely unmoved. Pensive, nonchalant and mildly sardonic, he bestowed a perfunctory glance on the measure of tape and returned to a critical perusal of some notes of his own, which he had been studying intently since he had surrendered his witness to his adversary. The adversary, his eyes still bulging, returned once more to the charge.
“May I ask you what caused you to burden yourself with this invaluable mass of information?”
“Surest thing you may ask. I do it because me, I am well familiar with the questions what all smart high-grade lawyers put when in the court—like, could you then tell us how high were those steps, and how many were those minutes, and how far were those walls—all things like that they like to go and ask, every time, sure like shooting.”
“I see. A careful student of our little eccentricities. How has it happened that your crowded life has afforded you the leisure to make so exhaustive a study of our habits?”