“It sounded like Barretti,” said the red-headed girl, getting limply to her feet.
“The poor fool!” murmured the reporter in the same awe-stricken tones.
“What?”
“Lambert. Did you get that? The poor blithering fool doesn’t know who he is and where he’s heading.”
“Well, who is he?” inquired the red-headed girl over her shoulder despairingly. She felt that if anything else happened she would sit on the floor and cry, and she didn’t want to—much.
“It’s Barretti—Gabriel Barretti,” said the reporter. “The greatest finger-print expert in the world. Lord, it means that he must have their—— What in the world’s the matter? D’you want a handkerchief?”
The red-headed girl, nodding feebly, clutched at the large white handkerchief with one hand and the large blue serge sleeve with the other. Anyway, she hadn’t sat on the floor.
The fourth day of the Bellamy trial was over.
Chapter V
“He couldn’t look so cocky and triumphant and absolutely sure of himself as that if he didn’t actually know that everything was all right,” explained the red-haired girl in a reasonable but tremulous whisper, keeping an eye in desperate need of reassurance on the portly and flamboyant Lambert, who was prowling up and down in front of the jury with an expression of lightly won victory on his rubicund countenance and a tie that boasted actual checks under a ruddy chin. Every now and then he uttered small, premonitory booms.