“Yes.”
“You wish that to be your final statement on that subject?”
“Wait a moment.” He looked suddenly exhausted, as though he had been running for a long time. “I told you that things were very confused from the time that I found that Mimi hadn’t gone to the movies. I’m trying to get it as straight as possible. It was some time after we had left my house—after ten, I mean—and before we got to hers, that I suggested there was just a chance that she was mistaken and that Pat had gone to meet her after all. Sue said she couldn’t be mistaken, and that, anyway, they’d never dare stay at the cottage so late—it wouldn’t fit in with the movie story. I suggested then that possibly she had been right in her idea that they had been planning to run away together. Possibly that was what they had done to-night. She said, ‘Steve, you sound as though you wish they had.’ I said, ‘I wish to God they had.’ Then she said, ‘I know that Pat hasn’t been out, but I’ll let you know definitely when we go home.’ It was then that she suggested the lights.”
“It all comes back very clearly now, doesn’t it, Mr. Bellamy?”
“Yes.”
“Very convenient, remembering all those noble bits about how you wished to God that they’d eloped, isn’t it?”
“I don’t know that it’s particularly noble or convenient. It’s the truth.”
“Oh, undoubtedly. Mr. Bellamy, at what time——”
“Your Honour, I protest these sneers and jeers that Mr. Farr is indulging in constantly. I——”
“I simply remarked that Mr. Bellamy was undoubtedly telling the truth,” said Mr. Farr in dangerously meek tones. “Do you regard that as necessarily sarcastic?”