The long screech of Mr. Conroy’s chair as he shoved it violently back tore through the courtroom like something human, echoing through every heart. The prosecutor was nonchalantly dangling before the broker’s staring eyes a crumpled object—a white dress, streaked and splotched and dotted with that most ominous colour known to the eyes of man—the curious rusted sinister red of dried blood.
“Yes,” said Mr. Conroy, his voice barely above a whisper—“yes, yes; that is it—that is the dress.”
The fascinated eyes of the spectators wrenched themselves from the dress to the two defendants. Susan Ives was not looking at it. Her head was as high as ever, her lips as steady, but her eyes were bent intently on a scrap of paper that she held in her gloved fingers. Apparently Mrs. Ives was deeply interested in the contents.
Stephen Bellamy was not reading. He sat watching that handful of lace and blood as though it were Medusa’s head, his blank, unswerving eyes riveted to it by something inexorable and intolerable. His face was as quiet as Susan Ives’s, save for a dreadful little ripple of muscles about the set mouth—the ripple that comes from clenched teeth, clenched harder, harder—harder still, lest there escape through them some sound not meant for decent human ears. Save for that ripple, he did not move a hairbreadth.
“Was the blood on this dress dry when you first saw it, Mr. Conroy?”
“No, it was not dry.”
“You ascertained that by touching it?”
Mr. Conroy’s small neat body seemed to contract farther into itself.
“No, I did not touch it. It was not necessary to touch it to see that. It—it was quite apparent.”
“I see. Your Honour, I ask to have this dress marked for identification.”