Mr. Lambert was not laughing. “You are a little late in recalling this,” he remarked heavily.
“Oh, a good deal late,” agreed Patrick Ives. “But, you see, I hadn’t been going in for watching the sun rise for some time previous to the murder. Since then I have. And when I heard that letter read in court the other day, something clicked in my head. Not five o’clock, and the sun was up! Something wrong there. I went back to New York and looked it up in the public library. On Friday, June 9, 1916, the sun rose at four twenty-two A. M. On Wednesday, June 9, 1926, the sun rose at five twenty-eight. So that’s that.”
“Have you a certified statement to that effect?” inquired Lambert, forlornly pompous.
“No,” said Mr. Ives. “But I can lend you a World Almanac.”
“You seem to find a trial for murder a very amusing affair,” remarked Lambert heavily, his eyes once more on the jury.
“You’re wrong,” said Patrick Ives briefly. “I don’t.”
“I do not believe that your attitude makes further examination desirable,” commented Lambert judicially. “Cross-examine.”
Farr rose casually from his chair, his hands in his pockets, his head cocked a trifle to one side. “Mr. Ives,” he said leisurely, “I’m going to ask you the one question that Mr. Lambert didn’t. Did you murder Madeleine Bellamy?”
After a pause that seemed interminable, Pat Ives lifted his eyes from their scrutiny of his hands, locked at the edge of the witness box. “No,” he said tonelessly.
“No further questions,” remarked Mr. Farr, still more leisurely resuming his seat.