“Sure?”
“Quite sure.”
“This continued story that you have been presenting to us from day to day has reached its absolutely ultimate installment?”
“I have already said that I have nothing to add to my statement.”
“And this is the same story that you were so sure that no twelve sane men in the world would believe, isn’t it?”
“Yes. It isn’t necessary to prove to me that I have been the fool of the world,” said Stephen Bellamy quietly. “I willingly admit it. My deepest regret is that my folly has involved Mrs. Ives too.”
“You have had no cause to revise your opinion as to the skepticism that your account of that night’s doings would arouse in any twelve sane men, have you?”
“Oh, yes, I have had excellent reason completely to revise it.”
The low, pleasant voice seemed to jar on the prosecutor as violently as a bomb. “And what reason, may I ask?”
“At the time that I arrived at that conclusion I had naturally had no opportunity to hear Mrs. Ives on the witness stand. Now that I have, it seems absolutely impossible to me that anyone could fail to believe her.”