“Why did you tell Mimi Dawson that she shouldn’t play around too much with Pat Ives?”
“Oh—oh, well, I guess, like she said, I was just foolish and it wasn’t none of my business.”
“You said, a ‘fellow like Pat Ives,’ Miss Biggs. What kind of a fellow did you mean? The kind of a fellow who played the ukulele? Or did he play something else?”
“Well—well, he played cards some—poker, you know, and red dog and—well, billiards, you know.”
“He gambled, didn’t he?”
“Now, Your Honour,” remarked Mr. Lambert heavily, “is this to be permitted to go on indefinitely? I have deliberately refrained from objecting to a most amazing line of questions——”
“The Court is inclined to agree with you, Mr. Lambert. Is it in any way relevant to the state’s case whether Mr. Ives played the ukulele or the organ, Mr. Farr?”
“It is quite essential to the state’s case to prove that Mr. Ives has a reckless streak in his character that led directly to the murder of Madeleine Bellamy, Your Honour. We contend that just as in those months before the war in the village of Rosemont, so in the year of 1926, he was gambling with his own safety and happiness and honour, and as in those days, with the happiness and honour and safety of a woman as well—with the same woman with whom he was renewing the affair broken off by a trick of fate nine years before. We contend——”
“Yes. Well, the Court contends that your questioning along these lines has been quite exhaustive enough, and that furthermore it doubts its relevance to the present issue. You may proceed.”
“Very well, Your Honour. . . . When Mr. Ives returned in 1919, were you still seeing much of Miss Dawson?”