“I did not.”
“Let’s get back now to what you were doing after eleven-thirty.”
“I lost my self-control and took Mrs. Prescott in my arms and told her that I loved her. Mrs. Anderson, watching from the adjoining house, can bear witness to that.”
Stella Anderson nodded vigorously.
The coroner said, “Never mind, Mrs. Anderson. You’re not on the witness stand now. You’ve already given your testimony. Go ahead, Mr. Driscoll. Tell us what happened after that.”
“After that I stepped into the other room to telephone the airport to get a reservation on the plane for Mrs. Prescott. I had just about finished telephoning when an automobile accident occurred in front of the place. I ran out to render what assistance I could, and then returned. Knowing that, because of the accident, I might be subpoenaed at any moment as a witness to that accident, and not wishing to leave Rosalind Prescott unprotected, I took the revolver from my pocket and gave it to her. That’s the Smith & Wesson .38 caliber revolver which has been introduced in evidence here. It was my revolver, but at the time I gave it to Mrs. Prescott it had not been fired. She told me that her husband had threatened to take her life, and I wanted her to have some means of protecting herself.”
“Then what did you do?”
“Then I left the house and ran into a couple of radio officers. They took my name, license number, and address, and told me I might be a witness. I told them I’d been telephoning at the time and hadn’t seen anything of what had occurred, but that didn’t seem to make any difference with them. Then I returned to Prescott’s house, told Rosalind Prescott that my identity had been discovered and I was afraid Walter would make some trouble, so I suggested we both leave at once for Reno.”
“What did she say?”
“She agreed.”