“Now, Ellen,” said the attorney, “I want you to tell us precisely why you called to me when you ran out of the house—why you said, ‘Save me, Colonel.’”
“I was scared,” replied the witness. “I didn’t know what was going to happen to me.”
“You thought the same thing that had happened to the lawyer, Mr. Collander, might also happen to you.”
“I don’t know, Colonel. I was scared.”
It was the third day of the criminal trial. Colonel Armant had put the prisoner on the stand in her own defense. It seemed a desperate hazard. A woman remains an experiment as a witness. The old experts about the court room were pretty nearly a unit against the experiment in this case. The prisoner was too much of an enigma; one of those little, faded, blonde women, with a placid, inscrutable face—capable of everything or of nothing, as one chose to assume it.
The big attorney went on.
“You did know that something had happened to Mr. Collander?”
“I heard the shots—yes, I knew something had happened to him.”
“Just a moment, on this feature,” continued the attorney. “You do not agree with the chief of police about the number of shots fired; you thought there were three shots; one, and then two together, or almost together?”
The prosecuting attorney interrupted.