Chapter I

The red-headed girl sank into the seat in the middle of the first row with a gasp of relief. Sixth seat from the aisle—yes, that was right; the label on the arm of the golden-oak chair stared up at her reassuringly. Row A, seat 15, Philadelphia Planet. The ones on either side of her were empty. Well, it was a relief to know that there were four feet of space left unoccupied in Redfield, even if only temporarily. She was still shaken into breathless stupor by the pandemonium in the corridors outside—the rattling of regiments of typewriters, of armies of tickers, the shouts of infuriated denizens of telephone booths, the hurrying, frantic faces of officials, the scurrying and scampering of dozens of rusty-haired freckled-faced insubordinate small boys, whose olive-drab messenger uniforms alone saved them from extermination; the newspaper men—you could spot them at once, looking exhausted and alert and elaborately bored; the newspaper women, keen and purposeful and diverted; and above and around and below all these licensed inhabitants, the crowd—a vast, jostling,

lunging beast, with one supreme motive galvanizing it to action—an immense, a devouring curiosity that sent it surging time and time again against the closed glass doors with their blue-coated guardians, fragile barriers between it and the consummation of its desire. For just beyond those doors lay the arena where the beast might slake its hunger at will, and it was not taking its frustration of that privilege amiably.

The red-headed girl set her little black-feathered hat straight with unsteady fingers. She wasn’t going to forget that crowd in a hurry. It had growled at her—actually growled—when she’d fought her way through it, armed with the magic of the little blue ticket that spelled open sesame as well as press section. Who could have believed that even curiosity would turn nice old gray-headed ladies and mild-looking gentlemen with brown moustaches and fat matrons with leather bags and thin flappers with batik scarfs into one huge ravenous beast? She panted again, reminiscently, at the thought of the way they’d shoved and squashed and kneaded—and then settled down to gratified inspection.

So this was a courtroom!

Not a very large or very impressive room, looked at from any angle. It might hold three hundred people at a pinch, and there were, conservatively, about three thousand crowding the corridors and walking the streets of Redfield in their efforts to expand its limits. Fan-shaped, with nine rows of the golden-oak seats packed with grimly triumphant humanity, the first three neatly tagged with the little white labels that metamorphosed them into the press section. Golden-oak panelling half-way up the walls, and then whitewashed plaster—rather dingy, smoky plaster, its defects relentlessly revealed by the pale autumnal sunshine flooding in through the great windows and the dome of many-coloured glass, lavish and heartening enough to compensate for much of the grimness and the grime.

Near enough for the red-headed girl to touch was a low rail, and beyond that rail a little empty space, like a stage—empty of actors, but cluttered with chairs and tables. At the back was a small platform with a great high-backed black leather chair, and a still smaller platform on a slightly lower level, with a rail about it and a much more uncomfortable-looking chair. The judge’s seat, the witness box—she gave a little sigh of pure uncontrollable excitement, and a voice next to her said affably:

“Hi! Greetings, stranger, or hail, friend, as the case may be. Can I get by you into the next seat without damaging you and those feet of yours materially?”

The red-headed girl scrambled guiltily to the offending feet, unobtrusive enough in themselves, but most obtrusively extended across the narrow passage, and turned a flushed and anxious countenance on her cheerful critic, now engaged in folding himself competently into the exiguous space provided by the golden-oak chair. A tall lanky young man, with a straight nose, mouse-coloured hair, shrewd gray eyes, and an expression that was intended to be that of a hard-boiled cynic, and that worked all right unless he grinned. He wore a shabby tweed suit, a polka-dotted tie, had three very sharp pencils, and a good-sized stack of telegraph blanks clasped to his heart. Obviously a reporter—a real reporter. The red-headed girl attempted to conceal her gold pencil and leather-bound notebook, smiling tentatively and ingratiatingly.

“Covering it for a New York paper?” inquired the Olympian one graciously.

“No,” said the red-headed girl humbly; “a Philadelphia one—the Philadelphia Planet. Is yours New York?”

“M’m—h’m—Sphere. Doing colour stuff?”

“Oh, I hope so,” replied the red-headed girl so fervently that the reporter looked somewhat startled. “You see, I don’t know whether it will have colour or not. I’m not exactly a regular reporter.”

“Oh, you aren’t, aren’t you? Well, if it’s no secret, just exactly what are you? A finger-print expert?”

“I’m a—a writer,” said the red-headed girl, looking unusually small and dignified. “This is my first as—assignment.” It was frightful to stammer just when you particularly wanted not to.

The real reporter eyed her severely. “A writer, hey? A real, honest-to-goodness, walking-around writer, with a fountain pen and a great big vocabulary and a world of promise and everything? Well, I’ll bet you a hot dog to a soup plate of fresh caviar that about four days from now you’ll be parading through these marble halls telling the cockeyed world that you’re a journalist.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t dare. Do all of you call yourselves journalists?”

The reporter looked as though he were about to suffocate. “Get this,” he said impressively: “The day that you hear me call myself a journalist you have my full and free permission to call me a —— Well, no, on second thought, a lady couldn’t. But if you ever call me a journalist, smile. And if you solemnly swear never to call yourself one I’ll show you the ropes a bit, because you’re a poor ignorant little writing critter that doesn’t know any better than to come to a murder trial—and besides that you have red hair. Want to know anything?”

“Oh,” cried the red-headed girl, “I didn’t know that anyone so horrid could be so nice. I want to know everything. Let’s begin at the beginning.”

“Well, in case you don’t know where you are, this is the courtroom of Redfield, county seat of Bellechester, twenty-five miles from the great metropolis of New York. And in case you’d like to know what it’s all about, it’s the greatest murder trial of the century—about every two years another one of ’em comes along. This particular one is the trial of the People versus Susan Ives and Stephen Bellamy for the wilful, deliberate, and malicious murder of Madeleine Bellamy.”

“A murder trial,” said the red-headed girl softly. “Well, I should think that ought to be about the most tremendous thing in the world.”

“Oh, you do, do you?” remarked the reporter, and for a moment it was no effort at all for him to look cynical. “Well, I’ll have you called at about seven to-morrow morning, though it’s a pity ever to wake anyone up that can have such beautiful dreams as that. The most tremendous thing in the world, says she. Well, well, well!”

The red-headed girl eyed him belligerently. “Well, yourself! Perhaps you’ll be good enough to tell me what’s more tremendous than murder.”

“Oh, you tell me!” urged the reporter persuasively.

“All right, I’ll tell you that the only story that you’re going to be able to interest every human being in, from the President of the United States to the gentleman who takes away the ashes, is a good murder story. It’s the one universal solvent. The old lady from Dubuque will be at it the first thing in the morning, and the young lady from Park Avenue will be at it the last thing at night. And if it’s a love story too, you’re lucky, because then you’ve got the combination that every really great writer that ever lived has picked out to wring hearts and freeze the marrow in posterity’s bones.”

“Oh, come! Aren’t you getting just a dash over-wrought? Every great writer? What about Wordsworth?”

“Oh, pooh!” said the red-headed girl fiercely. “Wordsworth! What about Sophocles and Euripides and Shakespeare and Browning? Do you know what ‘The Ring and the Book’ is? It’s a murder trial! What’s ‘Othello’ but a murder story? What’s ‘Hamlet’ but five murder stories? What’s ‘Macbeth’? Or ‘The Cenci’? Or ‘Lamia’? Or ‘Crime and Punishment’? Or ‘Carmen’? Or——”

“I give up,” said the reporter firmly—“or, no, wait a moment—can it be that they are murder stories? Quite a little reader in your quiet way, aren’t you?”

The red-headed girl ignored him sternly. “And do you want me to tell you why it’s the most enthralling and absorbing theme in the world? Do you?”

“No,” replied the reporter hastily. “Yes—or how shall I put it? Yes and no, let’s say.”

“It’s because it’s real,” said the red-headed girl, with a sudden startling gravity. “It’s the only thing that’s absolutely real in the world, I think. Something that makes you reckless enough not to care a tinker’s dam for your own life or another’s—that’s something to think about, isn’t it?”

“Well, yes,” said the reporter slowly. “Now that you put it that way, that’s something to think about.”

“It’s good for us, too,” said the girl, “We’re all so everlastingly canny and competent and sophisticated these days, going mechanically through a mechanical world, sharpening up our little emotions, tuning up our little sensations—and suddenly there’s a cry of ‘Murder!’ in the streets, and we stop and look back, shuddering, over our shoulder—and across us falls the shadow of a savage with a bloodstained club, and we know that it’s good and dangerous and beautiful to be alive.”

“I rather get you,” said the reporter thoughtfully. “And, strangely enough, there’s just a dash in what you say. It’s the same nice, creepy, luxurious feeling that you get when you pull up closer to a good roaring fire with carpet slippers on your feet and a glass of something hot and sweet in your hand and listen to the wind yowling outside and see the rain on the black windowpanes. Nothing in the world to make you feel warm and safe and sheltered and cozy like a good storm or a good murder—what?”

“Nothing in the world,” agreed the red-headed girl; and she added pensively, “It’s always interested me more than anything else.”

“Has it indeed? Well, don’t let it get you. I’d just keep it as a hobby if I were you. At your present gait you’re going to make some fellow an awfully happy widow one of these days. Are you a good marksman?”

“You think that murder’s frightfully amusing, don’t you?” The red-headed girl’s soft voice had a sudden edge to it.

The real reporter’s face changed abruptly. “No, I don’t,” he said shortly. “I think it’s rotten—a dirty, bloody, beastly business that used to keep me awake nights until I grew a shell over my skin and acquired a fairly workable sense of humour to use on all these clowns called human beings. Of course, I’m one of them myself, but I don’t boast about it. And if you’re suffering from the illusion that nothing shocks me, I’ll tell you right now that it shocks me any amount that a scrap of a thing like you, with all that perfectly good red hair and a rather nice arrangement in dimples, should be practically climbing over that rail in your frenzy to find out what it’s all about.”

“I think that men are the most amusing race in the world,” murmured the red-headed girl. “And I think that it’s awfully appealing of you to be shocked. But, you see, my grandfather—who was as stern and Scotch and hidebound as anyone that ever breathed—told me when I was fourteen years old that a great murder trial was the most superbly dramatic spectacle that the world afforded. And he ought to have known what he was talking about—he was one of the greatest judges that ever lived.”

“Well, maybe they were in his day. And you said Scotch, didn’t you? Oh, well, they do it better over there. England, too—bunches of flowers on the clerks’ tables and wigs on the judges’ heads, and plenty of scarlet and gold, and all the great lawyers in the land taking a whack at it, and never a cross word out of one of them——”

“He used to say that is was like a hunt,” interrupted the red-headed girl firmly, “with the judge as master of the hounds and the lawyers as the hounds, baying as they ran hot on the scent, and all the rest of us galloping hard at their heels—jury, spectators, public.”

“Sure,” said the reporter grimly. “With the quarry waiting, bound and shackled and gagged till they catch up with him and tear him to pieces—it’s a great hunt all right, all right!”

“It’s not a human being that they’re hunting, idiot—it’s truth.”

“Truth!” The reporter’s laugh was loud and long and free enough to cause a dozen heads to turn. “Oh, what you’re going to learn before you get out of here! A hunt for truth, is it? Well, now, you get this straight: If that’s what you’re expecting to find here, you’ll save yourself a whole lot of bad minutes by taking the next train back to Philadelphia. Truth! I’m not running down murder trials from the point of view of interest, you understand. A really good one furnishes all the best points of a first-class dog fight and a highly superior cross-word puzzle, and that ought to be enough excitement for anyone. But if you think that the opposing counsel are honestly in pursuit of enlightenment——”

A clear high voice cut through the rustle and clatter like a knife.

“His Honour! His Honour the Court!” There was a mighty rustle of upheaval.

“Who’s that?” inquired a breathless voice at the reporter’s shoulder.

“That’s the tallest and nicest court crier in the United States of America. Name’s Ben Potts. Best falsetto voice outside the Russian Orthodox Church. Kindly notice the central hair part and spit curls. And here we have none other than His Honour himself, Judge Anthony Bristed Carver.”

“Hear ye! Hear ye! Hear ye!” chanted the court crier. “All those having business before this honourable court draw near, give your attention and you shall be heard!”

The tall figure in flowing black moved deliberately toward the chair on the dais, which immediately assumed the aspect of a throne. Judge Carver’s sleek iron-gray head and aquiline face were an adornment to any courtroom. He swept a pair of brilliant deep-set eyes over the room, seated himself, and reached for the gavel in one motion.

“And he’ll use it, too, believe you me,” murmured the reporter with conviction. “Sternest old guy on the bench.”

“Where are the prisoners—where do they come from?”

“The defendants, as they whimsically prefer to be called for the time being, come through that little door to the left of the judge’s room; that enormous red-faced, sandy-haired old duffer talking to the thin young man in the tortoise-shell glasses is Mrs. Ives’s counsel, Mr. Dudley Lambert; the begoggled one is Mr. Bellamy’s counsel, Harrison Clark.”

“Where’s the prosecutor?”

“Oh, well, Mr. Farr is liable to appear almost anywhere, like Mephistopheles in Faust or that baby that so obligingly came out of the everywhere into the here. He’s all for the unexpected— Ah, what did I tell you? There he is now, conferring with the judge and the defense counsel.”

The red-headed girl leaned forward eagerly. The slender individual, leaning with rather studied ease against the railing that hedged in the majesty of the law, suggested a curious cross between a promising light of Tammany Hall and the youngest and handsomest of the Spanish Inquisitioners. Black hair that deserved the qualification of raven, a pale regular face that missed distinction by a destructive quarter of an inch, narrow blue eyes back of which stirred some restless fire, long slim hands—what was there about him that wasn’t just right? Perhaps that dark coat fitted him just a shade too well, or that heavily brocaded tie in peacock blue— Well, at any rate, his slim elegance certainly made Lambert look like an awkward, cross, red-faced baby, for all his thatch of graying hair.

“Here they come!” Even the reporter’s level, mocking voice was a trifle tense.

The little door to the left of the judge opened and two people came in, as leisurely and tranquilly as though they were advancing toward easy chairs and a tea table before an open fire. A slight figure in a tan tweed suit, with a soft copper silk handkerchief at her throat and a little felt hat of the same colour pulled down over two wings of pale gold hair, level hazel eyes under level dark brows, and a beautiful mouth, steady-lipped, generous, sensitive—the most beautiful mouth, thought the red-headed girl, that she had ever seen. She crossed the short distance between the door and the chair beside which stood Mr. Lambert with a light, boyish swing. She looked rather like a boy—a gallant, proud little boy, striding forward to receive the victor’s laurels. Did murderesses walk like that?

Behind her came Stephen Bellamy, the crape band on his dark coat appallingly conspicuous; only a few inches taller than Sue Ives, with dark hair lightly silvered, and a charming, sensitive, olive-skinned face. As they seated themselves, he flashed the briefest of smiles at his companion—a grave, consoling smile, singularly sweet—then turned an attentive countenance to the judge. Did a murderer smile like that?

The red-headed girl sat staring at them blankly.

“Oh, Lord!” moaned the reporter at her side. “Why did that old jackass Lambert let her come in here in that rig? If he had the sense that God gives a dead duck he’d know that she ought to be wearing something black and frilly and pitiful instead of stamping around in brown leather Oxfords as though she were headed straight for the first tee instead of the electric chair.”

“Oh, don’t!” The red-headed girl’s voice was passionate in its protest. “You don’t know what you’re talking about. Look, what are they doing now? What’s that wheel?”

“That’s for choosing the jury; it looks as though they were going to start right now. Yes, they’re off; that’s the sheriff spinning the wheel. He calls the names——”

“Timothy Forbes!”

A stocky man with a small shrewd eye and a reddish moustache wormed his way forward.

“Number 1! Take your seat in the box.”

“Will it take long?” asked the red-headed girl.

“Alexander Petty!”

“Not at this rate,” replied the reporter, watching the progress toward the jury box of a tow-headed little man with steel-bowed spectacles and a suit a little shiny at the elbows.

“This is going to be just as rapid as the law allows, I understand. Both sides are rarin’ to go, and they’re not liable to touch their peremptory challenges; and they’re not likely to challenge for cause, either, unless it’s a darned good cause.”

“Eliphalet Slocum!”

A keen-faced elderly man with a mouth like a steel trap joined the men in the box.

“It’s a special panel that they’re choosing from,” explained the reporter, lowering his voice cautiously as Judge Carver glanced ominously in his direction. “Redfield’s pretty up and coming for a place of its size. All the obviously undesirables are weeded out, so it saves an enormous amount of time.”

“Cæsar Smith!”

Mr. Smith advanced at a trot, his round, amiable countenance beamingly exposing three gold teeth to the pleased spectators.