“Yes, but¯”
“And you saw Jim Haight go back into the pantry?”
“No such thing,” said Lola with asperity. ”I turned around and went away, leaving Jim at the door!”
“That’s all,” said Carter softly; he even tried to help her off the stand, but Lola drew herself up and went back to her chair haughtily.
“I should like,” said Carter to the Court, “to recall one of my previous witnesses. Frank Lloyd.”
As the bailiff bellowed: “Frank Lloyd to the stand!” Mr. Ellery Queen said to himself: “The build-up.”
Lloyd’s cheeks were yellow, as if something were rotting his blood. He shuffled to the stand, unkempt, slovenly, tight-mouthed. He looked once at Jim Haight, not ten feet away from him. Then he looked away, but there was evil in his green eyes.
He was on the stand only a few minutes. The substance of his testimony, surgically excised by Bradford, was that he now recalled an important fact which he had forgotten in his previous testimony. Jim Haight had not been the only one out of the living room during the time he was mixing the last batch of cocktails before midnight. There had been one other.
Q.¯And who was that, Mr. Lloyd?
A.¯A guest of the Wrights’. Ellery Smith.
You clever animal, thought Ellery admiringly. And now I’m the animal, and I’m trapped . . . What to do?
Q.¯Mr. Smith left the room directly after the defendant?
A.¯Yes. He didn’t return until Haight came back with the tray of cocktails and started passing them around.
This is it, thought Mr. Queen.
Carter Bradford turned around and looked directly into Ellery’s eyes.
“I call,” said Cart with a snap in his voice, “Ellery Smith.”
Chapter 24
Ellery Smith to the Stand
As Mr. Ellery Queen left his seat, and crossed the courtroom foreground, and took the oath, and sat down in the witness chair, his mind was not occupied with Prosecutor Bradford’s unuttered questions or his own unut-tered answers.
He was reasonably certain what questions Bradford intended to ask, and he was positive what answers he would give. Bradford knew, or guessed, from the scene opened up to him by Frank Lloyd’s delayed recollection, what part the mysterious Mr. ”Smith” had played that bitter night. So one question would lead to another, and suspicion would become certainty, and sooner or later the whole story would have to come out. It never occurred to Ellery that he might frankly lie. Not because he was a saint, or a moralist, or afraid of consequences; but because his whole training had been in the search for truth, and he knew that whereas murder will not necessarily out, the truth must. So it was more practical to tell the truth than to tell the lie. Moreover, people expected you to lie in court, and therein lay a great advantage, if only you were clever enough to seize it.
No, Mr. Queen’s thoughts were occupied with another question altogether. And that was: How turn the truth, so damning to Jim Haight on its face, to Jim Haight’s advantage? That would be a shrewd blow, if only it could be delivered; and it would have the additional strength of unexpectedness, for surely young Bradford would never anticipate what he himself, now, on the stand, could not even imagine.
So Mr. Queen sat waiting, his brain not deigning to worry, but flexing itself, exploring, dipping into its deepest pockets, examining all the things he knew for a hint, a clue, a road to follow.
Another conviction crept into his consciousness as he answered the first few routine questions about his name and occupation and connection with the Wright family, and so on; and it arose from Carter Bradford himself.
Bradford was disciplining his tongue, speaking impersonally; but there was a bitterness about his speech that was not part of the words he was uttering. Cart was remembering that this lean and quiet-eyed man theoretically at his mercy was, in a sense, an author of more than books¯he was the author of Mr. Bradford’s romantic troubles, too.
Patty’s personality shimmered between them, and Mr. Queen remarked it with satisfaction; it was another advantage he held over his inquisitor. For Patty blinded young Mr. Bradford’s eyes and drugged his quite respectable intelligence. Mr. Queen noted the advantage and tucked it away and returned to his work of concentration while the uppermost forces of his mind paid attention to the audible questions.
And suddenly he saw how he could make the truth work for Jim Haight!
He almost chuckled as he leaned back and gave his whole mind to the man before him. The very first pertinent question reassured him¯Bradford was on the trail, his tongue hanging out.
“Do you recollect, Mr. Smith, that we found the three letters in the defendant’s handwriting as a result of Mrs. Haight’s hysterical belief that you had told us about them?”
“Yes.”
“Do you also recall two unsuccessful attempts on my part that day to find out from you what you knew about the letters?”
“Quite well.”
Bradford said softly: “Mr. Smith, today you are on the witness stand, under oath to tell the whole truth. I now ask you: Did you know of the existence of those three letters before Chief Dakin found them in the defendant’s house?”
And Ellery said: “Yes, I did.”
Bradford was surprised, almost suspicious.
“When did you first learn about them?”
Ellery told him, and Bradford’s surprise turned into satisfaction.
“Under what circumstances?” This was a rapped question, tinged with contempt. Ellery answered meekly.
“Then you knew Mrs. Haight was in danger from her husband?”
“Not at all. I knew there were three letters saying so by implication.”
“Well, did you or did you not believe the defendant wrote those letters?”
Judge Martin made as if to object, but Mr. Queen caught the Judge’s eye and shook his head ever so slightly.
“I didn’t know.”
“Didn’t Miss Patricia Wright identify her brother-in-law’s handwriting for you, as you just testified?”
Miss Patricia Wright, sitting fifteen feet away, looked murder at them both impartially.
“She did. But that did not make it so.”
“Did you check up yourself?”
“Yes. But I don’t pretend to be a handwriting expert.”
“But you must have come to some conclusion, Mr. Smith?”
“Objection!” shouted Judge Martin, unable to contain himself. ”His conclusion.”
“Strike out the question,” directed Judge Newbold.
Bradford smiled. ”You also examined the volume belonging to the defendant, Edgcomb’s Toxicology, particularly pages seventy-one and seventy-two, devoted to arsenic, with certain sentences underlined in red crayon?”
“I did.”
“You knew from the red-crayon underlining in the book that if a crime were going to be committed, death by arsenic poisoning was indicated?”
“We could quarrel about the distinction between certainty and probability,” replied Mr. Queen sadly, “but to save argument¯let’s say I knew; yes.”
“It seems to me, Your Honor,” said Eli Martin in a bored voice, “that this is an entirely improper line of questioning.”
“How so, Counsel?” inquired Judge Newbold.
“Because Mr. Smith’s thoughts and conclusions, whether certainties, probabilities, doubts, or anything else, have no conceivable bearing upon the facts at issue.”
Bradford smiled again, and when Judge Newbold asked him to limit his questions to events and conversations, he nodded carelessly, as if it did not matter.
“Mr. Smith, were you aware that the third letter of the series talked about the ‘death’ of Mrs. Haight as if it had occurred on New Year’s Eve?”