“Yes, sir.”
“Where?” Hamilton Burger asked.
“I was coming back from the country club and—”
“Do you see this map on the blackboard”
“Yes, sir.”
“Can you point to the place where you saw the defendant?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Please do so.”
The witness approached the map. “It was right here,” he said. “And when I first saw her she was running up the street. Then she stopped and walked for a way, getting her breath. Then she started running again. Then she walked. Then she saw me and waved her arm.”
“Return to the witness stand, please,” Hamilton Burger said. “Then what happened?”
“She got in the cab with me and was all breathless. She seemed very much excited and disturbed. I asked her where she wanted to go. She couldn’t tell me at first. Then she told me to take her to the Union Station.”
“And you took her there?”
“Yes, sir.”
“What time was this?”
“I picked her up a little before five o’clock. Around a quarter to five, I guess.”
“And what time did you get to the Union Station?”
“A little after five o’clock.”
“On the third of June?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Cross-examine,” Hamilton Burger said.
Mason smiled affably. “When did you next see the defendant, Mr. Keddie?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know?” Mason asked in simulated surprise.
“No, sir. I know that I saw her the next day in a lineup, and I may have seen her again that evening, but I just can’t be sure. You see, we have so many passengers and sometimes we don’t look back when—”
“Now just a moment,” Mason said. “Never mind making an argument. Just answer the question.”
“Your Honor, I submit that’s part of his answer,” Hamilton Burger said. “A witness always has a right to explain his answer. I submit the witness be allowed to finish.”
“I think it would be better for you to bring these matters out on redirect examination,” Judge Sedgwick ruled. “You’ll have ample opportunity to bring out the complete situation on redirect examination.”
“Very well,” Hamilton Burger said, yielding with poor grace.
“Now, when you testified on the preliminary examination,” Mason said, “you were very positive that you hadn’t seen the defendant from the time you picked her up on the afternoon of June third until you saw her in the lineup on June fourth, isn’t that right?”
“Yes, sir.”
“That’s all,” Mason said.
“Were you mistaken at the time of the preliminary examination?” Hamilton Burger asked.
“I was confused.”
“Were you mistaken?”
“Yes, sir, I was.”
“That’s all.”
“Just a minute,” Mason said. “You say you were mistaken, Mr. Keddie?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Do you mean by that that you swore to something that wasn’t so?”
“Oh, Your Honor,” Hamilton Burger said, “I object to that as not proper cross-examination. That’s an attempt to browbeat the witness.”
“I’m not browbeating the witness,” Mason said. “I’m just asking him if he swore to something that wasn’t so.”
“It was an honest mistake,” Hamilton Burger said.
“Are you now trying to testify,” Mason asked, “as to the state of mind of this witness?”
“I’m telling the Court the facts.”
“I want the witness to tell the facts,” Mason said.
“The objection is overruled,” Judge Sedgwick said.
“You testified to something that wasn’t so?” Mason asked.
“Yes, sir, I was mistaken. I was confused.”
“You aren’t confused now?”
“No, sir.”
“How did you happen to recognize your mistake?”
“Why, the district attorney found the person who had rented the cab. He pointed her out to me and told me she was a friend of the—”
“Just testify to what you know of your own knowledge,” Hamilton Burger said. “Don’t testify to hearsay.”
“No, no, go right ahead,” Mason said to the witness. “Tell me what Hamilton Burger told you.”
Judge Sedgwick smiled.
“Your Honor, that’s improper. That’s hearsay evidence,” Burger protested. “What I may have said to the witness is entirely outside of the issues.”
“He’s giving his reasons, Your Honor,” Mason said in a conversational tone of voice which was in sharp contrast to Hamilton Burger’s excited tones.
“Go ahead,” Judge Sedgwick said, smiling. “Answer the question.”
“Go ahead,” Mason told the witness. “You were saying that Hamilton Burger told you — What did he tell you?”
“Well, he told me that he’d had detectives trace down all of the close friends of the defendant to see if they could find the person who had been in the cab with her, and he pointed out this witness who has just been on the stand and told me she was the one, and then I recognized her.”
Mason smiled. “The district attorney pointed her out to you?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Where did he point her out to you?”
“In his office.”
“Did she see you at that time?”
“No, sir. I was in another room. It was a room that had one of those trick mirrors — it was a window on my side but a mirror on her side.”
“The district attorney put you in that room?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And then put Mrs. Marvel on the other side of this trick mirror?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And then the district attorney came into the room and pointed out Mrs. Marvel to you and told you she was the one?”
“Yes, sir.”
“So that made you feel that you had testified erroneously at the preliminary hearing?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And sworn to something that wasn’t so?”
“Yes, sir.”
“At the preliminary heating, before you had had the benefit of the advice of the district attorney, you said you had never seen the defendant again until you saw her in the lineup on the fourth, isn’t that right?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Well,” Mason said affably, “you’re to be congratulated on having the district attorney take such pains with you. If it hadn’t been for his interference, you’d have testified to the same thing now that you testified to at the time of the preliminary examination, wouldn’t you?”
“I suppose so. Yes.”
“So your testimony today has been inspired by statements made to you by the district attorney?”
“Well, I guess so, yes.”
“Thank you,” Mason said. “That’s all.”
Hamilton Burger, angry and exasperated, said, “Very well, that’s all. I have no further questions. I’ll call Stephen Ardmore to the stand.”
Ardmore came forward, was sworn, testified that he was a detective and had been a detective on the third of June of the present year.
“Did you have occasion to examine the house occupied by the defendant and her husband, Enright Harlan?”
“Yes, sir.”
“When was that examination made?”
“On the fourth of June of this year.”
“Did you have occasion to examine certain wearing apparel belonging to the defendant?”
“I did.”
“I call your attention to a certain pair of gloves and ask you if you examined those gloves?”
“I did.”
“What did you find, if anything?”
“When I placed those gloves under a vacuum cleaner in which there was a filter to trap any dust recovered from those gloves, I found certain foreign substances in the filter paper.”
“Did you identify some of those foreign substances?”
“Yes, I identified one of them.”