Part 22 (2/2)
”And after he left San Francisco to go East and visit his brother did you ever hear from him?”
”Yes. He wrote frequently, telling me about his brother's recovery from illness and other affairs, and then later that he had decided to enlist in the army.”
”At that time, Miss Morgan, had you ever known the State's witness here, Richard Glover?”
”It was about that time that I first met him.”
”Describe your first encounter with him.”
Again the carefully prepared report. But she was gaining in self-possession now, and the veil seemed to annoy her. With steady fingers she reached up and removed it. Clinton Morgan, watching her from the front row of seats, with a hawklike vigilance, was suddenly reminded of that Sunday night in the old library when she had first broken her long silence concerning Roger Kenwick, and had seemed all at once to come into a belated heritage.
The jurymen were leaning slightly forward in their seats, their eyes fixed upon the regal, fur-coated figure with delicately flushed profile showing clear-cut as a cameo against the frosted window-pane. Dayton thought that he caught an elusive fragrance that reminded him of something growing in his mother's garden.
”And how many times,” he proceeded, ”how many times have you seen Richard Glover during the past year?”
”I can't say exactly. For several months after our first meeting I didn't see him at all. But during the last three months his calls have been more and more frequent.”
”Has your brother known of these visits?”
”My brother was in government service in Was.h.i.+ngton until about two months ago. He didn't know of them until he returned.”
”And has he approved of them?”
”No, I can't say that he has.”
”Did he ever give any reason for his opposition?”
”He told me that he suspected Mr. Glover of being an adventurer who was in need of----”
Here the district attorney interrupted. ”We object. The suspicions of another person are irrelevant, incompetent, and have nothing to do with the case.”
”Sustained,” the judge decreed. ”Stick to the facts, Mr. Dayton.”
”During those three months, Miss Morgan, has Richard Glover made an effort to induce you to marry him?”
Her reply was given in a very low voice, but Dayton was sure that the jury caught it and he did not ask her to repeat. It was evident that the audience heard it, too, for another murmur rose and trailed off into silence before the lawyer went on. ”Is it true that _you_ were the one who discovered the clue which led you and your brother to seek the services of Mr. Jarvis on this case?”
She acknowledged it with a single word.
”And what was that clue?”
The gloved fingers closed a little closer over the arm of the chair. And then followed a story which caused Roger Kenwick to tear his gaze away from the fantastic palm-trees and fix it upon Richard Glover's face.
There was no resentment in his eyes, but only the dawning of a great light. Granville Jarvis, watching him as a physician might watch beside the bedside of an unconscious patient, knew by the leaping flame in those somber eyes that the last lap of the long journey had been covered, and that Roger Kenwick's memory had come home to him. But if that knowledge brought him a scientist's satisfaction, he gave no sign of it. After that one intent moment, his eyes returned to the witness-stand and fixed themselves upon Marcreta Morgan's face. Dayton was proceeding relentlessly.
”If you knew from the first that Richard Glover had stolen this story which he read to you as his own, why didn't you relate the circ.u.mstance to Mr. Kenwick when you saw him on the night that he was arrested for murder?”
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