The Rest Hollow Mystery Part 22

"And this was the report that you turned over to Professor Morgan at the end of your investigation?" Dayton inquired.

"This was the report. I was working on it with him up in San Francisco until late last night. We almost missed the train trying to fit together the final details. But I think the story, as I have given it to you, is now complete."

"Now, one other thing, Mr. Jarvis. In the first part of your testimony you said that Mr. Morgan told you that he had stumbled upon a clue that had made him suspicious of Glover. Did he disclose to you the nature of that clue?"

"Not at first. I told him that I preferred to work upon some theories of my own, unprejudiced by any evidence that he might have to offer."

"And how many times have you seen Mr. Morgan since then?"

"Only once. We came down from San Francisco together last night."

"Then you made no reports to him before?"

For the first time, the witness hesitated. Then his reply came with the customary clearness. "Not to him. I have reported to Miss Morgan on several occasions."

"Then you have been really working with her upon this case?"

"Yes, almost entirely with her."

There was a very obvious reluctance in his voice now, but Dayton went on imperturbably. "When you came down from San Francisco last night, Mr.

Jarvis, was Professor Morgan's sister in your party?"

"Yes."

Dayton swept a glance over the rows of faces before him. "Is Miss Morgan in the court-room now?"

"She has just come in." The promptness with which the witness had given his earlier testimony served to make his present reluctance the more apparent.

Dayton brought his eyes back to the witness-stand. "That will do."

Jarvis stepped down. The voice of the auditors, beginning in a subdued murmur, rose in marked crescendo. No word in it could be distinguished from another. Yet upon Roger Kenwick's sensitive nerves this message from the outer world registered. It was unmistakably applause.

For the first time since the trial began, he felt his mask of graven indifference slipping from him. He was trembling in every fiber, and with one unsteady hand he made a pathetic effort to quiet the other. And then there fell upon his ears like the crash of thunder Dayton's curt command, "Call Miss Morgan."

CHAPTER XIX

As the men standing in the far aisle made way for the new witness, Kenwick sat with averted eyes. Through the open window he stared out at the court-house palms which grew to gigantic size and then diminished under his blistering gaze. It was a monstrous thing, he told himself, for Clinton Morgan to allow this; to permit his sister to subject herself to such a strain. What could he be thinking about? But underneath his miserable apprehension for her there was something else; something else that sent the fiery blood rioting through his veins. For she must have been willing. Over and over he repeated to himself this a.s.surance. She must have been willing to come to his defense, for had she not been, they could have found a way to avoid it.

Marcreta Morgan, in long fur-trimmed motor-coat and dark veil, took the place which Granville Jarvis had vacated. She had none of Madeleine Marstan's calm self-a.s.surance, but although she gave her testimony in a low voice, it was distinctly audible throughout the court-room. She sat with one gloved hand clasping the arm of the chair and her eyes resting upon Dayton. Only once, at the very end of the examination, did she raise them to meet the argus-eyed spectators. Dayton put his questions in an easy conversational tone as though he and the witness were alone in the room.

"Miss Morgan, how long have you known the prisoner?"

"About two years."

"Describe the occasion of your first meeting."

She did so in words that sounded carefully rehea.r.s.ed.

"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?"