“You don’t mean that. You are as anxious as I am in your heart, Terry.”
“Perhaps I am, but he might have had the decency to let you know after the way you’ve coddled him.” Terrence unfolded his long self like an extension ladder from the chair in which he had been slumped. He stretched his arms and yawned. “Don’t you worry, Pam, he will come home when he is hungry and his money gives out. His get-away shows that he’s a lot better, doesn’t it? And so to study. First, though, I’ll go out and tuck in the hens and kiss the cow and horse good-night. Do you know the first thing I’d do if I came into the money — I’d go the rounds and thumb my nose at every item of live-stock on our ancestral estate; then with an incubator full of eggs to draw on for balls, I’d practise my curve on the barn windows. That’s how crazy I am about the poultry business. Where’s the Babe?”
“Hitty shut him in the barn and left the door partly open.”
“I thought the old girl was frightened to death of him?”
“She is. That act was a triumph of affection over fear. I must have seemed a little low when I came from the court-house. She did everything she could to help.” Pamela was indignantly aware of the unsteadiness of her voice. Terrence awkwardly patted her shoulder.
“Looks as if you had managed to chip her granite heart. Don’t worry, Pam. Everything’s going to be all right. Nightie-night.”
The light of Philip Carr’s cigarette glowed and faded as his eyes followed Terrence on his way to the barn. Came the sound of the great door being pushed open, the joyous yelping of a dog, the fragrance of hay, the warm, sickish scent of animals.
“That boy is pretty well fed up on farming, if you ask me. Don’t blame him,” he sympathized.
Pamela bit her lips furiously to steady them. What had happened to her tonight? She was all shaky inside. Was it the shock of her father’s sudden departure? She should be happy that he was well enough to go. Had she lost grip on her courage because she had stopped work for twenty-four hours? Had she lost faith in her attorney? He had seemed horribly casual. She tried to speak lightly.
“Terry is a dear. He is the sweetest, bravest boy. I —” Her voice broke. Philip Carr flung his arm about her and pulled her head to his shoulder. She tried to draw away, relaxed against him.
“I — I — don’t know what is the m-matter with me. Things are in s-such a m-m-mess.” The last word was a sob. He laid his head against her soft hair.
“Cry it out, dear. You’ve had this coming to you. You know I love you, don’t you? I’ve been waiting to hear from the settings before I told you. I wanted to have something of my own to offer you. You know —”
A light swept the steps. Pamela jerked her head from the comforting shoulder. A roadster. A soundless roadster! A high-powered roadster! Scott’s? Had he seen the tableau on the front steps? Of course, unless he was blind. Served her right for being such a weak sister.
Voices in the house. To whom was he talking? She ran into the hall. Scott Mallory, his face colorless, and her father were at the foot of the stairs. Harold Leigh, pale, but defiant, forestalled his daughter’s protest.
“Now, don’t make a scene, Pamela. I had business in New York. I flew there and back to Boston. Had a conference with Mallory and he drove me down. That’s all.” He gripped the rail. “Hang these confounded stairs, must have been designed for a chamois.”
Scott Mallory caught Pamela’s hands as she took a quick step toward the door.
“Wait. Was Carr kissing you?”
Her temper flamed in one of its periodic reactions to his authority. “And if he were? Would you have me go to my grave unsung and unkissed? How dare you come into this house and ask questions? You haven’t been here for weeks and now you — you —” her voice broke. Try as she would she couldn’t piece it together.
Mallory looked up at the man who was just disappearing in the hall above, before he caught her in his arms, held her so close she could hear the heavy pounding of his heart.
“Go unkissed? Not so long as I’m on earth.” He crushed her closer. “You’ve got to listen, Pam —”
“Sitting alone in the dark, Phil?” Hilda Crane’s voice on the porch outside. “I thought I heard Scott’s car. I phoned his office and Miss Cryder told me that he was on his way down. I —”
With extraordinary agility Mallory kicked the door shut. From the floor above drifted the sound of strings, deep and full, high and shining, in forward marching rhythms. Tightly as she was held, Pamela managed a shrug of disdain.
“Philanderer!”
His laugh was reckless. “Am I? Well, if that’s what you think of me I’ll take some of the perks that go with the title.” He crushed her mouth under his, lingeringly released her only to snatch her close again, his eager, ardent lips on hers.
He let her go as the knob of the door turned. Pamela caught at the newel post to steady herself. She was half way up the stairs, Scott was lighting a cigarette when Hilda Crane entered the hall. In spite of her thrumming pulses she managed her voice creditably.
“I will give your message to Father, Mr. Mallory, it will not be necessary for you to wait.”
His eyes met hers. How dared he smile? Hilda Crane linked her arm in his.
“Scott, take me home, will you? I came up to make a reservation for tomorrow, Belle wanted to entertain a party at luncheon, but Phil Carr tells me that the Silver Moon won’t be open for business. Is that true, Miss Leigh?” Her voice was aggrieved.
Pamela resented her tone. “It will be closed until after the trial.”
Miss Crane clasped a hand over the one already on Mallory’s arm. “I spent the day in court. I was thrilled. Of course, I don’t know anything about it, but it seems to me that Mr. Hale’s argument was unanswerable.”
“He hasn’t argued yet, Hilda.” Mallory’s interruption was curt. “Though I haven’t a doubt he attempted it.”
“How do you know, Scott? You weren’t there.”
“Didn’t have to be there to know that counsel do not argue until both sides have put in their evidence.”
“Why, oh why didn’t they go? Was each one waiting for the other,” Pamela protested mentally. She couldn’t bear looking at them another instant. With an attempt at gaiety, she suggested:
“Would you mind finishing the discussion of the case on the way home? Phil asked me to go for a drive — and —”
Face darkly red, eyes black with anger, Mallory opened the door wide.
“Our mistake. Profuse regrets for having detained you.”
Philip Carr entered, blinking at the light.
“Just came in to say good-night, Pam. Got to call a man I know on long distance. May I take you home, Miss Crane?”
There was a note in Scott Mallory’s laugh which tightened Pamela’s throat unbearably.
“Too late, Carr. I am already elected for the honor.”
Chapter XIX
Obviously Phineas Carr was uneasy. He kept glancing at the clock on the court-room wall as he sat behind the table with his client beside him. He was as immaculately apparelled as yesterday except that there was no flower in his coat lapel. Five minutes before ten. The spectator benches were packed, the jurors were in their seats. Cecile and Hale were conferring. Pamela’s courage mounted as she watched them. The plaintiff was maddeningly complacent but her counsel was unmistakably disturbed. Had he discovered a weak link in the evidence for the prosecution?
In spite of her effort to keep her attention on her surroundings, Pamela’s thoughts persisted in slipping back to the scene in the hall last night. Scott’s face had been colorless, his voice icy when he had bade her a formal good-night. Of course, he had known that she had had no date for a drive. Why had she thrust Phil Carr between them? Because she had been unbearably hurt that Scott’s secretary had told Hilda Crane where he was — under instruction doubtless — and had put her off with, “Away for two weeks.” That was the answer.
If he cared so little for her that he kept away from the Silver
Moon, why had he kissed her? What was one kiss in this age of promiscuous kissing? She closed her eyes, every pulse in her body quivered, her lips still burned from the pressure of his. Of course he had seen her head on Phil’s shoulder as the car lamps had spotted them; equally of course, being a man, it wouldn’t occur to him that she might be so low in her mind after a day in court, that any masculine shoulder — it didn’t matter much whose, so long as it was a sympathetic one — would be a comfort. She had been too fiercely hurt to explain.
Phil had stood beside her on the porch as Scott Mallory’s roadster coasted down the drive; moonlight had turned the hair of the girl beside him on the seat to silver-gilt. Carr had whistled.
“Something tells me I made a break somewhere? What set Mallory on his ear? Did he think I was trying to cut in on him when I offered to take Hilda Crane home? He needn’t worry, I don’t want her. You asked me to be nice to her and I was doing my darndest.”
“Let’s forget them. Will you be at court tomorrow morning for the opening, Phil?”
He had deliberated before answering. “Can’t tell yet. I may — be called away on business.”
She must stop looking back, hadn’t she enough in the present to think about? She glanced around the crowded court-room. Philip Carr had not come. She missed him.
A chauffeur in navy blue uniform with brass buttons — such as the old-time coachman used to wear — his face red, his breath short, hurried into the court-room. He spoke to a sheriff who nodded affirmatively. The man entered the bar and laid a small package on the table behind which sat Phineas Carr.
“Sorry to keep you waiting, sir, but the mail was late.”
He opened the package, removed a perfect white carnation. Phineas Carr fastened it in the lapel of his coat. The chauffeur picked up the box.
“All right now, sir?”
Carr’s face relaxed in a whimsical smile. “Quite. Now the trial may go on. Take care of those flowers.”
“Yes sir.”
The chauffeur departed. Pamela looked after him, then at the man beside her. He had stopped fidgeting. Was it possible that a flower in his buttonhole could work that change?
“Court!”
The occupants of the room rose as one. The sheriff intoned. The judge took his seat. Hale put his witness on the stand, a witness who merely corroborated what those before had testified. Phineas Carr waved away cross-examination. He spoke to the girl beside him.
“It is your turn now, Miss Pamela. Nothing to be afraid of. When you go on that stand say to yourself, ‘I am right! I am right!’ You’ll get that across to the jury. Tell the truth and stick to it, no matter what Hale asks you. Answer my questions as I have coached you. Answer his with ‘yes’ or ‘no’ when you can get away with it.”
The room whirled before the girl’s eyes as she stepped to the witness-stand, steadied at the first word of her counsel. She felt as if he had gripped her hand tight in his. By question after kindly question, he led her on till she had told the story of her father’s financial and physical crash, of his wife’s desertion, of her utter bewilderment at the sudden turn in their fortunes, of the decision of Terrence and herself to take the invalid to the Cape. She touched on the necessity of selling her jewels to pay nurses and doctors. Counsel for plaintiff sprang to his feet, roared objection. The judge ordered the evidence stricken from the records. Hale resumed his seat obviously exultant.
The defense attorney smiled. The bit of testimony had been indelibly recorded in the minds of the jury. He touched on the dog episode, emphasized his client’s statement that the animal never before nor since had shown antipathy to a visitor on the place. Wasn’t that a slip, didn’t that play into Cecile’s hands, Pamela wondered nervously, in the instant before he passed on to the next question, quite as if the little matter of the dog were unworthy of his valuable time.
“Your witness, Mr. Hale.”
He sat down. Counsel for the prosecution rose. Pamela’s heart threatened to choke her with its clamor, she gripped the rail in front of her. Hale smiled suavely. His smug satisfaction at her evident perturbation steadied her as nothing else could have done. She slipped the betraying hand into the pocket of her jacket and returned his smile. He was plainly disconcerted. He pushed the papers about on his table, as if undecided, before he asked his first question. Strategic blunder. It reminded Pamela of Phineas Carr’s command:
“Say to yourself, ‘I am right! I am right!’ You’ll get that across to the jury.”
Hale, counsel for the plaintiff, shook out his whole bag of tricks; he smiled, he insinuated, he accused, he roared. He assumed a ponderous solemnity, he set traps. He featured the letter she had written to her stepmother, in which she had refused to give her sanctuary in time of need. He went dramatic over the attack of the dog. Phineas Carr interrupted in the midst of a heart-shaking peroration.
“Your Honor, may I remind my brother that this is not the time to argue his case to the jury?”
“Keep to the cross-examination of the witness, Mr. Hale,” rebuked the judge dryly.
Pamela found herself anticipating Hale’s questions. “I’ll wager he has taken the same plot-construction course I took,” she reflected with half her mind, while she fixed the other on the prosecuting attorney. She returned to her seat as limp as if she had been put through a wringing machine. Phineas Carr approved:
“Well done, my dear. Horace Hale didn’t advance plaintiff’s case by so much as the fraction of an inch.”
One after another Phineas Carr examined his witnesses. Pamela listened tensely. She forgot that she was being sued for the alienation of a husband’s affection, forgot that a verdict against her might mean the loss of the home Grandmother Leigh left her. Her attorney was superb. He experimented with his witnesses as a master-scientist might with potent, inflammable chemicals. So much of this, so much of that, a suave reminder here, a flick on the raw there, never enough to precipitate an explosion nor cause collapse into a dud.
Terrence’s tenure of the witness-stand was brief. Pamela’s heart thumped with pride as she looked at him. He was so loyal, so clean, so boyishly honest, the jury could not help but be impressed by his testimony for the defense.
Intermission followed. Brother and sister drove in the sedan to the shore. In the shadow of a bathhouse Pamela spread out the tempting luncheon Mehitable Betts had provided.
“Better take it,” she had insisted. “You may not want to go to the Inn today, you an’ Terry can picnic somewhere. ’Twill do you good to get away from people.”
“Wise Hitty,” the girl thought as her spirit quickened to the beauty, the mystery beneath the rippling cobalt sea. She shook her head as Terrence offered sandwiches, temptingly thin ones, suggestive of crisp lettuce, and olives and cream cheese. She sifted white, shining sand through her fingers.
“Couldn’t swallow. I — I — have a horrible premonition that something will break this afternoon.”
Terrence filled a cup with steaming coffee rich with cream from the thermos, added sugar with a lavish hand.
“Something will break, all right, if you don’t eat. What can happen to us — unexpected, I mean. Counsel for the prosecution has put his case in, hasn’t he?”
“Yes — but I can’t explain the curious feeling. Perhaps it is the effect of the strain. I missed Phil Carr in the court-room. He said he might be away on business.”
Terrence threw a pebble with practised skill at a gull soaring and dipping overhead.
“Phil’s a good scout. Was Hale broken up when his witness wasn’t on hand at the opening of court this morning?”
“Wasn’t on hand? What do you mean? She was there. Just another sob-sister for Cecile.”
Terrence’s eyes, big and velvety and black with surprise, were in striking contrast to the snowy hunk of angel cake in which he had set his teeth. He swallowed convulsively.
“She was there? Sure, Pam?”
“Sure? Of course, I am sure. What are you talking about?”
He rolled over in a paroxysm of mirth. “Now what do you know about that?” He shouted again.
“Terrence, if there is anything funny in this awful case, sit up and tell me about it. I’d like to see a joke, if there is one.”
His hand shook as he refilled his cup. “Can’t tell — now!” He choked over the coffee, dropped his head on his arms folded on his knees and shook with laughter.
His sister maintained an ominous silence. He raised his head, wiped his eyes. With a too evident attempt to divert her attention, he pointed excitedly toward a husky, smartly designed cruiser driving at full throttle, churning snowy fountains of spray as it hit the high spots.
“Watch her bank as she turns at full speed! Turning in her own length! Cutting through the water at a sixty-mile clip — if it’s an inch! What a boat!”
“She is a beauty. Her nickel bright work glitters in the sunlight like diamonds.”
“The glitter would catch your eye. You’re a North American Indian, Pam, when it comes to color and sparkle.”
“I’ll be as bronzed as an Indian if I sit here in the sun and wind much longer.” She drew a deep breath of the soft, briny air. “I feel made over. The breeze has blown the cobwebs from my mind.”
“Sure you won’t eat anything? All right, let’s go.” Terrence collected the remains of the luncheon. Pamela glanced at her wrist watch.
“There is still half an hour before court opens.”
“I know, but I must go for Hitty,” he gurgled irrepressibly, “et als.”
“You’re all gales and giggles inside, aren’t you, Terry? What others?”
“Did I say ‘others’? Just a figure of speech, woman.” He chuckled again: “Come on, let’s get going.”
Mehitable Betts was the first witness called at the afternoon session. Lucky Terrence had started when he did. What had sent him into such paroxysms of laughter, his sister wondered. She would make him tell when she reached home.
An iron-gray frizz fringed the brim of Miss Betts’ pansy-laden hat — a hat unquestionably of the vintage of the merging ’twenties. Her slinky drab dress accentuated her height and angularity. She was primed for combat, as spiked with aggressiveness as a hedgehog with quills.
Fair Tomorrow Page 19