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To
my favorite lawyer
Edward Henry Hart

The Bellamy Trial

The Bellamy Trial

I

The redheaded girl sank into the seat in the middle of the first row with a gasp of relief. Sixth seat from the aisle—yes, that was right; the label on the arm of the golden-oak chair stared up at her reassuringly. Row A, seat 15, Philadelphia Planet. The ones on either side of her were empty. Well, it was a relief to know that there were four feet of space left unoccupied in Redfield, even if only temporarily. She was still shaken into breathless stupor by the pandemonium in the corridors outside—the rattling of regiments of typewriters, of armies of tickers, the shouts of infuriated denizens of telephone booths, the hurrying, frantic faces of officials, the scurrying and scampering of dozens of rusty-haired freckled-faced insubordinate small boys, whose olive-drab messenger uniforms alone saved them from extermination; the newspaper men—you could spot them at once, looking exhausted and alert and elaborately bored; the newspaper women, keen and purposeful and diverted; and above and around and below all these licensed inhabitants, the crowd—a vast, jostling, lunging beast, with one supreme motive galvanizing it to action—an immense, a devouring curiosity that sent it surging time and time again against the closed glass doors with their blue-coated guardians, fragile barriers between it and the consummation of its desire. For just beyond those doors lay the arena where the beast might slake its hunger at will, and it was not taking its frustration of that privilege amiably.

The redheaded girl set her little black-feathered hat straight with unsteady fingers. She wasn’t going to forget that crowd in a hurry. It had growled at her—actually growled—when she’d fought her way through it, armed with the magic of the little blue ticket that spelled “open sesame” as well as “press section.” Who could have believed that even curiosity would turn nice old gray-headed ladies and mild-looking gentlemen with brown moustaches and fat matrons with leather bags and thin flappers with batik scarfs into one huge ravenous beast? She panted again, reminiscently, at the thought of the way they’d shoved and squashed and kneaded—and then settled down to gratified inspection.

So this was a courtroom!

Not a very large or very impressive room, looked at from any angle. It might hold three hundred people at a pinch, and there were, conservatively, about three thousand crowding the corridors and walking the streets of Redfield in their efforts to expand its limits. Fan-shaped, with nine rows of the golden-oak seats packed with grimly triumphant humanity, the first three neatly tagged with the little white labels that metamorphosed them into the press section. Golden-oak panelling halfway up the walls, and then whitewashed plaster—rather dingy, smoky plaster, its defects relentlessly revealed by the pale autumnal sunshine flooding in through the great windows and the dome of many-coloured glass, lavish and heartening enough to compensate for much of the grimness and the grime.

Near enough for the redheaded girl to touch was a low rail, and beyond that rail a little empty space, like a stage—empty of actors, but cluttered with chairs and tables. At the back was a small platform with a great high-backed black leather chair, and a still smaller platform on a slightly lower level, with a rail about it and a much more uncomfortable-looking chair. The judge’s seat, the witness box—she gave a little sigh of pure uncontrollable excitement, and a voice next to her said affably:

“Hi! Greetings, stranger, or hail, friend, as the case may be. Can I get by you into the next seat without damaging you and those feet of yours materially?”

The redheaded girl scrambled guiltily to the offending feet unobtrusive enough in themselves, but most obtrusively extended across the narrow passage, and turned a flushed and anxious countenance on her cheerful critic, now engaged in folding himself competently into the exiguous space provided by the golden-oak chair. A tall lanky young man, with a straight nose, mouse-coloured hair, shrewd gray eyes, and an expression that was intended to be that of a hard-boiled cynic, and that worked all right unless he grinned. He wore a shabby tweed suit, a polka-dotted tie, had three very sharp pencils, and a good-sized stack of telegraph blanks clasped to his heart. Obviously a reporter—a real reporter. The redheaded girl attempted to conceal her gold pencil and leather-bound notebook, smiling tentatively and ingratiatingly.

“Covering it for a New York paper?” inquired the Olympian one graciously.

“No,” said the redheaded girl humbly; “a Philadelphia one—the Philadelphia Planet. Is yours New York?”

“M’m—h’m—Sphere. Doing colour stuff?”

“Oh, I hope so,” replied the redheaded girl so fervently that the reporter looked somewhat startled. “You see, I don’t know whether it will have colour or not. I’m not exactly a regular reporter.”

“Oh, you aren’t, aren’t you? Well, if it’s no secret, just exactly what are you? A fingerprint expert?”

“I’m a—a writer,” said the redheaded girl, looking unusually small and dignified. “This is my first as—assignment.” It was frightful to stammer just when you particularly wanted not to.

The real reporter eyed her severely. “A writer, hey? A real, honest-to-goodness, walking-around writer, with a fountain pen and a great big vocabulary and a world of promise and everything? Well, I’ll bet you a hot dog to a soup plate of fresh caviar that about four days from now you’ll be parading through these marble halls telling the cockeyed world that you’re a journalist.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t dare. Do all of you call yourselves journalists?”

The reporter looked as though he were about to suffocate. “Get this,” he said impressively: “The day that you hear me call myself a journalist you have my full and free permission to call me a ———. Well, no, on second thought, a lady couldn’t. But if you ever call me a journalist, smile. And if you solemnly swear never to call yourself one I’ll show you the ropes a bit, because you’re a poor ignorant little writing critter that doesn’t know any better than to come to a murder trial—and besides that you have red hair. Want to know anything?”

“Oh,” cried the redheaded girl, “I didn’t know that anyone so horrid could be so nice. I want to know everything. Let’s begin at the beginning.”

“Well, in case you don’t know where you are, this is the courtroom of Redfield, county seat of Bellechester, twenty-five miles from the great metropolis of New York. And in case you’d like to know what it’s all about, it’s the greatest murder trial of the century—about every two years another one of ’em comes along. This particular one is the trial of the People versus Susan Ives and Stephen Bellamy for the wilful, deliberate, and malicious murder of Madeleine Bellamy.”

“A murder trial,” said the redheaded girl softly. “Well, I should think that ought to be about the most tremendous thing in the world.”

“Oh, you do, do you?” remarked the reporter, and for a moment it was no effort at all for him to look cynical. “Well, I’ll have you called at about seven tomorrow morning, though it’s a pity ever to wake anyone up that can have such beautiful dreams as that. The most tremendous thing in the world, says she. Well, well, well!”