"Gemima!" whispered Mr. Broderick to his neighbour, "but she is a wonder! I never heard it better done, and I've seen some of the boss liars on the stand. She looks like an angel on toast, a poor, sweet, patient, martyr angel. But I'll bet five dollars to a nickel that she was just about three degrees too plausible for that jury. If she didn't do it, who did? That's what they'll ask. And who else wanted him out of the way? Have you given any thought to that proposition?" His voice was almost as steady as his keen grey eyes, and he looked straight into the wise and weary orbs of a brilliant but too inabstinent member of the crack reporter regiment who had been missing for several days. The man raised his sagging shoulders and dropped them listlessly. Then his heavy eyes were invaded by a sudden gleam. "Say," he whispered, "that Rush is a good-looking chap--and she--I don't like those ice-boxes myself, but some men do. It's crossed my mind more than once to-day that he's got something on his--what's the matter?" "For God's sake, hush!" Broderick's low voice was savage, his face white. "They're always likely to say that about a young lawyer when his client is handsome enough and their imaginations are excited by a mysterious murder case. He's a friend of mine, and I don't want him to get into trouble. He might not be able to prove an alibi. But I know he didn't do it because I happen to know that he is in love with another woman. I was in the same trolley with them yesterday when they came back from the woods. There was no mistaking how the land lay." "Oh! Just so!" The other man's eyes were glittering. He looked like a hunter glancing down his gun-barrel. "I see he _is_ a friend of yours and you've got his defence pat--well, I'm not going to bother my poor head until Mrs. B. is acquitted or convicted. Ta! Ta!" And he slid gently to the floor, laid his head against the infuriated Broderick's knee and went to sleep. "I say," whispered Wagstaff, "she almost involved young Kraus, all right. He's never been quite so close to the bull's-eye before. The very fact that she didn't trump up a yarn--or Rush wouldn't let her--that she saw him when she opened the door, or that he had turned the handle, is one for her and one on him." The Judge, who had taken a few moments' rest, re-entered, and conversation ceased. Conrad and Frieda were called in rebuttal, and encouraged to fix the time of Mrs. Balfame's departure and return as accurately as might be. Frieda asserted that Mrs. Balfame, after closing the outer door, had not remained below-stairs for more than three minutes, and Conrad declared that her exit must have been made three or four before Mr. Mott left Miss Lacke's. Of course--with quiet scorn--he had not looked at his watch. How could he in the dark? As he did not smoke he had no matches in his pocket.