"Then you have been really working with her upon this case?"
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?"
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."
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 assurance. 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-assurance, 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.