I said, “Your cigarette’s burning the desk.”
Bertha snatched up the cigarette end, ground it out in the ash tray and glowered at me.
I said, “It had to come out sooner or later. It’s better this way. You try juggling the truth and you’ll get hurt. Eventually we’ll settle this case for Crail, but not by letting Mysgart think he’s going to have a case he can win. Esther Witson has money. If you settle the case, Mysgart can’t charge his client a fat fee. If you’re on his side, he’ll put in a lot of time on legal monkey business and when he’s won the case send his client a bill for about three thousand bucks. Tell the truth and Mysgart may be willing to work out a settlement. Well, I’ve got some work to do. See you around deposition time. Better think over what you’re going to say.”
I walked out of the office. Bertha, frowning at her desk, was too busy thinking to say anything.
Elsie Brand was pounding away at the keyboard of the typewriter. Without missing a beat of a single letter, she glanced up at me, her right eye slowly closed.
I winked back at her and went out.
14
It was precisely three-seventeen when I returned to the office.
The deposition was under way. A court reporter sat at Elsie Brand’s desk, taking down everything that was said in shorthand. Bertha Cool was on the witness chair looking rather triumphant. The man of about fifty with a weak chin and eager greedy eyes who sat next to Frank Glimson would be Rolland B. Lidfield, one of the plaintiffs in the case.
As far as possible, John Carver Mysgart had interposed his bulk between Esther Witson and Bertha Cool. He had Esther parked pretty well behind him and he was scribbling furiously on a notebook as I opened the door, evidently taking down something he wanted to ask Bertha when it came his turn.
They all glanced up as I entered. Then Glimson went on with his questioning. His hands were out in front of his chest, the fingers spread apart, tips touching. His head was tilted back slightly and his bony face was a complete mask. “Now, Mrs. Cool, tell us exactly what you did.”
“I slowed my car at the intersection,” Bertha said, “and then I heard this raucous horn blowing behind me.”
“Yes, yes, go on.”
“And then Miss Witson swung her car around me out into the middle lane of traffic.”
“And what did she do, if anything?”
“She started giving me a tongue lashing because she didn’t like the way I was driving.”
“She stopped her car to do this?” Glimson asked.
“She did not. She was shooting around me with a heavy foot on the throttle.”
“She was, of course, facing you,” Glimson said as one who makes a statement rather than asks a question.
“I’ll say she was facing me,” Bertha said.
“You saw her eyes?”
“I saw her eyes and her teeth.”
Esther Witson moved in her chair.
Mysgart reached back and made little pattie-cake gestures with his hand to quiet down his client.
Glimson’s eyes held a flashing glint of triumph. “Then when Miss Witson drove past you, she was looking at you and talking to you. Is that right?”
“That’s right.”
“Let me see if I have understood your testimony correctly, Mrs. Cool. I believe you said that when you came to the intersection you brought your car almost to a stop.”
“That’s right.”
“Now let’s not misunderstand each other. When Miss Witson went past you, she was looking at you and talking to you, and your car was at the intersection, is that right?”
“Yes.”
“Then the front of her car must have been well into the intersection?”
“Well, yes.”
“While she was looking at you and talking to you?”
“Yes.”
“And all of this time she was traveling at a high rate of speed?”
“She was stepping on it. She had a heavy foot on the throttle.”
“And when did she turn around to look where she was going?” Glimson asked.
“Well, all of a sudden, it seemed to hit her that she hadn’t been looking...”
“Note an objection,” Mysgart said, “that the witness cannot testify as to what seemed to have been passing through my client’s mind. She can only testify...”
“Yes, yes,” Glimson interrupted. “Just tell us the facts, Mrs. Cool, not what you think.”
“Or what she thinks my client thought,” Mysgart added sarcastically.
Glimson glared at him.
Mysgart wiggled his upper lip so that his mustache scratched his nose.
“Well, she suddenly turned around and there was this other car right on top of her,” Bertha snapped.
“You mean the car which was being driven by Mr. Rolland B. Lidfield, the gentleman sitting at my right?”
“Yes.”
“And this car driven by Mr. Lidfield was turning to the left, was it not, so that it was headed up Mantica Street in a northerly direction?”
“That’s right.”
“And Miss Witson, with what you have described as a heavy foot on the throttle, charged her car blindly into the intersection of Garden Vista Boulevard and Mantica Street directly in front of the car driven by Mr. Lidfield. Is that right?”
“That’s right.”
Glimson settled back in his chair and lowered his hands until they rested across his stomach. He turned to Mysgart with a benign expression, “Would you care to cross-examine?”
Esther Witson stirred uneasily in her chair.
Mysgart made another little blind patting gesture in her general direction and said, “Certainly.”
“Go ahead.”
“Thank you,” Mysgart retorted with heavy sarcasm.
Mysgart shifted the position of his chair somewhat, Bertha Cool glanced at me with a triumphant expression as much as to say that no damn lawyer was going to mix her up, and then turned her eager little eyes on Mysgart.
Mysgart cleared his throat. “Now let’s just go back to the beginning and see if we get this straight, Mrs. Cool. You were proceeding in a westerly direction on Garden Vista Boulevard?”
“Yes.”
“And how long had you been driving westerly along Garden Vista Boulevard before you came to the intersection of Mantica Street?”
“Eight or ten blocks, perhaps.”
“Now at the intersection of Mantica Street, you have testified that your automobile was in the extreme right-hand lane, the lane that is next to the curb.”
“Yes.”
“And how long had it been in that lane?”
“I don’t know.”
“You wouldn’t say for eight or ten blocks?”
“No.”
“Some of the time you had been over on the extreme left-hand lane, the one that’s closest to the center of the road, hadn’t you, Mrs. Cool?”
“I suppose so.”
“And part of the time you had been in the middle lane?”
“No.”
Mysgart raised his eyebrows in surprise. “You’re certain of that, Mrs. Cool?”
“Absolutely certain,” Bertha snapped.
“At no time at all, had you operated your car in the middle lane? Is that right?”
“That’s right.”
“But you had been over on the left-hand lane?”
“Yes.”
“And at the time of the accident you were over on the right-hand lane?”
“Yes.”
“Then,” Mysgart said with elaborate sarcasm, “will you be so kind to tell us, Mrs. Cool, how you could possibly have got from the left-hand lane to the right-hand lane without driving over the middle lane?”
“I may have crossed it,” Bertha said.