“Yes.”
“Was it through you that your husband got in touch with Mr. Burbank?”
“I believe so, yes.”
“There was an interval of some years during, which you hadn’t seen Mr. Burbank?”
“Yes.”
“And then you telephoned him?”
“I did.”
“You mentioned your old acquaintanceship?”
“Yes.”
A look of triumphant satisfaction began to manifest itself upon the district attorney’s face.
“Just what did you say to him, Mrs. Milfield?”
She flashed a glance at the district attorney, received in return what might have been a signal, said very rapidly, “I took pains to assure him that I would say nothing about the trouble he had been in New Orleans when he had killed a man with a blow of his fist.”
The judge frowned.
Mason, not changing his voice in the least, said, “But, notwithstanding that promise, you did tell your husband?”
“Well, I’d already told Fred.”
“And did you tell any of your husband’s business associates — Harry Van Nuys, for instance?”
“Yes, I told him.”
“Anyone else?”
“No, just these two.”
“And told them so they could go to Burbank and force him to finance them...”
“Absolutely not!”
“Then why did you tell them?”
“Just because I thought my husband had a right to know.”
“And how about Van Nuys? Did you think he had a right to know?”
“Of course,” Burger objected, “this inquiry is now going far afield, Your Honor.”
Mason said, “Not at all, if the Court please. The Court will have noticed the eager alacrity with which the witness rushed into the discussion of Burbank’s past. I am now showing bias, as well as asking her to elaborate on the answer she was so anxious to rush into the record.”
“It is only natural this witness should have a bias,” Burger snapped. “After all, this man murdered her husband.”
“And it is only fair that I have a chance to show the extent of that bias,” Mason said.
“Answer the question,” the judge instructed. “The question was whether you thought a certain Harry Van Nuys had a right to know about this former trouble Burbank had been in.”
“Well, he was my husband’s business associate.”
“And, therefore, entitled to know?” Mason asked.
“In a way, yes.”
“Because you considered the information a business asset?”
“No! Absolutely not.”
“But the information was used as a business asset, was it not?”
“By whom?”
“By your husband and Harry Van Nuys.”
“That calls for hearsay,” Burger objected. “This witness wouldn’t know about anything that took place between her husband and Burbank except through what her husband may have told her. Moreover it calls for a conversation between husband and wife.”
“The question was whether she knew,” the court said. “That calls for her own knowledge.”
“I don’t know — of my knowledge,” Mrs. Milfield said sweetly.
“But prior to this conversation you had with Burbank your husband had never met him?”
“No.”
“Nor Harry Van Nuys?”
“No.”
“But within a week or ten days after you told them of Burbank’s past they had met him and had arranged with Burbank to finance them in an extensive business venture?”
“I don’t think Mr. Van Nuys ever met Burbank.”
“Your husband handled all the business of getting the financing?”
“Yes.”
“Therefore Van Nuys had no reason to meet Mr. Burbank?”
“Well — no.”
“Therefore, the only reason your husband went to see Burbank was to get money?”
“Backing.”
“Financial backing?”
“Yes.”
“In the form of cash?”
“Yes.”
“Now then,” Mason said, pointing his finger at the witness, “did you remonstrate with your husband for taking advantage of a situation which you had disclosed to him, for blackmailing Roger Burbank into advancing him money, and...”
“Your Honor,” Burger objected, jumping to his feet, “this is incompetent, irrelevant and immaterial. Moreover, it calls for a privileged communication between husband and wife, it is far afield from any questions covered in the direct examination and I object to it specifically on the ground that it is not proper cross-examination.”
“The objection is sustained on the privileged communication point,” the judge ruled.
Mason said, “Now then, Mrs. Milfield, I’ll direct your attention to the Saturday when the body was discovered. You were in your apartment at that time, and I called on you there, did I not?”
“Yes.”
“You’d been crying?”
“Objected to as improper cross-examination,” the district attorney said.
“It may show bias,” Mason pointed out to the court.
“Overruled.”
“I called on you there?” Mason asked.
“Yes.”
“And you had been crying?”
“Yes.”
“And while I was there, Lieutenant Tragg of the Homicide Squad arrived, did he not?”
“Yes.”
“And I told you that Lieutenant Tragg was connected with the Homicide Squad and asked you if you knew anyone who had been murdered and you said, ‘It may have been my...’ and then stopped. Did you not so state?”
“Yes”
“And you had in mind that it was your husband?”
“Yes.”
“What made you think it was your husband, Mrs. Milfield?”
“Because... because he hadn’t been home all night, and because I knew he’d had trouble with Roger Burbank; and that Mr. Burbank had claimed my husband had been guilty of falsifying his accounts.”
“That’s all,” Mason said.
Burger’s re-direct examination was triumphant. “And,” he announced to the witness, “Mr. Mason, championing your cause just because Lieutenant Tragg happened to be downstairs, advised you to start peeling onions so that it would account for the tear-swollen appearance of your eyes, didn’t he?”
Mason said, “Certainly, I did.”
“Answer the question,” Burger told the witness.
“Yes.”
“Now why did Mr. Mason do that?”
The judge looked down at Mason and said, “I think this is objectionable, Mr. Mason, as not being proper redirect examination and calling for a conclusion of the witness — in case you care to object to it.”
“I don’t care to object to it,” Mason said. “I am quite willing to have it appear that I gave this young woman some gratuitous advice which would enable her to...”
“To save her face,” Burger sneered.
Mason smiled and said, “Not to save her face, Counselor, merely to account for its appearance.”
The courtroom burst into laughter.
The judge, smiling himself, pounded the courtroom into silence with his gavel. “Any further re-direct?” he asked.
“None, Your Honor.”
“Re-cross?”
“None,” Mason said.
“The witness is excused. Call your next witness, Mr. Burger.”
Burger said grimly, “Your Honor, I am going to call my next witness slightly out of order, but I think I can show a pattern which I can presently connect up with other evidence, if the Court will bear with me.”
“Very well.”
“J. C. Lassing,” Burger called.
Mr. Lassing, a stoop-shouldered man in the late fifties, with a dejected appearance, took the witness stand and painfully avoided meeting the eyes of either of the defendants.
“Your name is J. C. Lassing. You are an oil-drilling contractor, and you reside at sixty-eight forty-two La Brea Avenue, Colton, California?” Burger asked.