“Do you want this Court to believe that you saw the witness through a drawn shade?” Mason asked.
“No, I didn’t mean that.”
“What did you mean, then?”
For a moment, she was trapped, and there was desperation on her face. Then she thought of a way out and said triumphantly, “I thought your question related to whether all the shades were up or down. I knew that the shade on that one window had not been drawn, but I couldn’t remember about the others.”
She smiled triumphantly, as much as to say, “You thought you had me that time, didn’t you? But I got out of it.”
Mason said, “But there were no lights in the room.·”
“No. I’m certain there were none.”
“For what purpose did you enter that darkened room?” Mason asked.
“Why, I... I just wanted something in there.”
“The window at which you were standing was near the door on the side farthest removed from the door?”
“Yes, on the side farthest away from the door.”
“And the light switch is near the door, is it not?”
“Yes.”
“So that, when you entered this room in search of something, which you can’t now recall, you didn’t turn on the light switch, but you did walk all the way across this darkened room to stand at the window, looking down at the door of Leslie Milter’s apartment?”
“I was just standing there — thinking.”
“I see. Now, shortly after that, when I appeared at the apartment and rang the doorbell trying to get in, you came down the stairs from your apartment, did you not?”
“Yes.”
“And talked with me?”
“Yes.”
“And we walked a few feet together, up toward the center of town?”
“Yes.”
“And you went to the stage office, did you not?”
The district attorney was gloating now. “Your Honor, I must object. This examination certainly is going far afield. Where this witness went, or what she did after she had left that apartment house, is certainly not proper cross-examination. It’s incompetent, irrelevant, and immaterial, and too remote in point of time to have any possible bearing upon the case. The Court will bear in mind that this entire evidence has been introduced for a very limited purpose.”
Judge Meehan nodded, said, “This Court will hear argument on it, Mr. Mason, if you wish to argue it, but it would seem that the position taken by the district attorney is correct.”
“I would think so,” Mason said. “I should think that it was quite correct, and I think I have no more questions of this young woman. Thank you very much, Miss Cromwell.”
Plainly she had expected a pitched battle with Mason, and his calm acceptance of her statements, which were so directly at variance with the statements she had previously made to him, came as a surprise.
She was just about to leave the witness stand when Mason said casually, “Oh, one more question, Miss Cromwell. I notice Raymond E. Allgood is in the courtroom. Do you know him?”
She hesitated, then said, “Yes.”
“Do you know his secretary, Sally Elberton?”
“Yes.”
“Have you ever made any statement to either of them, claiming that you were the wife of Leslie Milter?” Mason asked.
“I... That is...”
“Will you stand up, Miss Elberton, please?”
The blond young woman got to her feet very reluctantly.
“Haven’t you ever told this woman that you were Leslie Milter’s common-law wife?” Mason asked.
“I didn’t say I was a common-law wife,” the witness said. “I told her to lay off of him, and...” She caught herself abruptly in mid-sentence, dammed the stream of words which had started to pour from her mouth.
As she realized the effect of what she had said, as she looked around at the curious eyes focussed upon her, she dropped slowly back into the witness chair as though her knees had suddenly lost their strength.
“Go on,” Mason said. “Go right ahead and finish what you were about to say.”
She said indignantly, “You trapped me into that. You made me think it was all over, and then got that woman to stand up, and...”
“What have you against that woman, as you term her?... That’s all, Miss Elberton. You may be seated again.”
Sally Elberton settled back into her seat, conscious of the craning necks of spectators; then all eyes were once more upon Alberta Cromwell.
“All right,” the witness said, as though suddenly making up her mind to see it through, “I’ll tell you the whole truth. What I told you was the absolute truth except I was trying to cover up on that one thing. I was the common-law wife of Leslie Milter. He never did marry me. He told me that it wasn’t necessary, that we were married just as legally as though we’d been married in a church, and I believed him. I lived with him as his wife, and he always introduced me as his wife; and then this woman came along and turned his head completely. She made him want to get away from me. I knew he’d been stepping out on me before, but it had been just here and there, the way a man will. This was different. She’d completely turned his head, and...”
The dazed district attorney, suddenly gathering his presence of mind, interrupted to say, “Just a moment, Your Honor. It seems to me this is also too remote and distant, that it’s incompetent, irrelevant, and immaterial, and...”
“I think not,” Judge Meehan ruled sternly. “This witness is now making a statement in direct contradiction to a statement which she made under oath a few minutes earlier. She is admitting that she falsified a part of her testimony. Under the circumstances, the Court wants to hear every bit of explanation this witness wants to make. Go right ahead, Miss Cromwell.”
She turned to face the judge and said, “I don’t suppose you’ll ever understand, but that’s the way it was. Leslie ran away from me and came down here to El Templo. It took me two or three days to find out where he’d gone. I came on down to join him. He told me that he was here on a business matter, and I couldn’t be with him, that it would ruin things if I should try to make trouble. Well, I found there was a vacant apartment next to his, and I moved in. I guess he really was working on a case, and...”
“Never mind what you guess,” District Attorney Copeland interrupted. “Just answer Mr. Mason’s questions, Miss Cromwell. If the Court please, I submit that this witness shouldn’t be allowed to make a statement of this nature. She should only answer the questions which are asked her on cross-examination.”
Judge Meehan leaned forward to regard the young woman. “Are you explaining the contradiction in your testimony, Miss Cromwell?” he asked.
“Yes, Judge.”
“Go right ahead,” Judge Meehan said.
She said, “Then Leslie told me that if I’d be a good girl and not rock the boat, that within a week or so we could go away and travel anywhere we wanted to. We could go down into Mexico or South America, or anywhere. He said that he was going to have lots of money and...”
“I’m not particularly concerned with what he said,” Judge Meehan broke in to say. “I want to know how it happened that you falsified a portion of your testimony and whether that is the only part in which you failed to tell the truth.”
“Well,” she said. “I’ve got to explain this so you’ll understand. Leslie told me the night he was killed that his business was all ready to close up, but that Sally Elberton was coming down to see him. He told me I’d been all wet about her. He said that his relationship with her had been built up just so he could get some information. That he’d been working on her so he could put across this deal. He said she was a vain, empty-headed little brat, and he had to kid her along in order to keep on getting information out of her.”