Page:That Royle Girl (Balmer).pdf/256

 sat solemnly in his place; the witness was reinstated upon the stand.

"Do you recollect the evening of a Saturday, the second in October?" asked Max Elmen.

"Perfectly," replied Joan Daisy.

"What were you doing upon that evening?"

"I was at work until about half-past eleven in the office in which I was and am now employed. A special job was on hand and I was reading back and correcting specifications which I had written during the day."

"When you left the office what did you do?"

"I took the elevated train for Wilson Avenue."

"Alone?"

"Alone."

"Please relate to the jury your subsequent actions."

"I reached Wilson Avenue almost exactly at midnight," related Joan Daisy, facing the jury at the cue from Mr. Elmen.

"One moment," interrupted Max. "How did you fix the time?"

"The window lights in the stores were just going out."

"So the time is now Sunday morning. Proceed."

This cue released Joan Daisy to an uninterrupted relation of the truth for several minutes, and she told directly to the jury how she had gone to the apartment building in which she lived, and passed it to go alone to the lake shore where, early upon that Sunday morning, she sat in the sand.

This truth, as she very well knew from her rehearsal with Max Elmen, was far from an ideal bit of testimony; indeed, it was not satisfactory at all, and many a time Mr. Elmen had attempted to better it, but his improvements and embellishments always had failed to sound more convincing, and neither Mr. Elmen nor his son Herman nor Mr. Kleppman nor Mr. Wein, who also