Russell could not conceal his agitation. In fact, he referred to it.
Fear, he explained in a low, husky voice to the coroner and the jury,
was not a part of his emotions. His only feeling was sorrow, varied now
and then by the embarrassment he felt as a result of the purely personal
and very intimate facts which he had to reveal.

His one desire was to be frank, he declared, his pale blue eyes roving
from place to place, his nervous fingers incessantly playing with his
thin, uncertain lips. This mania for truthfulness, he asserted, was
natural, in that it offered him the one sure path to freedom and the
establishment of his innocence of all connection with the murder of the
woman he had loved.

He was, he testified, thirty-one years old, a clerk in a real-estate
dealer's office and a native of Washington. Mildred Brace had been
employed for a few weeks by the same firm for which he worked, and it
was there that he had met her. Although she had refused to marry him on
the ground that his salary was inadequate for the needs of two people,
she had encouraged his attentions. Sometimes, they had quarrelled.

"Speak up, Mr. Russell!" Dr. Garnet directed. "And take your time. Let
the jury hear every word you utter."

After that, the witness abandoned his attempt to exclude the family
portraits from his confidence, but his voice shook.

"Conductor Barton is right," he said, responding to the coroner's
interrogation. "I did come out on his car, the car that gets to the
Sloanehurst stop at ten-thirty, and I did leave the car at the
Ridgecrest stop, a quarter of a mile from here. I was following
Mil--Miss Brace. I saw her leave her apartment house, the Walman. I
followed her to the transfer station at the bridge, and I saw her take
the car there. I followed on the next car. I knew where she was going,
knew she was going to Sloanehurst."

"How did you know that, Mr. Russell?"

"I mean I was certain of it. She'd told me Mr. Berne Webster, the lawyer
she'd been working for, was out here spending the week-end; and I knew
she was coming out to meet him."

"Why did she do that?"

Mr. Russell displayed pathetic embarrassment and confusion before he
answered that. He plucked at his lower lip with spasmodic fingers. His
eyes were downcast. He attempted a self-deprecatory smile which ended in
an unpleasant grimace.

"She wouldn't say. But it was because she was in love with him."

"And you were jealous of Mr. Webster?"

"We