The Anonymous Client

significance?”
    “No. The names appear to be people involved in this trial. Why that should be important, I couldn’t begin to tell you.”
    “There are many people involved in this trial,” Steve said. “But it is my contention that there is one whose name has a special significance to you. Would it change your testimony any to know that the investigator, Tracy Garvin, was convinced that you showed a definite reaction to the name, Phyllis Kemper?”
    The witness stared at him. “It most certainly would not.”
    “It would not?”
    “No.”
    “The name Phyllis Kemper means nothing to you?”
    “No, it doesn’t.”
    “Has no special significance?”
    “None whatsoever.”
    “And it is not true that last night when you were handed the clipboard, you reacted to seeing the name Phyllis Kemper?”
    “No. It is not true.”
    There was a pause.
    Steve nodded. “You’re right, Miss Millburn. I don’t think that’s true either.”
    The witness blinked. Stared at him.
    Steve shook his head. “No. I think the name you reacted to was the name Mark Taylor.”
    There was a pause. A time lag in the court, while people caught up with that statement. Mark Taylor? It was clear that most of the people in the court couldn’t even place the name.
    Most of the people.
    On the stand, the witness blinked. Once. Twice. She wet her lips.
    “That’s true, isn’t it, Miss Millburn?” Steve said. “It was the name Mark Taylor that you reacted to, wasn’t it?”
    “No. No,” she said. “It wasn’t.”
    “No?” Steve said. He raised his voice and picked up the pace. “Then perhaps I can refresh your recollection. You have testified, have you not, that you never spoke to the decedent on the phone—that you never called him on his phone and he never called you on yours. Is that right?”
    “Yes, that’s right.”
    “Is it, Miss Millburn? I ask you, is it not a fact that on the afternoon of Tuesday the eighth, the man you knew as David C. Bradshaw called you on your telephone in your apartment, and said to you words to this effect: ‘I have just left the building and I’m being followed by detectives. I don’t want them to know I’ve spotted them. Here’s what I want you to do. I’m going to leave here and walk down the block in front of our building. I want you to look out your window at the car that’s tailing me and get the license number. Then I want you to call so-and-so at this phone number and ask him to trace the plate. Tell him it’s urgent and to do it right now. Just get the information, and I’ll call you right back.’
    “And is it not a fact, Miss Millburn, that you did as you were instructed? Is it not a fact that you got the information, and when Bradshaw called you back minutes later, you passed it on to him? Is it not a fact that what you told Bradshaw, when he called you back from a pay phone on the corner, was that the car that was following him was registered to a detective agency? And wasn’t the name of the detective who had registered the car, the name that you passed on to David C. Bradshaw—wasn’t that name Mark Taylor? Isn’t that why the name Mark Taylor has a special significance to you, and isn’t that why you reacted so visibly to seeing his name on that list?”
    The witness’s eyes darted around the courtroom. “No. No,” she said. “It’s not true.”
    “It isn’t? You deny receiving either of those phone calls?”
    “Yes, I do.”
    “And if the records of the telephone company should show that calls were made from those pay phones to your apartment on the day in question, those records would be in error, is that right?”
    “Objection. Argumentative.”
    “Sustained.”
    “Do you deny receiving those calls?” Steve persisted.
    The witness hesitated. Looked around. “I ... I...”
    “It’s a simple question,” Steve said. “Do you or do you not deny receiving those calls?”
    “It’s not a simple question,” she said. “You ask me if I deny receiving any calls from David C. Bradshaw. I may have received calls from someone else.”
    Steve shook his head. “Nice try, Miss Millburn, but it’s no good. You forget. Bradshaw was being followed by detectives. Those detectives were in Mark Taylor’s employ and reported back to him. And those detectives reported the times and places of Bradshaw’s phone calls. If you received those calls, they could only have been from him.”
    Margaret Millburn bit her lip.
    Steve gave her time to think. He