The witness swallowed. “I’m the president of Bagby Answers Ink.”

“By ‘Ink’ you mean ‘Incorporated’?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Do you own the business?”

“I own half the stock that’s been issued, and my wife owns the other half.”

“How long have you been operating that business?”

“Five years now-nearly five and a half.”

“And what is the business? Please tell the jury about it.”

Bagby’s eyes went left for a quick, nervous glance at the jury box but came right back to the prosecutor. “It’s a telephone-answering business, that’s all. You know what that is.”

“Yes, but some members of the jury may not be familiar with the operation. Please describe it.”

The witness licked his lips. “Well, you’re a person or a firm or an organization and you have a phone, but you’re not always there and you want to know about calls that come in your absence. So you go to a telephone-answering service. There are several dozen of them in New York, some of them spread all over town with neighborhood offices, big operations. My own operation, Bagby Answers Ink, it’s not so big because I specialize in serving individuals, houses and apartments, instead of firms or organizations. I’ve got offices in four different exchange districts-Gramercy, Plaza, Trafalgar, and Rhinelander. I can’t work it from one central office because-”

“Excuse me, Mr. Bagby, but we won’t go into technical problems. Is one of your offices at six-eighteen East Sixty-ninth Street, Manhattan?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Describe the operation at that address.”

“Well, that’s my newest place, opened only a year ago, and my smallest, so it’s not in an office building, it’s an apartment-on account of the labor law.