“Just a minute, Mr. Bagby. Just answer my questions. Did you accept Leonard Ashe as a client?”

“Sure, there was no reason not to.”

“What was the number of his telephone at his home?”

“Rhinelander two-three-eight-three-eight.”

“Did you give his name and that number a place on one of your switchboards?”

“Yes, sir, one of the three boards at the apartment on East Sixty-ninth Street. That’s the Rhinelander district.”

“What was the name of the employee who attended that board-the one with Leonard Ashe’s number on it?”

“Marie Willis.”

A shadow of stir and murmur rippled across the packed audience, and Judge Corbett on the bench turned his head to give it a frown and then went back to his knitting.

Bagby was going on. “Of course at night there’s only one girl on the three boards-they rotate on that -but for daytime I keep a girl at her own board at least five days a week, and six if I can. That way she gets to know her clients.”

“And Leonard Ashe’s number was on Marie Willis’s board?”

“Yes, sir.”

“After the routine arrangements for serving Leonard Ashe as a client had been completed, did anything happen to bring him or his number to your personal attention?”

“Yes, sir.”

“What and when? First, when?”

Bagby took a second to make sure he had it right before swearing to it. “It was Thursday, three days after Ashe had ordered the service. That was July fifteenth. Marie phoned me at my office and said she wanted to see me privately about something important. I asked if it could wait till she was off the board at six o’clock, and she said yes, and a little after six I went up to Sixty-ninth Street and we went into her room at the apartment. She told me Ashe had phoned her the day before and asked her to meet him somewhere to discuss some details about servicing his number. She told him such a discussion should be with me, but he insisted-”