The Inspector, reporting the matter, had his own opinion of it.
“He deliberately got rid of that car,” he said.
“It might have lain there for a year, if those youngsters hadn’t happened on it.”
There was no sign of the revolver, and although inside it—it was a roadster, with one seat and a rumble—there were certain scratches, and a leather seat cushion torn in one place, these were probably the result of the terrific impact after it had shot down the hill.
There was however an unexpected result to the discovery and description of the car in the press.
A woman named Wiggins came forward to say that she had seen such a car as she was leaving the street car at the end of the line at something before nine on the evening of Wednesday, June the twenty-second.
She fixed the date absolutely, as she had gone to town to see her daughter off on a train, also she remembered the car distinctly, because it had almost run over her.
And she stated positively that there had been two men in it at the time.
The Inspector was very sober when he told me that.
“It looks now,” he said, “as though somebody knew that Walter Somers meant to go on the stand that next day and tell all he knew.
And that he was—prevented.”
“Murdered is what you meant, isn’t it?”
He cleared his throat.
“It’s possible.
It’s very possible.
And I suppose Walter could swim and Amos couldn’t!”
Which was what he left me with, to make of it what I might.
Those few days had told terribly on Joseph.
The maids reported that he walked the floor at night until they were almost crazy, and for the first time in my service he was forgetful and absent.
I was startled one day to have him pour ice water into my soup, and his hands were so uncertain that he broke a piece of my mother’s Lowestoft china, a thing he had not done in all his years of dusting and washing it.
On the plea that he knew Wallie’s habits I loaned him my car, and he took his afternoons and joined the search.
That he went to the club I know, but I have no other knowledge of his movements save one.
Dick had taken Judy out to the road above the gully, and they were surprised to find my car there.
When they got to the edge they saw Joseph below; he was sitting on a rock, his head on his breast, and when they called to him he jumped and then came toiling up the slope.
“What on earth are you doing?” Judy demanded.
He looked down sheepishly at his muddy clothes.
“I was looking for the revolver.
Mr. Walter never killed himself, Miss.”
“Joseph,” said Judy impulsively, “why don’t you tell what you know?
You know something.”
“What little I know is Mr. Walter’s secret, Miss.”
And that was all he would say.
Chapter Twenty-eight
THAT NIGHT JOSEPH WAS shot.
Not killed, but painfully injured.
The bullet struck his collar bone and broke it, near the shoulder.
But fired from only five or six feet the impact was terrific, and at first I thought that he was dead.
The two children had come in about eight-thirty, and Judy was very low.
The appeal was still pending, and unless we secured a new trial Jim would go to the chair early in September.
There was strong pressure being brought against a re-trial.
“James Blake has had every opportunity to prove his innocence, and has failed.
A jury of thoughtful men and women found him guilty and sentenced him to death as the penalty of at least one crime.
There is no question but that an acquittal would have found him at once accused of at least one other murder, and possibly two.
“There is however more at issue than this.
In the past the murderer with wealth at his command has found it possible to evade punishment for almost indefinite periods, with the result that the sacredness of human life—”
It is not surprising then that our group of three was silent that night.
Judy I remember had gone back to the night of Sarah’s death, as though she was desperately attempting to prove something to herself.
“Why wasn’t it Wallie after all?” she said.
“He was in dinner clothes that night.
Suppose he broke into the house here at night?