We have a list of his calls out for that night.
Wherever he was when he telephoned—and we are trying to locate that—he was not at home.”
And I felt again that this communicativeness of his was deliberate, that he was watching for its effect on me.
“But why?
Why would Jim Blake kill Sarah?” I demanded.
“What would be his motive?”
He was getting ready to go, and he stopped by the door.
“Now and then, in criminal work,” he said, “we find the criminal before we learn the motive.
I make no accusation against Mr. Blake.
I merely say that his movements that night require explanation, and that until he makes that explanation we have to use our own interpretation.
If that’s unfavorable to him that’s his fault.”
One comfort at least we had at that time.
The reporters, the camera men and the crowds of inquisitive sightseers had abandoned us, and out on the Warrenville road Hawkins had thriftily piled brush about the site of the crime, and was letting in the morbid minded at a price until the county police stopped him.
The cow had died.
But in my own household demoralization was almost complete.
The women were in a state of hysteria, afraid to leave the house and almost as terrified to stay in it.
On Tuesday morning the laundress had come upstairs pale and trembling, to say that the chair had been taken from the laundry again, and was once more in the room where the wood was stored.
And on that night, at something after twelve o’clock, Clara ran down to my room, pounding on the door and shouting that there was a man under her bed.
It required Joseph with the revolver and myself with all my courage to discover Jock there, neatly curled up and asleep.
The matter of the chair, however, puzzled me.
I took Judy and went down.
It was a plain wooden chair, and it had been left where it was found.
Judy mounted it and examined the joists above, for this portion of the basement is not ceiled.
But there was nothing there except a large black spider, at which she got down in a hurry.
I don’t know what I had expected to find.
The sword-stick, perhaps.
It was on Wednesday that I determined to see Jim.
I had not seen him for over a week, not indeed since the day of Sarah’s funeral, and if Wallie’s state had bewildered me Jim’s frankly shocked me.
I had been fond of Jim, but with no particular approval.
The very fact that he was still idling through his late forties; that he was content to live modestly because extravagance meant work; that he could still put in weeks of preparation on the Bachelors’ Ball, given each year for the debutantes; that his food and drink were important to him, and his clothes—all these things had annoyed me.
Nor had I ever quite believed in his feeble health; certainly he was a stronger man than Howard, who had always worked and who was still working in the very shadow of death.
Certainly Jim was able to play golf, to sit up all night at bridge, to eat and drink what he wanted, and to dance with a young generation which liked his cocktails and the flowers he sent them.
But this was the surface of Jim Blake.
Of the real man, buried under that slightly bulging waistline, that air of frivolity, those impeccable garments, I doubt if even Katherine knew anything.
He went his way, apparently a cheerful idler, with his present assured, and his future undoubtedly cared for in the case of Howard’s death.
There was, however, nothing cheerful about the Jim I found on Wednesday night, lying in his handsome bed and nursed and valeted by Amos.
I have often wondered since just what were his thoughts as he lay there day after day, watching Amos moving deftly about the room; Amos who knew so much and yet not enough.
The two watching each other, the black man and the white, and yet all serene between them on the surface.
“I’ve ordered sweetbreads for luncheon, sir.”
“That’s right.
Put them on a little ham, Amos.”
And Amos going out, efficient and potentially dangerous, to order sweetbreads.
Jim must have had his bad hours, his own temptations.
He could have escaped even then; could have slipped out the rear door to his car and gone somewhere, anywhere, for his illness was certainly not acute.
But he did not. He lay there in his bed and waited for the inevitable.
He was glad to see me, I thought.
He was propped up in bed in a pair of mauve silk pyjamas, and with a dressing gown of dark brocade hanging over a chair beside him.
The room was masculine enough, but a trifle too carefully done, as though Jim had taken pains to place the jewel which was himself in a perfect setting.
There was something incongruous in the contrast between that soft interior, shaded and carefully lighted, with Jim as the central figure, the star of its stage, and the man I had seen across the street as I walked to the house. I had walked. I felt that it was not necessary to take my household into my confidence in this particular matter.
“Well,” he said, “this is a kindly and Christian act!