“I don’t like your tone, Wallie.”
He pulled himself together then, and took another turn about the room.
“Sorry,” he muttered.
“I get excited.
God, who wouldn’t be excited?
I’ll ask you in a different way.
Was the carpet in the car the other night when Amos drove you back here?”
“It was.”
“And you left it there?”
“Why shouldn’t I?”
“That’s not an answer.”
“Now see here, Wallie,” I said.
“I won’t be bullied.
There is no reason why I should answer any questions you put to me.
Go to the police, if you like.
Then if they choose to come to me—”
“The police.
I’m trying my very best to keep the police out of this.
But that darky of Jim Blake’s blabs everything he knows.
They’ll get it out of him yet.
All I want to find out is why the carpet was taken.
What was on it?
It told something. What did it tell?”
I eyed him.
“Wallie,” I said, “do you believe that Jim Blake committed these crimes?
You’ve insinuated that, and that there was a reason.”
“I could think of a reason, but this Gunther thing—No, I don’t believe he’s got the guts.”
“If you could think of a reason, it’s your business to tell it.
Tell me, at least.
If I’m to work in the dark—”
“Ah, so you have been working!
Now look here, what was on that carpet?
Oil?
Blood?
You took it, didn’t you?
Amos says you did.”
“Why should he say that?”
“He says that if you got in the car and it was missing, you’d have asked about it.”
I made up my mind then to make a clean breast of it.
“I did take it, Wallie, I took it out and burned it in the furnace.
There was oil on it; a ring of oil. Something containing kerosene oil had been carried in it.”
“My God!” he said, and seemed to sag lower in his chair.
He had aged in the past few days.
That is the only way I can describe the change in him.
That buoyancy and gaiety which had made him likable, with all his faults, had deserted him.
But I could not feel sorry for him.
He knew something; I rather thought that he knew a great deal.
“Do you think Amos knew what was on that carpet?” he asked.
“I haven’t an idea.
If he did, the police may know it too; but I think, if they do know it, they would have taken it away for safekeeping.