“I’ve told you that.
She wanted her to look after my niece, Judy.
There was a young man here she was fond of.
My sister didn’t approve.”
“After you telephoned, where did you go?”
“I walked on.
I went to see a woman.
I don’t intend to say more.
Then I started back.”
“That would have been when?”
“Perhaps nine o’clock.
I don’t know exactly.”
The District Attorney bent forward.
“And you still decline to give the direction you took?”
“I do.
I have done nothing wrong.
I decline to be put on the offensive.”
“But suppose I show you the route you took that night, Mr. Blake?
Suppose I tell you that from that drugstore you went to the path through the Larimer lot, and down that path to the park?
And that later you returned by the same route?
I warn you, Mr. Blake, that we know a great deal, and that you are only damaging yourself by these evasions.”
And still Jim obstinately silent, and the District Attorney leaning back in his chair and watching him.
“You carried the sword-stick that night?”
“I told you before that I did.”
“Did you see Sarah Gittings during that walk?”
“No.
Absolutely not.”
“Yet you were on that path that night, Mr. Blake. We know that.
You went down that path into the park, and later on you went up again.
At one point you stopped for some time.
You either sat or stood on that hillside, and you smoked a cigar.
You were not alone at that time.
A man does not pause on a dark hillside on a cool spring night to look at nature.”
And then Jim made his unconscious admission.
“I was alone. Absolutely alone.”
“Ah! you admit then that you were there?”
“I was there, yes.”
“You met nobody?
Talked to nobody?”
“I did not.”
“At what time were you there?”
And again that almost infinitesimal pause, and Jim mopping his forehead.
“I went down about half past seven.”
“And you came back?”
“Something after nine.”
“And reached your house a little after ten?
Come, come, Mr. Blake, that’s childish.”
“I don’t know the time.”
“What route did you follow, coming back?”
“I cut across the park, coming up by the bridle path near Miss Bell’s house.