But it is true that it disappeared.
It was taken from there.”
“You had the key to that closet?”
“Yes.”
“Was there more than one key?”
“No.
I have wondered since if Amos took it.
I was in bed.
He could have taken the key.”
“And why would Amos do that?”
He was utterly confused by that time, faint, sagged in his chair and gray of face.
“He may have known—he may have thought—”
“What did Amos know?”
And then Inspector Harrison walked into the room, and laid something on the table.
Jim took one look at it, and fainted dead away.
Chapter Eighteen
IN THE CELLAR INSPECTOR Harrison had renewed his prowling about, the Federal officers mildly interested, and Amos watching his movements with a sort of fascinated terror.
He rapped on the cement walls again, inspected the ceiling.
Now and then, furtively, he looked at the negro, and it seemed to him that the negro was increasingly alarmed each time he neared the coal cellar.
But the coal cellar was full of coal.
It had overflowed into the main cellar, and lay about.
And suddenly Inspector Harrison remembered that it was spring.
“Plenty of coal, for the summer?” he said to Amos.
“Cook with coal?”
“No sir.
With gas,” said Amos.
“And when did you get in all this coal?”
“I don’t rightly remember, sir.
Seems to me it was in May some time.”
Inspector Harrison stooped down, and cleared a few lumps from the margin of the heap.
“What’s under here? Cement?”
“I don’t rightly know, sir.”
But it was not cement.
There was a shovel on the coal, and at first they put Amos to work on it.
He was terrified. He made noisy protests, but there were three of them, grim and determined.
They were not inhuman, however, for as the negro began to play out they took the shovel from him.
One after the other, they dug into the coal, throwing it out into the clean cemented floor, scrutinizing it, and then falling to work again.
It required more than two hours to clear the place, but at last they reached the end and they had found nothing.
There was the hard-pounded black earth, glistening with black dust under their flashlights, and no sign that it had been disturbed.
One of the men laughed.
“Well, that’s that,” he said, “and now I want a bath and a bed.
Let’s go.”
But the Inspector was not listening.
He was watching Amos, and Amos was smiling again.
“If that’s all you gentlemen want,” he said, “you all can go up and I’ll put out the light.”
The Inspector was wiping his face, which was streaming.
“What’s the hurry, Amos?” he said gently.
“There’s no liquor here, sir.
You’ve seen for yourself.”
“Have I?