The sheriff, unaware of the newcomer, stood near the bed, emphasizing his speech with restless arms and violent motions of his head, as if to galvanize into response the still and prostrate form before him. On the opposite side of the bed stood the sepulchral Jarvis, flashing malign looks at Crown, but chiefly busy, with unshaking hands, preparing a beverage of some sort for the sick man.

Sloane lay on his back, eyes closed, face under the full glare of the reading light. His expression indicated both boredom and physical suffering.

"--have to make an arrest!" Crown was saying. "You're making me take that action--ain't you? I come in here, considerate as I know how to be, and I ask you for a few facts. Do you give 'em to me? Not by a long shot! You lie there in that bed, and talk about leaping angels, and say I bore you! Well, Mr. Sloane, that won't get you a thing! You're where I said you were: it's either Webster that will be arrested--or yourself!

Now, I'm giving you another chance. I'm asking you what you saw; and you can tell me--or take the consequences!"

Hastings thought: "He's up that gum stump of his again, and don't know how to quit talking."

Sloane made no answer.

"Well," thundered Crown. "I'm asking you!"

"Moaning martyrs!" Sloane protested in a thin, querulous tone. "Jarvis, the bromide."

"All right!" the sheriff delivered his ultimatum. "I'll stick to what I said. Webster may be too sick to talk, but not too sick to have a warrant served on him. He'll be arrested because you won't tell me----"

Hastings spoke then.

"Gentlemen!" he greeted pleasantly. "Mr. Sloane, good evening. Mr.

Sheriff--am I interrupting a private conference?"

"Fiery fiends!" wailed Sloane. "Another!"

Hastings gave his attention to Crown. He was certain that the man, balked by Sloane's refusal to "talk," would welcome an excuse for leaving the room.

"Let me see you a moment, will you?" He put a hand on the sheriff's shoulder, persuading: "It's important, right now."

"But I want to know what Mr. Sloane's going to say," Crown bl.u.s.tered.

"If he'll tell----"

Hastings stopped him with a whisper: "That's exactly what he'll do--soon!"

He led the sheriff into the hall. They went into the parlour.

"Now," Hastings began, in genial tone; "did you get anything from him?"

"Not a dad-blamed thing!" Crown was still bl.u.s.tery. "But he'll talk before I'm through! You can put your little bets down on that!"

"All right. You've had your chance at him. Better let me see him."

Crown looked his distrust. He was thinking of Mrs. Brace's warning that this man had made a fool of him.

"I'm not trying to put anything over on you," the detective a.s.sured him. "Fact is, I'm out here for the newspaper men. They've had nothing from him; they've asked me to get his story. I'll give it to you before I see them. What do you say?"

Crown still hesitated.

"If, after you've heard it," Hastings added, "you want to question him further, you can do it, of course. But this way we take two shots at it."

To that, the other finally agreed.

Hastings found Sloane smoking a cigarette, his eyes still closed. Jarvis was behind a screen near the door, now and then clinking gla.s.s against gla.s.s as he worked.

The old man took a chair near the bed and waited for Sloane to speak. He waited a long time. Finally, the invalid looked at him from under lowered lids, slyly, like a child peeping. Hastings returned the look with a pleasant smile, his shrewd eyes sparkling over the rims of his spectacles.

"Well!" Sloane said at last, in a whiney tone. "What do you want?"

"First," Hastings apologized, "I want to say how sorry I am I didn't make myself clearly understood night before last when I told Miss Sloane I'd act as mouthpiece for this household. I didn't mean I could invent a statement for each of you, or for any of you. What I did mean amounts to this: if you, for instance, would tell me what you know--all you know--about this murder, I could relay it to the reporters--and to the sheriff, who's been annoying you so this evening. As----"

"Flat-headed fiends!" Sloane cut in, writhing under the light coverlet.

"Another harangue!"

Hastings kept his temper.

"No harangue about it. But it's to come to this, Mr. Sloane: you're handicapping me, and the reporters and the sheriff don't trust you."

"Why? Why don't they trust me?" shrilled Sloane, writhing again.

"Ill tell you in a very few words: because you refused to testify at the inquest yesterday, giving illness as an excuse. That's one reason.

The----"

"Howling helions! Wasn't I ill? Didn't I have enough to make me ill?--Jarvis, a little whiskey!"

"Dr. Garnet hasn't told them so--the reporters. He won't tell them so.

In fact," Hastings said, with less show of cordiality, "from all he said to me, I gather he doesn't think you an ill man--that is, dangerously ill."

"And because of that, they say what, these reporters, this sheriff?

What?"

"They're in ugly mood, Mr. Sloane. They're saying you're trying to protect--somebody--by keeping still about a thing which you should be the first to haul into daylight. That's it--in a nutsh.e.l.l."

Sloane had stopped trembling. He sat up in the bed and stared at the detective out of steady, hard eyes. He waved away the whiskey Jarvis held toward him.

"And you want what, Mr. Hastings?" he inquired, a curiously effective sarcasm in his voice.

"A statement covering every second from the time you waked up Sat.u.r.day night until you saw the body."

"A statement!--Reporters!" He was snarling on that. "What's got into you, anyway? What are you trying to do--make people suspect me of the murder-make 'em suspect Berne?"

He threw away the cigarette and shook his fist at Hastings. He gulped twice before he could speak again; he seemed on the point of choking.

"In an ugly mood, are they? Well, they can stay in an ugly mood. You, too! And that hydrophobiac sheriff! Quivering and crucified saints! I've had enough of all of you--all of you, understand! Get out of here! Get out!"

Although his voice was shrill, there was no sound of weakness in it.

The trembling that attacked him was the result of anger, not of nervousness.

Hastings rose, astounded by the outbreak.

"I'm afraid you don't realize the seriousness of----"