'Now either her husband did it, or this Bartee did it, or a thiid party did it. Right?'
'Right.' They were eye to eye.
'Since the husband was tried and convicted by law, this would seem the most probable. Only we don't like it much, do we? This makes the httle girl's father a killer and that's unpleasant. Nicer to think of him as a saint.' The chaplain's gaze did not falter. 'But Bartee,' Johnny went on, 'now it seems we don't like him for the part either. Nan's in love
with him. It would break her heart. The really nice way for this to come out would be to find a third party. Somebody Nan doesn't give a whoop about. All right.' Johnny made a furious gesture. 'I don't want Nan's heart broken either, but can't you see how silly—?' Johnny felt stormy. 'You can't rearrange what happened' he said, 'to make it nicer for a sweet young girl.'
'McCauley has no proof that Bartee did the killing,' the chaplain said gravely and steadily. 'Suppose you found proof that Bartee did not? Then, when we tell Nan the story of her father and mother, as I agree we should, she will at least have the strength and the refuge of the man she loves.'
Courtesy of }. Sims, thought Johimy to himself wryly.
'As for McCauley,' the chaplain went on, 'you find it incredible that he wishes he needn't break her heart? But I can conceive that McCauley not only wishes this but also would rather be rid of the prejudice of an old hatred, of a possible injustice in his thoughts. I can imagine that Clinton McCauley wants to be good. That is a motive that does exist, in some human beings.'
Johnny felt himself flushing. He thought, O.K. I guess I'll have to see if I can prove her darling dear's an upright man. He felt very strange, hghtheaded, a little empty. He must have nodded or something because the chaplain opened the door to his oflSce.
The small man sat where they had left him, his head bowed, his lips moving.
'. . . from evil. . .' Johnny thought he heard him say.
CHAPTER 5
Johnny vtent over to him. 'I wish you would tell me about this whole case,' Johnny said to him crisply, with neither sympathy nor hostility.
'Yes, I will do that,' said McCauley.
The little lame man with the saint's face looked at the wall. 'I went to the Spanish War,' he began. 'If you can remember it—we fought for an ideal. That's the kind of young man I was. I got hit in my right heel. Not important. Makes me limp. When I came home, Christy and the baby were living with the Baitees in the big old house in Hestia. The old lady was Christy's own grandmother by her first husband. The old lady married old man Bartee about 1917, I think. He'd had a wife before. Nathaniel was the first wife's son and Dick is Nathaniel's son. So Dick is the old man's grandson. Yet he and Christy shared no blood. Bart, Junior, now, he was in the middle. Half brother to Nathaniel, and half brother to Christy's mother. I don't know if that's clear.'
'I think so,' said Johnny. 'His child. Her child. Their child.'
'That's right. Well, they all made a big fuss over Christy and she liked it there. She hked the prestige of being a Bar-tee connection, you know, and the comfort. Christy couldn't understand why I wanted her to come away and live in poverty.'
'I could have had a job up north, but it would have meant scraping along on a small income, Christy confined, taking care of tfee baby all alone.
'I can see Christy's point of view so clearly, now. Then I was a young man with a limp, a hero returned, ignored. I was frustrated and bitter. 1 wanted to be the head of my family. In that house, the old man was head, and the old lady ran the house and Nathaniel, pussyfooting around with his art and his elegant manners, was the Crown Prince. Or the old lady thought so.'
McCauley's voice had changed. It was crisper and harsher. The face was harder. Young McCauley, Johnny perceived, had been no saint.
'The young boys, of course, were in and out,' McCauley continued. 'Young Bart had gone into the service. I couldn't, because of my foot. Or I think I would have gone. Young Dick they got rid of as best they could by sending him to a military school, not far away. He was hard to handle. His mother was dead. Nathaniel, his father, couldn't do a thing. The old man w.as the only one who could handle ; him at all.
'So, in that household Christy was everybody's pet. She was only twenty-two, pretty and gay. The place was full of servants, fussing over Christy's clothes and Christy's baby. My baby.
'I couldn't persuade Christy to leave there. She had such reasonable reasons why not. I couldn't say, 'Look, it's my pride for which you must give up all this.' Although it was true. So I took to drinking too much. Going out on the town. It's a small town. The whole town watched me. Sometimes I had to be carried home. I took to one particular bar, run by a woman whose reputation was not what the Bartees thought it should have been.
'She meant to be my friend,' the prisoner said. 'Kate had a kind heart. She'd listen to me curse the Bartees, complain of Christy, and pity myself.'
'Then, the next morning, Christy would look at me with her clear sober eyes and I'd be ashamed and everything would be worse than before.' He sighed deeply and clasped his hands.
'All right. That night, I had been with Kate. Alone. In her room. I'd had too much. I didn't want anybody called to come fetch me, and Kate understood my pride. So Kate was trying to sober me. I wasn't actually so very late getting back to the Bartee house. It was about midnight. I got off the bus and wobbled up the drive. Long drive. I had my key, opened the front door. Old-fashioned double doors. Night light in the hall. Old-fashioned wood-paneled hall.'
The man was describing a vision now and Johnny began to see it too.
'I saw, right away, as soon as I was inside, that the light burned in the old man's study. A square little room across from the bottom of the stairs, about half-way back. I started down the hall and I saw a big iron candlestick lying on the red hall rug. This was strange. So I picked it up. 'I held it in my hand. I got opposite the study door. The candlestick belonged in there. I turned into the room and then I saw Christy. Lying on the floor. Her head was bloody. She was dead. I knew that, right away. There was paper money fallen all around her.
'I was numb and sick and I hoped it was a drunken nightmare. I stood there until I heard the old man saying,
