'Don't move.' He was on the stairs and he had a gun.
'Christy was dead. The candlestick was the weapon. It was covered with her blood and I had it in my hand.'
'Circumstantial,' Johnny said. His mouth felt dry.
'That wasn't all,' McCauley said. 'The wall safe was open. That's where the money had come from. And now I must try to tell you about those pins.' He sighed deeply once more. 'The old lady had given Christy a jeweled pin on Christy's birthday. It was only about an inch in diameter, flat, made in the shape of a flower. Six petals. Covered with pearls. A diamond in the center. It was worth, I suppose, about two hundred dollars. Christy had asked the old man to keep it in the safe. Now, Kate . . .'
The little man wiped his forehead with his MTist. 'Kate also had such a pin.' He looked straight into Johnny's eyes with a curious compassion as if to say, T know, I know, you cannot believe this.'
'I was mooning over a glass, to Kate one night. 'Now we could sell my wife's valuable jeweled pin,' I said, 'and get the money to move us north.' Still she wouldn't go. Kate asked me to describe the pin and, when I did, she fetched one exactly like it from a box of trinkets she had. Kate told me that Nathaniel Bartee had given her this pin, years ago. Kate tr«#ted me not to spread this around for a scandal. Kate was just surprised that Christy's pin was supposed to be valuable. If hers was its twin, perhaps hers was valuable too. So I took Kate's pin home with me. I showed it to Christy. She got hers from the safe one day. We compared them. They toere twins. So we' believed what K^ate had said. Christy knew about Kate, you see, and she understood, in a way. But Christy didn't altogether understand.' The man shook ghosts out of his head, and pain out of his eyes.
'The old lady told Christy that her first husband had bought the pin. We guessed he must have bought a pair. The old lady must have given the other one to Nathaniel, or Josephine, his wife that died—a long time ago. Anyway, it was, we thought, amusing. Because Nathaniel was such a pussycat. His father, the old man, was disappointed in him and harsh with him. The old lady was always on his side.' McCauley brooded.
'Go on,' the chaplain said.
'Yes. Well, Christy's pin was back in the safe that night. I had Kate's pin in my pocket to return to her. I'd had it
there for a week. That night, you see, Td drunk too much again. I'd forgotten it again.
'So, that night, when the police came—the old man made Nathaniel call them—why, they searched me and they found Kate's pin. Then they found that Christy's pin wasn't in the safe. So they thought that proved I had opened the safe.' McCauley's voice had gone flat and despairing.
'I see,' said Johimy. 'But are you positive your wife's pin was in there?'
'Oh, yes. She asked the old man to put it there just after dinner. And he was reading in the study all evening. He wouldn't lie.'
Johnny frowned. 'Was there money missing too?' 'I don't know,' McCauley said. 'If so, not much. Sometimes the old man hadn't counted.' 'Why did Christy go downstairs?'
'Possibly something for the baby.' McCauley looked desolated. 'We couldn't know.' 'Go on.'
'Yes. Now, the old lady said she had heard angry voices, which was what made her wake the old man. Nathaniel said he'd been awake, he'd heard them too. So the theory was that I had opened the safe to get the pin —to sell it for the money in it. Chiisty had discovered me. We'd quarreled. And I'd hit her.
''They conceded that I may not have meant to hit so hard. But I was drunk. I was opening a safe that was not my safe. You see?' 'I guess so,' Johnny said. 'That was all the case there ever was.' 'But what about this Kate?'
'The testimony on my side wasn't believed,' said McCauley patiently. 'Oh, Kate went on the stand and told about her pin. That Nathaniel had given it to her. But there was nobody who remembered seeing it in Kate's old box. And then Nathaniel swore that he'd given no pin. He produced the pin.' Johnny bhnked. The prisoner talked on. 'So they said this was all a preposterous lie to save me. Nathaniel Bartee wouldn't have had any truck with a woman hke Kate, they said. Well, nobody took the word of a 'woman like Kate' against the Bartees. Nobody took the word of a man
like me, either, who had been drunk and with another woman, when he had a wife and child. And Christy,^ who could have told them I had one pin, Christy was dead.'
'I see,' said Johnny. He thought he saw. This man was crazy. The story had no k)gic. 'Where does Dick Bartee come into it?'
'He was supposed to be locked up for the night in that mihtary school. But he could get out. I'd seen him in the Baitee kitchen getting food after many a midnight.' Johnny lifted an eyebrow.
'The safe wasn't forced, Mr. Sims. It was opened by someone who knew how. One of the family.' Johnny just waited.
'Christy wouldn't have quarreled with a stranger or a burglar. She'd have screamed. So Christy knew whoever it was she found in there, by the open safe.' Johnny conceded a thoughtful nod.
'But Cluisty wouldn't have quarreled with Nathaniel, who was fort>'-one years old and the Crown Prince in that house. No more than she would have quarreled with the old man himself. But she certainly would have questioned fifteen-year-old Dick Bartee if she'd found him in his grandfather's stud^ at midnight and the safe open. She'd' have threatened to call out.. He was rough and tough, that kid. He'd have hit her. I've thought about it all so long,' said McCauley, 'I can't tell you the feel—the fitting down—the choking in.'
'And how did Nathaniel get the pin?' snapped Johimy. 'Christy^'s pin?' said McCauley. 'Dick gave it to him.' Johnny found himself shaking his head. 'What is this alibi?' he asked, turning to something else for kindness' sake. 'Yes. Well the school—that's tlie Brownleaf School—says nobody leaves after lights out. Dick's roommate was a boy named George Rush, who said Dick was there. Edith-Emily tried to talk to him years ago, but he was just a kid and scared and she couldn't approach him in any way that would get him to tell her the truth.'
'He lives in Oakland now,' said the chaplain, 'He has a radio-TV repair shop. If you could get this George Rush to say, without fear or pressure, whether Dick Bartee was really there in his room at the school that night . . .'
'I don't see how any roommate could guarantee . . .'' Johnny felt sorry for both these men.
'He might,' said the chaplain. 'He might be able to convince us. It's worth trying. If he could, it would settle
