“Suppose,” Anthony said, dropping his hand, “suppose you tell me why in hell you listen to my conversations with other people.”
“I wasn’t listening.” The man’s voice was sullen, yet at the same time shrill with fear.
“Why take the trouble?” Anthony asked plaintively. “Besides, it’s wicked to tell stories, Belford. Wicked! Unhappy is the burden of a fib. We will, I think, get farther from our fellows and you shall tell me all about everything. I’ve been watching you, you know.”
With these last words, true but intentionally misleading, a black shadow of hopelessness seemed to fall upon the prisoner.
“All right,” he mumbled wearily, and followed meekly, but with dragging feet, while his captor led the way down the steps and across the lawn and into the little copse which faced the eastern end of the house.
As he walked, Anthony thought hard. He was something more than mystified. What in heaven, earth or hell was this little person going to tell him? Another old boot turning into a salmon, what? Father Gethryn, confessor! Well, every little helps.
When the house was hidden from them by the trees, he stopped. He sat on a log and waved Belford to another. Then he lit his pipe and waited. To his surprise, the little servant, after clearing his throat, began at once. Much of his nervousness seemed to drop from him, though he still looked like a man in fear.
“I’m rather glad this has happened, sir,” he said, “because I was going to come to you anyway.”
“You were, were you?” thought Anthony. “Now why?” But he went on smoking.
“I couldn’t of stood it much longer, sir, reely I couldn’t! And ever since you stopped that great brute of a sergeant from popping it across me, sir, I’ve been tryin’ to make up me mind to tell you.” He paused as if expecting an answer; but getting none, plunged on. “I wasn’t upstairs all the time that night, like I said I was at the inquest!” Again he paused.
Anthony went on smoking. Here, if he wanted the story quickly, silence was best.
Belford swallowed hard. His face, as he went on speaking, turned from muddy gray to dead white.
“I—I come downstairs, sir, after I’d finished in the master’s room. And when I got to the ’all I heard old Poole starting on one of them sneezin’ fits. And—and, sir, I went into the study and I saw the master lyin’ there on the rug—just like they found ’im! And—and I shut that door behind me quick—old Pooley was still coughin’ and chokin’ his head off—and I nipped back up the stairs, sir. It’s God’s truth, sir! It is—”
This time the pause was so long that Anthony knew speech necessary.
“Are you trying to explain,” he said, “that though you did go into the study that night you didn’t have anything to do with the murder?”
“Yes, sir, yes.” The man’s eagerness was pathetic. “That’s just it, sir! I didn’t have nothink to do with it, sir, nothink! So ’elp me God!”
“What did you go into the room for?” Anthony shot out the question. “Must’ve been for something you didn’t want found out or Poole’s hay-fever wouldn’t have been so important to you?” The logic, he knew, was faulty. But the thrust told.
Belford hung his head. “Yes, sir, it was what you say. I thought—one of the girls told me—the master was in the billiard-room. And I knew as ’e always kept money somewhere in the study. I was goin’ to pin—steal it if I could. I was desprit, sir. Desprit!”
Anthony was puzzled. “But if you came out without stealing anything, why didn’t you rouse the house when you saw Mr. Hoode was dead?”
“I don’t know, sir. Except that it all come as such a shock like—my sneaking in there while old Poole was sneezin’—and then finding—that, sir. You see, when I nipped out, the old man was still sneezin’ with ’is ’ead on his knees. And I knew as he hadn’t spotted me. And I bolted away to think. An’ the more I thought, the more I feels as if I couldn’t—hadn’t better like—tell anybody.
“I can see, now, sir, ’ow blasted silly it were—me having done nothink wrong. But there it was, sir, I meant to tell, but as I’d gone in there to steal and ’ad sneaked in in the way I did—well, it made me feel as if they’d all jump on me immediate as the murderer. Specially as I never goes into the study in the ordinary way. You do see ’ow it was, don’t you, sir?”
“It do,” Anthony said. “But I also see that you’re a fool. A fool for not rousing everyone at once; a fool for not keeping quiet after you’d decided to say nothing about it.”
Belford’s little eyes opened wide. “But you—you were on me, sir! You suspected me like—thought I was the murd’rer!”
Anthony shook his head. “Not really, Belford. You know, you looked too guilty to be true. I nabbed you just now because I don’t like eavesdroppers. Also because anything fishy in this house interests me at present.”
“I may be a fool,” cried Belford in heavy tones not without humour, “but I feel better now I’ve got it off my chest like. Reely I do, sir! I kept sayin’ to meself as how I wasn’t guilty of anythink, and yet I ’ad the conscience awful! I’ve bin trying to tell you for twenty-four hours, sir, but when I ’eard you askin’ Poole if ’e’d ’ad a ’tack of that hay-fever on the night the master was killed, I got frightened again and was goin’ to bolt. Only you copped me.” He was silent a moment, then burst out: “Mr. Deacon didn’t do it, sir. He couldn’t of! You know that, sir?”
Anthony did. But he wanted to turn this tragicomic confession of nothing into evidence of importance, though he had but little hope of success.
“What time,”
