“I don’t know. I don’t remember any such,” began the witness, in a stammering sort of way. “We have always a great many men from the West stopping at our house, but I don’t recollect any special one who registered himself as coming from Toledo.”
“You, however, always expect your guests to put their names in your book?”
“Yes, sir.”
There was something in the troubled look of the man which aroused the suspicion of the coroner, and he was about to address him with another question when one of the jury, who was looking over the register, spoke up and asked:
“Who is this Clement Smith who writes himself down here as coming from Toledo?”
“Smith?—Smith?” repeated Symonds, going up to the juryman and looking over his shoulder at the book. “Oh, yes, the gentleman who came yesterday. He—”
But at this moment a slight disturbance occurring in the other room, the witness paused and looked about him with that same embarrassed look before noted. “He is at the hotel now,” he added, with an attempt at ease, transparent as it was futile.
The disturbance to which I have alluded was of a peculiar kind. It was occasioned by the thickset man making the spring which, for some minutes, he had evidently been meditating. It was not a tragic leap, however, but a decidedly comic one, and had for its end and aim the recovery of a handkerchief which he had taken from his pocket at the moment when the witness uttered the name of Smith, and, by a useless flourish in opening it, flirted from his hand to the floor. At least, so the amused throng interpreted the sudden dive which he made, and the heedless haste that caused him to trip over the gentleman’s hat that stood on the floor, causing it to fall and another handkerchief to tumble out. But Mr. Byrd, who had a detective’s insight into the whole matter, saw something more than appeared in the profuse apologies which the thickset man made, and the hurried manner in which he gathered up the handkerchiefs and stood looking at them before returning one to his pocket and the other to its place in the gentleman’s hat. Nor was Mr. Byrd at all astonished to observe that the stand which his fellow-detective took, upon resettling himself, was much nearer the unseen gentleman than before, or that in replacing the hat, he had taken pains to put it so far to one side that the gentleman would be obliged to rise and come around the corner in order to obtain it. The drift of the questions propounded to the witness at this moment opened his eyes too clearly for him to fail any longer to understand the situation.
“Now at the hotel?” the coroner was repeating. “And came yesterday? Why, then, did you look so embarrassed when I mentioned his name?”
“Oh—well—ah,” stammered the man, “because he was there once before, though his name is not registered but once in the book.”
“He was? And on what day?”
“On Tuesday,” asserted the man, with the sudden decision of one who sees it is useless to attempt to keep silence.
“The day of the murder?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And why is his name not on the book at that time if he came to your house and put up?”
“Because he did not put up; he merely called in, as it were, and did not take a meal or hire a room.”
“How did you know, then, that he was there? Did you see him or talk to him?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And what did you say?”
“He asked me for directions to a certain house, and I gave them.”
“Whose house?”
“The Widow Clemmens’, sir.”
Ah, light at last! The long-sought-for witness had been found! Coroner and jury brightened visibly, while the assembled crowd gave vent to a deep murmur, that must have sounded like a knell of doom—in one pair of ears, at least.
“He asked you for directions to the house of Widow Clemmens. At what time was this?”
“At about half-past eleven in the morning.”
The very hour!
“And did he leave then?”
“Yes, sir; after taking a glass of brandy.”
“And did you not see him again?”
“Not till yesterday, sir.”
“Ah, and at what time did you see him yesterday?”
“At bedtime, sir. He came with other arrivals on the five o’clock train; but I was away all the afternoon and did not see him till I went into the barroom in the evening.”
“Well, and what passed between you then?”
“Not much, sir. I asked if he was going to stay with us, and when he said ‘Yes,’ I inquired if he had registered his name. He replied ‘No.’ At which I pointed to the book, and he wrote his name down and then went upstairs with me to his room.”
“And is that all? Did you say nothing beyond what you have mentioned? ask him no questions or make no allusions to the murder?”
“Well, sir, I did make some attempt that way, for I was curious to know what took him to the Widow Clemmens’ house, but he snubbed me so quickly, I concluded to hold my tongue and not trouble myself any further about the matter.”
“And do you mean to say you haven’t told anyone that an unknown man had been at your house on the morning of the murder inquiring after the widow?”
“Yes, sir. I am a poor man, and believe in keeping out of all sort of messes. Policy demands that much of me, gentlemen.”
The look he received from the coroner may have convinced him that policy can be carried too far.
“And now,” said Dr. Tredwell, “what sort of a man is this Clement Smith?”
“He is a gentleman, sir, and not at all the sort of person with whom you would be likely to connect any unpleasant suspicion.”
The coroner surveyed the hotelkeeper somewhat sternly.
“We are not talking about suspicions!” he cried; then, in a different tone, repeated: “This gentleman, you say, is still at your house?”
“Yes, sir, or was at breakfast-time. I have not seen him since.”
“We
