III
Burgess stood by the window with his back to them. The governor spoke to him, and he nodded and left the room. In a moment he returned with two men and closed the door quickly.
“Hello, warden; sit down a moment, will you?”
The governor turned to a tall, slender man whose intense pallor was heightened by the brightness of his oddly staring blue eyes. He advanced slowly. His manner was that of a blind man moving cautiously in an unfamiliar room. The governor smiled reassuringly into his white, impassive face.
“I’m very glad to see you, Mr. Avery,” he said. He rose and took Avery by the hand.
At the name Tate’s head went up with a jerk. His chair creaked discordantly as he turned, looked up into the masklike face behind him, and then the breath went out of him with a sharp, whistling sound as when a man dies, and he lunged forward with his arms flung out upon the table.
The governor’s grip tightened upon Avery’s hand; there was something of awe in his tone when he spoke.
“You needn’t be afraid, Avery,” he said. “My way of doing this is a little hard, I know, but it seemed the only way. I want you to tell me,” he went on slowly, “whether Tate was at the bungalow the night Reynolds was killed. He was there, wasn’t he?”
Avery wavered, steadied himself with an effort, and slowly shook his head. The governor repeated his question in a tone so low that Burgess and the warden, waiting at the window, barely heard. A third time he asked the question. Avery’s mouth opened, but he only wet his lips with a quick, nervous movement of the tongue, and his eyes met the governor’s unseeingly.
The governor turned from him slowly, and his left hand fell upon Tate’s shoulder.
“If you are not guilty, Tate, now is the time for you to speak. I want you to say so before Avery; that’s what I’ve brought him here for. I don’t want to make a mistake. If you say you believe Avery to be guilty, I will not sign his pardon.”
He waited, watching Tate’s hands as they opened and shut weakly; they seemed, as they lay inert upon the table, to be utterly dissociated from him, the hands of an automaton whose mechanism worked imperfectly. A sob, deep, hoarse, pitiful, shook his burly form.
The governor sat down, took a bundle of papers from his pocket, slipped one from under the rubber band which snapped back sharply into place. He drew out a pen, tested the point carefully, then, steadying it with his left hand, wrote his name.
“Warden,” he said, waving the paper to dry the ink; “thank you for your trouble. You will have to go home alone. Avery is free.”