“Yes. I think I heard the door close behind him—I’m not sure. Then I saw his form in the moonlight on the front lawn.”
“You recognized him at once?”
“Not at once. I thought perhaps it was one of the guests. But in a bright patch of moonlight I saw him plain.”
“Where did he go?”
“He turned down the driveway toward the lagoon. I didn’t see him again.”
At the sound of the piercing scream she got up and put on a dressing-gown, but she did not come down at once. She was afraid, she said—she didn’t know what to do. She had no knowledge as to the activities and the positions of the other members of the household at the time of the crime.
She had come to work as her uncle’s secretary but a few weeks before; and she verified perfectly Nealman’s testimony in regard to the dead servant. If he had had enemies in the household she had not been aware of it, she knew of no chronic malady, and she did not think that he carried any large amount of money on his person. The scream had seemed to her to be one of unfathomable fear.
The housekeeper, Mrs. Gentry, was the last of the white people to be called upon; and her testimony threw no new light upon the problem. She was in bed and asleep, and the shouts of the men without had wakened her.
The coroner called on the negroes in turn, and I was a little amazed at the ease with which he wrung their testimony out of them. He knew these dark people: no northern man could have hoped to have been so successful. Sometimes he shouted at them as if in fury, sometimes he wheedled or jested with them.
Not one of them but could prove an alibi. They were all in their own quarters, they said, at the moment of the tragedy. Because this was the South and they were black, they did not know Florey, a white man, very well. And they had all been frightened nearly out of their wits by the events of the night.