"You had no feelings against either of these men? They didn't know anything you were afraid they might tell?"
Alison's face blanched under her companion's merciless gaze, and he saw it was all she could do to keep back her tears. "Oh, what could—I swear to you—I didn't know either of them, even by sight. So why would I—what motive could there be?"
"I've been asking myself that question for months," Dexter observed. "The motive? All I know is that the woman's voice I heard talking in that dark cabin said something about dead tongues never talking. The few fragments of speech suggested the idea that either fear or vengeance had much to do with the tragedy. You have no notion of what it all meant?"
"No!" she moaned. "How could I? I don't know anything more than you yourself have told me."
The corporal strode along for a distance in meditative silence, soberly watching the ground underfoot. Alison looked up at him, and shook her head, and sighed. "It isn't that I'm hoping to influence you in your duty," she said at last in a small, stifled voice. "I don't think I—-I'd want you to yield an inch from the straight line as you see it, even if I could persuade you. And I know I couldn't. I'm not asking anything, only—"
"Only what?" he asked as she failed to finish.
"I want you to believe that I have done nothing wrong," she said in stumbling accents. "I know what I've got to go through later with others, but if you didn't think evil of me, then I—it would make it a little easier."
"You were the only woman in that section of the forest that night," Dexter stated dully, and deep lines of unhappiness were graven at the corners of his mouth. "Can I deny the testimony of my own eyes and ears? I was there, and saw and heard."
"Try to believe in me," she sobbed. "I—I'm not bad. Won't you try to think that I'm not? Please!"
"As a man, I want to believe: you know that! But as a policeman—" He turned his head aside for a moment to hide the anguish in his face. "As a policeman," he went on somberly, "I've got to believe in the evidence that I gather—in facts."