I walked out around the driveway to the early morning streets of Santa Ysobel. The little town looked as peaceful and innocent as a pan of milk. In an hour or so, its ways would be full of people rushing about getting ready for the carnival, a curious contrast to my own business, sinister, tragic. It seemed to me that two currents moved almost as one, the hidden, dark part under—for there must be those in the town who knew the crime was murder; the murderer himself must still be here—and the foam of noisy gayety and blossoms riding atop. A Blossom Festival; the boyhood of the year; and I was in the midst of it, hunting a murderer!
An hour later I talked to Barbara in the stuffy little front room at Capehart's, brow-beaten by the noise of Sarah getting breakfast on the other side of the thin board partition; more disconcerted by the girl's manner of receiving the information of how I had found the 1920 diary hidden in Worth's bureau drawer. There was a swift, very personal anger at me. I had to clear myself instantly and thoroughly of any suspicion of believing for a moment that Worth himself had stolen or mutilated the book, protesting,
"I don't—I don't! Listen, Barbara—be reasonable!"
"That means 'Barbara, be scared!' And I won't. When they're scared, people make mistakes."
"You might see differently if you'd been there last night when Cummings made his charge against Worth. That seventy two thousand dollars Worth carried up to the city Monday morning, he had taken from his father's safe the night before."
For a minute she just looked at me, and not even Worth Gilbert's dare-devil eyes ever held a more inclusively defiant light than those big, soft, dark ones of hers.
"Well—wasn't it his?"
"All right," I said shortly. "I'm not here to talk of Worth's financial methods; they're scheduled to get him into trouble; but let that pass. Look through this book and you'll see who it is I'm after."
She had already opened the volume, and began to glance along the pages. She made a motion for me to wait. I leaned back in my chair, and it was only a few moments later that she looked up to say,
"Don't make the arrest, Mr. Boyne. You have nothing here against Eddie—for murder."