"Yes, yes!" Sanderson encouraged him impatiently. "You say you worked for Mrs. Selim as gardener one day a week—"
"Yes, sir, but I 'tended to her hot water and her garbage, too—twice a day it was I had to go and stoke the little laundry heater that heats the hot water tank in summertime when the steam furnace ain't being used. I live about a mile beyant the Crain place, that is, the house the poor lady was killed in—"
"Did you come to stoke the laundry heater Saturday evening?" Dundee interrupted. "Excuse me, sir," he turned to the district attorney, "but this is the first time I've seen this man."
"No, sir, I didn't stoke it Sat'dy night," Rawlins answered uneasily. "You see, I was comin' up the road to do my chores at half past six, like I always do, but before I got to the house I seen a lot of policemen's cars and motorcycles, and I didn't want to get mixed up in nothing, so I turned around and went home again. I didn't know what was up, but when me and the wife went into Hamilton Sat'dy night in our flivver we seen one of the extries and read about how the poor lady was murdered. But that ain't what I was gittin' at, sir—"
"Well, what are you getting at?" Sanderson urged.
"Well, the extry said the police had found some footprints under the frontmost of them two side windows to Mis' Selim's bedroom, and went on to talk about the rose vines being tore, and straight off I said to the missus, 'Them's my footprints, Minnie'—Minnie's my wife's name—"
"Your footprints!" Sanderson ejaculated, then shook with silent laughter. "There goes Strawn's case, Bonnie!" But immediately he was serious again, as the import of this new evidence came to him. "Tell us all about it, Rawlins.... When did you make those footprints?"
"Friday, sir. That's the day I gardened for Mis' Selim.... You see, sir, the poor little lady told me she was kept awake nights when they was a high wind, by the rose vines tapping against the windows. Says she, 'I think they's somebody tryin' to git into my room, Elmer,' and I could see the poor little thing was mighty nervous anyway, so I didn't waste no time. I cut away a lot of the rose vine and burned it when I was burnin' the garbage and papers in the 'cinerator out back."
"Is that all, Rawlins?" Sanderson asked.
"'Bout all that 'mounts to anything," the laborer deprecated. "But they was somethin' else that struck me as a little funny, when I come to think of it—"