"Well?" Sanderson prodded, as the man halted uncertainly.
"Well, it's like I told you, it was my job to burn the papers. That scar-face maid of Mis' Selim's put everything—garbage and trash—in a big garbage can outside the back door, and I burnt 'em up. So I was kinder surprised Sat'dy mornin', when I went to stoke up the laundry heater, to find somebody'd been meddlin' with my drafts and had let the fire go clean out. I had to clean out the ashes and build a new fire—"
"You're trying to say, I suppose, that you could tell by the ashes that someone had been burning papers in the laundry heater?" Sanderson asked, with a quick glance at Dundee's tense face.
"That's right, sir," Rawlins agreed eagerly. "You know what kind of ashes a mess o' paper makes—layers of white ashes, sir, that kinder looks like papers yit."
"Yes, I know.... And you found layers of white ashes, which you took particular pains to clean out?" Sanderson asked bitterly.
"Yes, sir. So's I could build a new fire—"
"Did you speak to the maid—ask her if she'd been 'meddlin' with your drafts'?"
"Yes, sir, I did!" the man answered with a trace of the belligerence he had undoubtedly shown to Lydia. "She said she didn't open no dampers, claimed the heater was the same as usual when she left Friday night to go to a movie. So I reckin it was the poor lady herself, burnin' up love letters, maybe, or some such truck—"
"You're to keep your 'reckins' to yourself, Rawlins," Sanderson cut in emphatically. "Remember, now, you're not to tell anybody else what you've just told me.... If that's all, you can go now, and I'm much obliged to you. Leave your address with the young lady here. You'll be needed later, of course."
The relieved man hurried out of the room on Penny's heels. Sanderson shrugged, then, when the door had closed, began heavily: