“Well?” queries the object of his remarks.
“At what hour did you enter the Raymond National Bank on the evening of Memorial Day of last year?”
“I cannot say exactly. I judge that it was in the vicinity of 7:45.”
“Will you be good enough to state what took place there between you and Roger Hathaway?”
Ames scans the detective’s face keenly for a moment, then replies to Barker in deliberate tones:
“I went to the bank to ask Mr. Hathaway’s consent that his daughter Helen might become my wife. I was confident that my errand was useless, as he had twice before scorned my suit. Helen and I had been idling all the afternoon on the hillside below the town. As evening drew on I left her at the bars and went to the bank, as she stated that she had understood her father to say that he should spend the evening at work upon his books. It being Memorial Day the streets were deserted, and, barring one acquaintance, a chap named Sam Brockway, I did not meet a person on my walk up the main thoroughfare. As I crossed the bridge I saw Mr. Hathaway standing on the steps of the bank, delivering a note to a boy, and when he re-entered the building I followed him.
“‘What do you want?’ he demanded, almost fiercely. I told him, and he broke into a torrent of abuse. Naturally hot-tempered, I answered his railings in kind, and I know not what might have happened had not Mr. Hathaway suddenly ended the dispute by seizing me by the shoulder and pushing me through the bank door to the street, threatening, as he did so, to have the law on me if I continued my attentions to his daughter. Through the glass panel in the door I watched him walk rapidly away in the darkness of the interior; saw him as for an instant his form passed into the lighted office in the rear of the bank. Then the door to that room closed. I never saw Roger Hathaway again.”
“That is sufficient,” says Barker, as Ames pauses. “Your further progress up to to-day is known to me.”
“Indeed?”
“Yes. And I may say that from the outset neither Mr. Ashley nor myself believed you guilty of the murder of Roger Hathaway. At the most, we considered that you might have been a witness to the tragedy. But your testimony is the last link in the chain. I am now prepared, gentlemen, to relate what in all human probability happened in Raymond on the evening of Memorial Day last year.”