“Aw, shucks, tain’t clever at all. Only, I know them magazines like a mother’d know her own children. I read ’em over an’ over. An’ I know that picture on that cover came out more’n two weeks later’n what Judge Hoyt said it did. I mean, he didn’t have that card taken of himself on the day he said he did.”
“Motive?”
“That I dunno. I do know Judge Hoyt is tryin’ sumpin’ fierce to clear Mr. Landon—has he done it yet?”
“No, Terence, but the trial is almost over, and I think the judge has something up his sleeve that he’s holding back till the last minute. I never was in such a baffling mystery case. Every clue leads nowhere, or gets so tangled with contradictory clues that it merely misleads. Now tell me your story.”
Fibsy told the tale of his imprisonment, and the manner of his escape. He told the street and number of the house, and he told of his discovery of a dirk cane in a cupboard.
“An’ Mr. Stone,” he went on, “I found the shoe the button came off of.”
“You’re sure it was a shoe button?” and Fleming Stone smiled at recollection of the button that had been described as of several varieties.
“Yes, sir. An’ every time I said that button was a kind of button that it wasn’t, I was glad afterward that I said it. Yes, Mr. Stone it’s a shoe button an’ in that same house I was in, is the shoe it useter be on.”
“Look out now, Terence, don’t let your zeal and your imagination run away with you.”
“No, sir, but can’t you go there yourself, and get the shoe and the cane, or send for ’em, and if they fit the cane mark in the mud, and if the button I’ve got is exactly like those on that shoe, then ain’t there sumpin in it, Mr. Stone? Ain’t there?”