Fibsy was allowed to tell his own story, and half shy, half frightened, he began.
“At first, Judge Hoyt he wanted me to go to woik in Philadelphia, an’ I thought it was queer, but I went, an’ I discovered he was payin’ me wages himself. That was funny, an’ it was what gimme the foist steer. So I came back to New York an’ I stayed here, makin’ b’lieve me aunt needed me. So then one day, Judge Hoyt, he took me to dinner at a restaurant, sayin’ he took a notion to me, an’ wanted me to learn to be a gent’man. Well, when we had coffee, he gimme a little cup foist, an’ then he put some sugar in it fer me. Well, I seen the sugar was diffrunt—”
“Different from what?” asked Whiting.
“From the rest’rant sugar. That was smooth an’ oblong, and what the judge put into my cup, was square lumps, and rougher on the sides. So I s’picioned sumpin was wrong, an’ I didn’t drink that coffee. I left it on the table. An’ soon’s I reached the street I ran back fer me paper, what I’d left on poipose, and I told the waiter to save that cup o’ coffee fer evidence in a moider trial. An’ he did, an’ Mr. Stone he’s had it examined, an’ it’s full of—of what, Mr. Stone?”
“Of nitro-glycerine,” asserted Stone, gravely.
“Yes, sir, Judge Hoyt tried to kill me, he did.” Fibsy’s big blue eyes were dark with the thrill of his subject rather than fear now. He was absorbed in his recital, and went steadily on, his manner and tone, unlettered and unschooled though they were, carrying absolute conviction of truth.
“When I seen that queer sugar goin’ in me cup, me thinker woiked like lightnin’ an’ I knew it meant poison. So I thunk quickly how to nail the job onto him, and I did. Then soon after that, I was kidnapped. A telephone call told me Mr. Stone was waitin’ fer me in a taxi, and when I flew meself to it, it wasn’t Mr. Stone at all, but a Japanese feller, name o’ Kite. He took me to a swell house, and locked me in. If I tried any funny business he gave me a joo jitsy, till I quit tryin’. Well, I didn’t know whose house it was, but I’ve sence found out it was Judge Hoyt’s. He lived with his sister an’ she’s away, but the Jap told me it was another man’s house. Well, in that house, I found one o’ them postcard pictures o’ Judge Hoyt in the Philadelphia station. I didn’t think even then, ’bout me bein’ in his house, I just thought maybe it was a friend o’ hisen. But when I ’zamined that picture, I saw the judge had pertended it was took a diffrunt date from what it was. Now, I thought he kinda lugged it in by the ears when he showed it to me anyway, an’ I began to s’picion he meant to make me think sumpin’ what wasn’t so. ’Course that could only be that he wasn’t in Phil’delphia when he said he was. An’ he wasn’t.”
Fibsy’s quietly simple statements were more dramatic than if he had been more emphatic, and the audience listened, spellbound.
Judge Hoyt sat like a graven image. He neither denied nor admitted anything, one might almost say he looked slightly amused, but a trembling hand, and a constant gnawing of his quivering lip told the truth to a close observer.
“And you were held prisoner in Judge Hoyt’s house, how long?”