Landon looked at him in mild amazement, almost amusement. “Certainly not,” he replied; “nor do I need to. The burden of proof rests with you. If you suspect me of having killed my uncle, it is for you to produce proof.”
Coroner Berg looked chagrined. He had never met just this sort of a witness before, and did not know quite how to treat him.
And yet Landon was respectful, serious, and polite. Indeed, one might have found it hard to say what was amiss in his attitude, but none could deny there was something. It was after all, an aloofness, a separateness, that seemed to disconnect this man with the proceedings now going on; and which was so, only because the man himself willed it.
Coroner Berg restlessly and only half-consciously sensed this state of things, and gropingly strove to fasten on some facts.
Nor were these hard to find. The facts were clear and startling enough, and were to a legal mind conclusive. There was, so far as known, no eye-witness to the murder, but murderers do not usually play to an audience.
“We have learned, Mr. Landon,” the coroner said, “that you had an unsatisfactory interview with your uncle; that you did not get from him the money you desired. That, later, he was killed in a locality where you admit you were yourself. That his dying words are reported to be, ‘Kane killed me! willful murder.’ I ask you what you have to say in refutation of the conclusions we naturally draw from these facts?”
There was a hush over the whole room, as the answer to this arraignment was breathlessly awaited.
At last it came. Landon looked the coroner squarely in the eye, and said: “I have this to say. That my uncle’s words,—if, indeed, those were really his words, might as well refer, as you assumed at first, to any one else, as to myself. The name Cain, would, of course, mean in a general way, any one of murderous intent. The fact that my own name chances to be Kane is a mere coincidence, and in no sense a proof of my guilt.”
The speaker grew more emphatic in voice and gesture as he proceeded, and this did not militate in his favor. Rather, his irritation and vehement manner prejudiced many against him. Had he been cool and collected, his declarations would have met better belief, but his agitated tones sounded like the last effort in a lost cause.
With harrowing pertinacity, the coroner quizzed and pumped the witness as to his every move of the day before. Landon was forced to admit that he had quarreled with his uncle, and left him in a fit of temper, and with a threat to get the money elsewhere.