"Yes, sir! Yes, sir! That's it exactly."
Suddenly my mind leaped back to the night when Bill Hayden had died, and the man from Boston had made that cryptic remark, to which I called attention long since. "He said he could tell something, Roger," I burst out. But Roger silenced me with a glance.
Turning on the fellow again, he said, "If I find that you are lying to me,
I'll shoot you where you stand. What do you know about who killed Captain
Whidden?"
For once the fellow was taken completely off his guard. He glanced around as if he wished to run away, but there was no escape. He saw only hostile faces.
"What do you know about who killed Captain Whidden?"
"Mr. Kipping killed him," the fellow gasped, startled out of whatever reticence he may have intended to maintain. "Yes, sir! Yes, sir!"
"Do you expect me to believe that Kipping shot the captain? If you lie to me—" Roger drew his pistol. By eyes and voice he held the man in a hypnosis of terror.
"He did! I swear he did. Don't shoot me, sir! I'm telling you the very gospel truth. He cursed awful and said—don't point that pistol at me, sir! I swear I'll tell the truth!—'Mr. Thomas is as good as done for,' he said. 'There's only one man between us and a hundred thousand dollars in gold.' And Falk—Kipping was talking to Falk low-like and didn't know I was anywhere about—and Falk says, 'No, that's too much.' Then he says, wild-like, 'Shoot—go on and shoot.' Then Kipping laughs and says, 'So you've got a little gumption, have you?' and he shot Captain Whidden and killed him. Don't point that pistol at me, sir! I didn't do it."
Roger had managed the situation well. His sudden and entirely unexpected attack had got from the man a story that a month of ordinary cross-examinations might not have elicited; for although the fellow had volunteered to tell all he knew, his manner convinced me that under other circumstances he would have told no more than he had to. Also he had admitted being in the cabin while the natives were roaming over the ship!