“I put it in my desk within five minutes after he gave it to me, and I haven’t seen it since.”
“You say you couldn’t identify the pistol?” said the officer.
Jimmy nodded.
“Well, we can, and have. The number of this pistol was recorded when Mr. Compton bought it, as was the number of the other one which is still in his desk. They were the only two pistols he ever bought, according to Mr. Bince, and his daughter, aside from one which he had at home, which has also been accounted for. The drawer in which Mr. Bince saw you place this pistol we found open and the pistol gone. It looks pretty bad for you, young fellow, and if you want a chance to dodge the rope you’d better plead guilty and tell us why you did it.”
Jimmy was given little opportunity for sleep that night. A half-dozen times he was called back to the lieutenant’s office for further questioning. He commenced to realize that the circumstantial evidence was strongly against him, and now, as the girl had warned him, his entirely innocent past was brought up against him simply because his existence had been called to the attention of a policeman, and the same policeman an inscrutable Fate had ordained should discover him alone with a murdered man.
O’Donnell made the most of his meager knowledge of Jimmy. He told the lieutenant with embellishments of Jimmy’s association with such characters as the Lizard and Little Eva; but the police were still at a loss to discover a motive.
This, however, was furnished the next morning, when Elizabeth Compton, white and heavy-eyed, was brought to the station to identify Jimmy. There was deep compassion in the young man’s face as he was ushered into the presence of the stricken girl, while at sight of him hers mirrored horror, contempt, and hatred.
“You know this man?” asked the lieutenant.
“Yes,” she replied. “His name is Torrance. I have seen him a number of times in the past year. He worked as a clerk in a store, in the hosiery department, and waited on me there. Later I”—she hesitated—“I saw him in a place called Feinheimer’s. He was a waiter. Then he was a sparring partner, I think they call it, for a prizefighter. Some of my friends took me to a gymnasium to see the fighter training, and I recognized this man.
“I saw him again when he was driving a milk-wagon. He delivered milk at a friend’s house where I chanced to be. The last time I saw him was at my father’s home. He had obtained employment in my father’s plant as an efficiency expert. He seemed to exercise some strange power over father, who believed implicitly in him, until recently, when he evidently commenced to have doubts; for the night that the man was at our house I was sitting in the music-room when they passed through the hallway, and I heard father discharge him. But the fellow pleaded to be retained, and finally father promised to keep him for a while longer, as I recall it, at least until certain work was completed at the plant. This work was completed yesterday. That’s all I know. I do not know whether father discharged him again or not.”