I’d done fairly well, I thought; I didn’t fool myself into feeling that I’d seen old Win out of danger absolutely but I did feel sure that I’d pried his demise out of the present into the future. What’s the phrase that surgeons use? I’d considerably prolonged his life, I thought; and, so thinking and fairly much pleased with my plan after all, I went to bed and to sleep.
It was half-past four, as I learned after I got fully awake, when I was roused by some one shaking me. It was father.
“Wake up, Stephen!” he was saying to me. “Wake up! The police are here. They want to talk to you. Jerry has just shot and killed Winton Scofield.”
I stumbled up, as you may imagine, with father’s words painting the picture in my mind. Jerry was in that picture. Then I shook myself and cast him out of the image and put Keeban, Harry Vine, in his place.
“When was it, father?” I asked.
“Less than an hour ago. The police roused your mother who woke me.”
He was in pajamas and dressing gown, was father, with bedroom slippers on. He was tall and gray and gaunt-looking in the glow of my reading lamp which he’d lit. He shook a little and bent a little more; he believed that Jerry did it.
“Where was it?”
“Jerry killed him at home.”