My father gave me up. “Come talk to the police,” he said and stalked from my room.
Downstairs I met Mullaney and a plain clothes man from the central detective bureau who wanted to know how I happened to run into Mrs. Scofield’s car at eleven in the evening.
I wanted to know something before I answered this; I wanted to know that the witnesses, Shirley and Thurston and the butler, were being held by the police.
All three were; so there could be no harm in keeping what I knew. You can always tell what you’ve kept to yourself but never call back what you’ve chattered. I thought, “When Jerry warned me of this murder, he said ‘not a word to any one.’ If I say he warned me against Shirley, and the news gets out, not only the police’ll be after him; the crowd he trains with now will go for him and get him, surely.” So I said to Mullaney about my collision with Shirley’s car, “You have the report on that accident.”
“So you stick to it that ’twas an accident?”
I nodded.
“Then tell us, please, what was you doing up that way alone at that time so that you had the little accident?”
I didn’t like his tone; I didn’t like it at all.
There was no possibility of my convincing him of the existence of Keeban; and the impossibility of it only made me surer of Keeban, just as it always did when I argued with father. You see at that time, it was a matter of faith with me; and nothing feeds up faith like antagonism. I was slow but also stubborn, as perhaps you’ve perceived. These men were here because they were sure Jerry had shot down Winton Scofield; Jerry’d been seen doing it. I wouldn’t believe that; therefore I had to believe in Keeban.
“What are you getting at?” I asked Mullaney.