“Here? Does she say that she put it here?” cried Mahala. Both hands were gripping her heart. She had seemed to shrink, to grow into a helpless, childish thing. The tremors that shook her body were visible through her clothing.
The men were eager in their acquiescence.
“She says,” answered the sheriff, “that she put it through a hole in the plaster on the right-hand side of the front door. You’re vindicated, Mahala, beyond a doubt in the mind of any one, but it would be better, it would be fine, if we could discover that pocket book.”
Jason stood straight in the doorway. His eyes were travelling from the face of one man to another, but they avoided Mahala. Slowly his form tensed, his breathing began to come in short gasps. Albert Rich turned to him.
“Jason,” he said, “get an axe. I’m going to break through the wall on the right-hand side of the front door and search the place where Becky says she put that pocket book.”
Slowly Jason shook his head. His lips were very stiff, but he managed to speak.
“There’s no use,” he said. “You’ll find nothing there. I mended that lath and plastered that broken place with my own hands.”
Suddenly Mahala’s head fell forward, and then she lifted it, and as people have done since the beginning of the world in the ultimate agony, she called on God. Her voice was torn and pitiful past endurance. She was calling on God, but she was reaching to Jason, stretching out her hands to him.
“Oh, God!” she cried. “Help me! Won’t you please help me? Why couldn’t it have been there? Why couldn’t vindication have been complete? Oh, God, won’t you help me?”
Big tears rolled down her cheeks.