“You mean to say there was another woman somewheres?” asked Sol, taking the scent avidly.
The women against the wall joined Mrs. Greening in a virtuous, scandalized groan. They looked pityingly at Ollie, sitting straight and white in her chair. She did not appear 167 to see them; she was looking at Judge Little with fixed, frightened stare.
“That is not for me to say,” answered the judge; and his manner of saying it seemed to convey the hint that he could throw light on Isom’s past if he should unseal his lips.
Ollie took it to be that way. She recalled the words of the will, “My friend, John B. Little.” Isom had never spoken in her hearing that way of any man. Perhaps there was some bond between the two men, reaching back to the escapades of youth, and maybe Judge Little had the rusty old key to some past romance in Isom’s life.
“Laws of mercy!” said Mrs. Greening, freeing a sigh of indignation which surely must have burst her if it had been repressed.
“This document is dated almost thirty years ago,” said the judge. “It is possible that Isom left a later will. We must make a search of the premises to determine that.”
“In sixty-seven he wrote it,” said Sol, “and that was the year he was married. The certificate’s hangin’ in there on the wall. Before that, Isom he went off to St. Louis to business college a year or two and got all of his learnin’ and smart ways. I might ’a’ went, too, just as well as not. Always wisht I had.”
“Very true, very true,” nodded Judge Little, as if to say: “You’re on the trail of his iniquities now, Sol.”
Sol’s mouth gaped like an old-fashioned corn-planter as he looked from the judge to Mrs. Greening, from Mrs. Greening to Ollie. Sol believed the true light of the situation had reached his brain.
“Walker–Isom Walker Chase! No Walkers around in this part of the country to name a boy after–never was.”