“And what did Joe tell him, Mrs. Chase?” asked Hammer, aglow with the victory which he felt to be already in his hand. He looked with gloating triumph at the prosecuting attorney, who sat at the table twirling a pencil in his fingers, and did not lift his eyes.
“Joe told Isom he was making a mistake, and then Isom ripped and swore and threatened to kill us both. He looked around for something to do it with, and he saw that sack of money under Joe’s hat. He jumped for the table and 332 grabbed it, and then he made for the gun. I told Joe to stop him, and Joe tried. But he was too late. The rest of it happened just like Joe’s already told you.”
Ollie’s head drooped forward wearily, and her hands lay passively in her lap. It seemed that she considered the story concluded, but Hammer was not of that mind.
“After Isom fell–after the gun went off and Isom fell–what did you and Joe do?” he asked.
“We heard somebody coming in a minute. We didn’t know who it could be, but I was afraid. I knew if it got out on me about my start to run off with Morgan, and all the rest of it, I’d be ruined and disgraced forever.
“Joe knew it too, better than I did. I didn’t have to tell him, and I never even hinted for him to do what he did. I never even thought of that. I asked him what we’d do, and he told me to go upstairs and leave him to do the talking. I went. I was coward enough to go and leave him to bear the blame. When Joe lied at the inquest to save me, I backed him up in it, and I stuck to it up till now. Maybe I was a little mad at him for coming between me and Mr. Morgan, but that was just a streak. That’s the only lie Joe’s told, and you can see he never would have told that to save himself. I don’t want to see him suffer any more for me.”
Ollie concluded her recital in the same low, dragging and spiritless voice in which she had begun it. Conscience whipped her through, but it could not make her unafraid. Hammer turned to the prosecutor with questioning eyes. Lucas announced that he did not desire to cross-examine the witness, and the judge dismissed her.
Ollie went back to her mother. No demonstration accompanied her passing, but a great sigh sounded over the room as the tenseness of the listening strain relaxed, and the fulness of satisfaction came in its place.
Mrs. Newbolt still clung to her son’s hand. She nodded 333 at the prosecuting attorney with glowing eyes, as if glorying over him in the moment of his defeat. Alice Price smiled joyously, and leaned back from her posture of concentration. The colonel whispered to her, bringing the palms of his hands together in silent but expressive applause. The prosecuting attorney stood.
“Your honor–” he began, but Judge Maxwell, lifting his head from the reflecting pose into which he had fallen when Ollie left the stand, silenced him with an impatient gesture.