It's funny, but I'd never thought of it that way. Why, he'd get a shock like dynamite! It got hold of me so that I didn't speak for a spell, thinking of that man reading his paper to-morrow—over his coffee or maybe going down in the L—and suddenly seeing printed out in black and white what he thought no one in the world knew except himself and that poor dead girl. Babbitts went on talking, me listening with one ear—which comes natural to an operator.
"We've been rounding up all the men that were after her—not that they were backward with their alibis—only too glad to be of service, thank you! Carisbrook was at Aiken, a lawyer named Dunham was up state trying a case; Robinson, a chap in a bank, was spending the week-end on Long Island. There was only one of them near here—man named Cokesbury. Do you know him?"
Both my ears got busy.
"Cokesbury," I said, sort of startled, "was Cokesbury at the Lodge last week?"
"He was and I know just what he did."
"What did he do?"
He laughed out as gay as you please, for he saw he'd got me just where he wanted.
"When I've tried to find out things from you you've turned me down."
"Aw, go on," I said coaxing, "don't you know by experience I'm no talking machine to give out every word that's said to me."
"I believe you," he answered, "and it'll be good for your character for me to set a generous example. Cokesbury was at the Lodge from last Saturday on the one-ten train to last Monday on the eight-twenty."