“Now, Mr. Allen, will you please express your opinion as to whether the robbery could have been committed earlier in the day and the robbers could have come back a second time?”
This was an angle that Frank did not see the end of. Further, the chief seemed to be questioning him as if he knew more than he had told.
“Mr. Berry,” he replied, “I have no idea of what these men may have done. I told you what I saw, and I cannot see that my guesses would be any good. If I were able to guess at such things with a reasonable amount of accuracy, I’d be out hunting for these men right now, for it was a shame to have robbed Mrs. Parsons and to have tied her in that pantry.”
“All right, but I have one more question I would like to ask, and then I may be through. It is this: What were you doing that day on the river with your motor boat? That is, please account for your time.”
Again Frank saw the veiled intent of accusation. There was something deeper here than he knew.
But he accounted for the time in a general way by saying they had gone up the river on an errand for his father, had some mishaps with the motor and with the electric lighting system, and were running along at a reasonable speed late in the evening when they heard the cries of the imprisoned woman.
“Ordinarily, would it take you so long to run up the river on such an errand and come back?”
“Certainly not, sir, but you must remember that I had trouble with the motor.”
“Will you please tell me, then, why you were tied to the shore just above the Parsons place and lay there for two hours on that afternoon? Will you please tell why you were tied at the only point along the shore where there is an open path through the underbrush to the lawn of the Parsons house? And will you please tell me where you were for those two hours?”
Frank told them it was motor trouble, that he had tied there because it was the first place he could get to when the motor stopped and that any other place would have been just as good.