“Do you want your money now?”
The landlord’s loud talk had attracted a half dozen town worthies who now crowded into the little room. The landlord was mad.
“I knowed who you was as soon as you drive up,” he retorted.
As the agitated hotel keeper reached over and picked up a newspaper from the ink-smeared desk the curious onlookers crowded forward, Amos among them. The matter that had been the sole topic of conversation for the last half hour was coming to a dramatic sequel.
“I knowed you. I reckon you all thought we don’t see no newspapers in Centerville. How about this piece in the paper?”
Morey took the paper, followed the direction of a shaking finger and read:
MURDEROUS ASSAULT
ON MEMBER OF BENCH.
Scion of Aristocratic Virginia Family
Attacks Ex-Jurist.
“Lee’s Court House, Virginia.—About noon today Mortimer Marshall, the son of the late Colonel Aspley Marshall of Aspley Place, made a mysterious and as yet unexplained attack on Ex-Judge E. L. Lomax, in the latter’s offices in this city. Marshall escaped, but will be arrested in the morning. The jurist, who had lain unconscious for over an hour, finally managed to call for assistance and he is now lying at his home with probably fatal wounds. So far, he has been unable to give but a fragmentary account of the assault which he says was wholly unprovoked and made when his back was turned. Some blunt instrument was used—”
Morey threw the paper on the floor.
“That’s a lie, mainly,” he exclaimed.