“Only by sight. Red-haired, isn’t he, and lives next door to where that valet worked? I see him now and then going by on the other side of the street.”
“Have you seen him since he got that scare?”
“Oh, yes.” Porter smiled faintly in surprise. “Only a day or so ago. George didn’t mean to scare him even,—he wouldn’t harm a fly!—but the thought of those gates shutting him in as though he was back up the river almost drove him mad!”
“You’ve been here since June, you say, Porter? Did you know that valet who died?”
“No. I think I’ve seen him with the butler from the next house, but I don’t want to know any of them. I was glad enough to stay here and do a servant’s work myself till I could get my nerve back to go out and hunt up my own kind of a position again where the bulls wouldn’t keep moving me on.” He smiled again, but bitterly. “I guess there isn’t a chance of that now with you on! I’m not sorry, though; I’d do it again for George! He was innocent, the same as me, and look what was done to him!”
“If I find you’ve come clean I’ll keep my word, Porter,” McCarty reiterated as he moved toward the door with Dennis in tow. “You may not know it but I’m not on the Force any longer, nor connected with headquarters except to mix in now and then for old times’ sake, and the inspector didn’t recognize you the other day; he kind of knew your face but he couldn’t place you. Riordan and me will just forget you laid eyes on Radley unless it comes to a showdown, and then we’ll do what we can for you.”
Cutting short the ex-convict’s broken thanks they took their departure, to find Inspector Druet pacing impatiently back and forth before the two closed houses opposite and Dennis’ comments on the interview just ended were necessarily curtailed.
“Did you get any dope from Parsons?” the inspector asked.
“We didn’t even see him,” McCarty parried. “I was getting a line on the servants; do you recall saying you’d seen one or two of them before? Have you thought where?”
“Lord, no! I’ve had enough else on my mind! I had an idea one of the housemaids and the page-boy who runs errands looked familiar, but there wasn’t anything out of the ordinary about them.”