"Yes; and if I could break down his alibi, I'd still have him cooked!"
"You accept the alibi, then?"
"Sure, I accept it."
"I don't."
"Why don't you?" objected Crown. "He didn't have an aeroplane in his hip pocket, did he? That's the only way he could have covered those four miles in fifteen minutes.—Or does his alibi have to fall in order to save Miss Sloane's fiancé?"
He slapped his thigh and thrust out his bristly moustache. "You're paid to fasten the thing on Russell," he said, clearly pugnacious. "I don't expect you to help me work against Webster! I'm not that simple!"
The old man, with a gesture no more arresting than to point at the sheriff with the piece of wood in his left hand, made the official jaw drop almost to the official chest.
"Mr. Crown," he said, "get this, once and for all: a man ain't necessarily a crook because he's once worked for the government. I'm as anxious to find the guilty man now, every time, as when I was in the Department of Justice. And I intend to. From now on, you'll give me credit for that!—Won't you, Mr. Sheriff?"
Crown apologized. "I'm worried; that's what. I'm up a gum stump and can't get down."
"All right, but don't try to make a ladder out of me! Why don't you look into that alibi?"