"Your son was once very friendly with her. Had that woman no reason to hate him?"
"That was years ago."
Paul asked many questions concerning this woman which I will not set down here, because they were necessarily of a sordid nature, but which went to prove that although in neither case could these people have had anything to do with the murder, Ned Wilson was not universally beloved, as his father had stated, but bitterly hated.
"You have admitted to me," went on Paul at length, "that he was believed to have wronged two people, and that both of them had reason to bear him enmity. Might there not have been others of whom you never heard?"
"Of course my son was thirty years of age, and he lived his own life. At the same time it is universally admitted that he was respected in the town and beloved by practically everyone."
"With the exception of these people, who, as you have admitted, uttered dark threats against him?"
At this the witness was silent.
"We will now go on to the question of the knife," said Paul, "concerning which you have made so much." And he dealt with this question in a similar way to that with which he had dealt with it on the previous occasion. The tendency of his questions was to show how unlikely it was that he, whom the witness still called a clever, scheming, cold-blooded villain, should use a knife known to be his, a knife that had been seen on his office desk, and leave it in the murdered man's body, knowing that all the time it could be traced to himself.
"There is still something more important," said Paul. "From the evidence given it is known that I parted from your son at twilight on the night before the murder."
"Yes."