“When did you first learn that the money was missing?”
“Not until late the next day, when I returned from that trip. Then I found my uncle in his office. He asked me for the safe key. I went to my room for it and discovered that it was gone. My uncle had the lock picked and we found that the package of money that had been in the safe when I last opened it was also gone.”
Ben Watkins was asked many other questions, all of which he answered without hesitation, and then he was turned over to Captain Ellis for cross-examination.
For two hours the captain plied him with questions designed to confuse him and cause him to contradict himself, but without success. He stuck to the story that he had already told and could not be made to take back or alter one word of it.
When asked how he happened to have so much money about him on the day that he paid Lieutenant Easter’s note he answered that he only had about three hundred dollars in all; but that it looked like more because it was in small bills: This money he claimed to have saved from his salary and to have won at cards.
Thus the case stood when court was adjourned; and by this time there was hardly one among the spectators who was not fully convinced of Myles Manning’s guilt.
As for Myles himself, he was utterly bewildered and in despair. If a witness, under oath, could so deliberately tell falsehood after falsehood, what chance was there for the truth to prevail? He had to acknowledge also that even the true facts of the case, as thus far brought to light, were greatly against him.
The poor fellow was separated from his friends that night and forced to spend it in a small locked room in the sheriff’s house. It seemed almost like a prison cell, and this fact, together with the tumult of his own unhappy thoughts, completely banished sleep. So all night long he tossed on his narrow bed, longing for the light of the day that was to decide his fate.