He paused for an instant, as though he were living the moment over, but I did not speak. I wanted him to tell the story in his own way.
"I caught the five o'clock train back and was in Houston soon after six. I went at once to the hotel and to my room. Henley's room communicated with mine. The door between them was ajar, and I pushed it open to speak to him. He was leaning over the table, on which cards were scattered about, and he was quite dead, from a knife thrust between the shoulders."
Clyde had been speaking in a composed manner, like one telling an entirely impersonal tale, but at this point he paused and a look of embarrassment clouded his face.
"I find it hard to explain to you or to myself why I did so foolish a thing as I did next, but I was rather shaken up by weeks of dissipation, and the racketing of the night before and my excited, sleepless night had thrown me off my balance. When I saw Henley dead over the cards, I realized in a flash how bad it would look for me after my row with him in the saloon the night before. I jumped back into my own room and began stuffing my things into my bag pell-mell to make my escape."
"The worst thing you could have done."
"Of course. And it proved so. I had left my room-door ajar, a sweeper in the halls saw my mad haste, and it made him suspicious. When I stepped out of my room, the proprietor stopped me. Of course the whole thing was uncovered. I was arrested, tried for murder, and, as I told you, sentenced to be hanged." He finished grimly. His manner was studiedly unemotional.
"And yet you had a perfect alibi, if you could prove it."
"But I couldn't. No one knew I took that train. The train conductors were called, but neither of them remembered me. The station agent at Lester, with whom I had had some conversation about the first train back, was killed by an accident the next day. The fact that I was out of Houston from eleven until six was something I could not prove. And it was the one thing that would have saved me."
"But neither could they prove, I take it, that you were in the hotel that night."
"They tried to. The clerk testified that four men came in shortly after eleven and went up to Henley's room. One of them was Henley, two were strangers, and the fourth he had taken for granted to be me. My lawyer pressed him on that point, of course, and forced him to admit that he had not noticed particularly, but had assumed that it was I from the fact that he was with Henley, and because he was about my size and figure. Drinks had been sent up, and an hour later two of the men had quietly come down and gone out. Nothing further had been heard from our room until the sweeper reported in the morning that he had seen me acting like a man distracted, through the partly open door. Everything seemed to turn against me. I was bent on saving my name at any rate, so I could not be entirely open about my past history, and that prejudiced my case."