“Quite right,” said Rand. “But is that all?”
“All! O’ course, it is. What you tryin’ to insinuate?”
“I’m trying to insinuate,” the policeman was very deliberate in his choice of words now, “that you read the book, copied something out of it and afterward sold that copy to two men—Emery and MacGregor. You did that, didn’t you?”
Reynold seemed to sink into his chair. His lips were white. Either he could not or would not answer. Feeling faint, Dick looked out of a window. Shadows were falling everywhere outside. The trees were black silhouettes. Night was shaking out its mantle from a metal-colored sky. There was no brightness or radiance anywhere except a single orange streak in the west, a sinister orange streak that marked the place where the sun had gone down.
“If he doesn’t confess,” thought Dick, “and have this over with, I’ll go crazy.”
A voice, trembling but defiant, broke across the silence.
“Yes, I did do that. What was wrong about it? Tell me—what was wrong about it? I didn’t commit no crime— It wasn’t a very bad thing to do—you can’t make me believe that. Just sold a copy of something that was written in that old book.”
“Reynold!” cried the old man. “Reynold!”
“Listen, dad, it wasn’t so terrible wrong. I didn’t touch anybody an’ I didn’t steal nothing. All I did was to sell what was in that book to a few men for just a few dollars.”
“To a few men!” gasped the corporal. “Who—beside Emery and MacGregor?”