“My name’s Bill Jobson. I’m a miner,” he volunteered.
“That means nothing to me,” I told him sharply.
“Well, now, I don’t suppose it does! See here! I’m the man as helped Randall Batterly kidnap your boy, Joey— Wait a minute, wait a minute! Don’t get excited. It was a frame up—the whole darn thing! Batterly never had no idea the kid was his. He framed the whole thing up to get a rise out of his wife. He was set on getting her back, and he took that way of doing it. He knew mighty well the kid warn’t his. His own boy died from an over-dose of medicine Batterly gave it one night when he was drunk, on board the ship him and me was on going from Alaska to Seattle. The boy died in my arms, and was buried at sea. Batterly wouldn’t go back to Alaska and face his wife and tell her the truth about the child. He made me swear not to squeak. And he went back, and he let on to his wife that the child was never seen after the collision between our ship and another, in the fog, off Cape Flattery. He told his wife as how a nurse on board ship had the babe in her stateroom, caring for it, the night of the wreck. There was a nurse on board who was drowned that night, so the story passed muster.”
I watched the man with fascinated eyes as he sat down on the doorstep, filled his pipe leisurely, and struck a match on his boot heel. The full import of his statement did not sink into my brain at once. When it did I said, speaking with dry lips:
“But what about the mark on the lad’s chest?”
“That’s what you call a coincidence, partner—that and their age seeming to be the same. When Batterly saw the mark on the kid’s chest the whole blame plan came to him quick as lightning, he said. And when the girl, Wanza Lyttle, told him as how he was picked up by a fisherman over on the Sound, that settled it. He took a chance on his wife’s not remembering the mark on her kid’s chest was just over his heart. This kid’s is higher up.”
Completely unmanned, I sat down on the step beside my visitor, and rested my head in my hands. “It does not seem possible your story is true,” I groaned.
Bill Jobson brought his hand down hard on my knee. “Look ahere, Mr. Dale, do you think I tramped way over here from Roselake to see Mrs. Batterly just because I wanted a country stroll? Well, I didn’t! Get that through your head—quick! I’m a busy man— I oughtn’t to have took the time to come and say my say as I have—”
“Will you write a statement and have it witnessed, and send it to Mrs. Batterly?” I interrupted.
“I will that. And I’ll tell you why I’m doing it. I’m doing it because I used to see the little chap with you in the village last summer and I saw him after that in the fall with Mrs. Batterly, and he never run and skipped as he did with you. It just got me for fair—it did! I’ve been intending all this winter to see Batterly’s widder and tell her the gosh darned truth, but I been working in the Alice mine, a good fifty mile from Roselake, and I ain’t been down but once before since fall, and that time I—well, I got pickled, partner, I sure did! I wa’n’t exactly up to holding lucid conversation with folks, you might say.”