“I am rich,” she faltered, feeling the error she had committed.
“Money won’t do it,” he answered.
“I have many friends possessed of influence.”
“Influence can’t save me. There is only one thing could help me, Miss Grace; and I need not trouble you with talking about that, because I know no more than the child still unborn who killed the man. I have sat here and gone over, and over, and over the story, and can make neither head nor tail of it. All I am sure of is, I had no act or part in the murder; and how my stick came to be where they say it was found is beyond me, for I lost it the night before; and I never was near the divisional road at all.”
“What does Mr. D’Almarez say?” asked Miss Moffat.
“He says nothing, except ‘tell me the truth,’ as if a man in my strait would be likely to tell his attorney a lie.”
“And what does he think about your having lost your stick?”
“He just thinks I never lost it, because when he asked me about the places I had been the day before, I couldn’t mind. I have been that perplexed, Miss, since Lady Jane died, my memory won’t serve me as it used.”
“But surely, Amos, with trying, you might recollect.”
“I have minded a good many. I was at Rosemont to try to get speech of Mr. Robert; and at the office; and at the Glendare Arms, where a stranger man, seeing I was in trouble, treated me to a glass, bad luck to it! for I had not broken my fast, and the liquor got into my head; and I said things about Brady they’re going to bring up again me at the trial; and then I stopped at a heap of places besides, but I can’t mind just where, except that at the last I called at Hanlon’s surgery for some stuff for the lad. I didn’t forget that, because he went on at me for having had too much, and made me mad because he wouldn’t believe me I had only had one glass to overcome me—me—who could once have taken off half-a-dozen without winking.”