"Do you mean to tell us that you've heard nothing to-night?" asked the man with the lamp sharply. "No struggling—no crying out?"
Andrew Ferkoe slowly shook his head. "I don't know what you're talking about," he said. "Who are you? I know that gentleman," he added, pointing to me. "What do they want, Mr. New?"
I began to have a sneaking admiration for the boy, even though I shuddered at him; I thought how wonderfully he played the game. I answered as calmly as I could.
"Your master has been murdered, Andrew," I said—"brutally done to death. Have you really been asleep?—have you heard nothing?"
"Nothing at all, sir," he said, scrambling out of bed, and standing ghostlike amongst us in his long night-shirt, and with his thin, bare feet and ankles showing. "I don't know anything about it."
He began to whimper, looking from one to the other of us in a terrified way; I began to have my doubts whether, after all, he was not sincere, and had not really slept through the horrible business.
"I thought you said that the old gentleman lived alone?" asked the police officer, turning to me.
"When I said that I'd clean forgotten the boy," I answered easily. "You see, I've never been here except by daylight; how should I know that anyone else slept in the house?"
That explanation seemed simple enough, and, in a fashion, satisfactory. I suggested to the man that Andrew Ferkoe should be allowed to dress; I pledged my word to look after him.
"You see, you can hardly leave the boy in the house alone, after what has occurred," I urged. "You have my address, and you can verify it if you like. Let me take the boy with me, and I will undertake to produce him for any enquiry at any time."