“But I heard him!” cried Peter, whose quick wits had thought up a way of escape, “I know what I heard! It was just before they were leaving, and somebody had turned out some of the lights. He was standing with his back to me, and I went over to the book-case right behind him.”
Here the deputy district attorney put in. He was a young man, a trifle easier to fool than the others. “Are you sure it was Joe Angell?” he demanded.
“My God! Of course it was!” said Peter. “I couldn’t have been mistaken.” But he let his voice die away, and a note of bewilderment be heard in it.
“You say he was whispering?”
“Yes, he was whispering.”
“But mightn’t it have been somebody else?”
“Why, I don’t know what to say,” said Peter. “I thought for sure it was Joe Angell; but I had my back turned, I’d been talking to Grady, the secretary, and then I turned around and moved over to the book-case.”
“How many men were there in the room?”
“About twenty, I guess.”
“Were the lights turned off before you turned around, or after?”