"THEY HAD A FIERCE QUARREL OVER MONEY MATTERS."
"Next afternoon I went down to see Guide in the waiting-room at the Old Bailey. He was a middle-aged man, heavy-faced, and evidently knocked half stupid by the situation in which he found himself. He was perhaps as great a fool to his own interests as one might often meet with. There was no getting the simplest tale out of him except by regular question-and-answer cross-examination. What little he did tell seemed rather to confirm his guilt than otherwise; though, strange to say, I was beginning to believe him when he kept on assuring me between every other sentence that he did not commit the murder. Perhaps it was the stolid earnestness of the fellow in denying the crime which convinced me. One gets to read a good deal from facial expression when a man has watched what goes on in the criminal dock as long as I have done; and one can usually spot guilt under any mask.
"'But tell me,' I said, 'what did you quarrel about in the first instance?'
"'Money,' said Guide, moodily.
"'That's vague. Tell me more. Did he owe you money?'
"'No, sir, it was t'other way on.'
"'Wages in arrear?'
"'No, it was money he had advanced me for the working of my business. You see Walker had always been a hard man, and he'd saved. He said he wanted his money back, he knowing that I was pinched a bit just then and couldn't pay. Then he tried to thrust himself into partnership with me in the business, which was a thing I didn't want. I'd good contracts on hand which I expected would bring me in a matter of nine thousand pounds, and I didn't want to share it with any man, least of all him. I told him so, and that's how the trouble began. But it was him that hit me first.'
"HE KEPT ON ASSURING ME THAT HE DIDN'T COMMIT THE MURDER."