We returned to the garage. Death was there in the open mouths of the men, in their blanched eyes, in the heavy hanging shadows.
“I’m an honest man, sir,” said Mr. Dukes to me. “If this here was murder and has to do with any o’ mine, I’ll see this here place which is all I has in the world a heap of ashes before I’ll spare myself.”
“What motive,” said I, “could any of your men have had in such a thing?”
“None,” growled Dukes. The men’s murmur wreathed about me, an assent that was ready to rage into flame at the kindle of any doubt of mine.
“Any boys about? Mischief-makers? Rowdies?”
“None.”
“Any strangers?”
A man came forward: a lean, cave-jawed fellow with the eyes of a starved poet.
“There was that stranger that come askin’ fer work.”
He spoke not to me, but to Dukes. The men wreathed closer to him. They felt that his words were a healing truth. They were one, sustaining him in what he was ready to say.