“I mean about the way Dan Willis met his death,” Pole said, to the point. “I'm no fool an' you ain't, at least you wouldn't be ef you was paid by some client to git at the facts. Folks are ready to swear Carson was seed the day that thing happened on that road inside of a mile o' whar Willis was found. You know what time Carson left here that day; it was sometime after dinner, an' the hotel man at Spring-town says he got thar an' registered after dark. He says, too, that Carson looked nervous an' upset an' seemed more anxious to avoid folks than the general run of vote-hunters. Then—then, oh, well, what's the use o' beatin' about the bush? You know an' I know that Carson hain't been actin' like himself since then. It's all we can do to git 'im interested in his own popularity, an' that shows some'n' is wrong—dead wrong. An' it looks to me like it is a matter that ought to be attended to. Killin' a man is serious enough in the eyes of the law without covering it up till it's jerked out of you by the State solicitor.”
“So you think the two men met?” Garner said, now quite as if he were inquiring into the legal status of any ordinary case.
“That's my judgment,” answered Pole. “And if I'm right, then it seems to me that Carson an' his friends ought to take action before—”
“Before what?” Garner prompted, almost eagerly. “Before the grand jury takes it up, as you know they will have to with all this commotion goin' the rounds.”
“Yes, Carson ought to act—concerned in it or not,” said Garner. “If something isn't done right away, it might be sprung on him on the very eve of his election and actually ruin him.”
“I'm worried, an' I don't deny it,” said the mountaineer. “You see, Bill, Carson's a lawyer, and he knows whether he had a good case of self-defence or not, an' shirking investigation this way looks powerful like—”
“Like he was himself the—aggressor,” interpolated Garner, with a frown.
“Yes, like that,” said Baker. “Of course we know Willis was houndin' the boy and making threats, but Carson's hot-headed, as hot-headed as they make 'em, an' maybe he flared up at the first sight of Willis an' blazed away at 'im. I don't see no other reason for him lyin' so low about it.”
“I'm glad you came to me,” Garner said. “I'll admit I've been fearing the thing, Pole. It will be a delicate matter to broach, but I'm going to talk to him about it. As you say, the longer it remains like it is the more serious it becomes. Good Lord! if he did kill Willis—if he did kill him, it would take sharp work to clear him of the charge of murder after the silly way he has acted about it. Why, dang it, it's almost an admission of guilt!”
Baker had barely left the office when Carson came in, nodded to his partner, and sat down at his desk and began in an absent-minded way to cut open some letters that were waiting for him. Unobserved Garner watched him from behind the worn book he was holding up to his face. Hardened lawyer that he was, Garner's heart melted with pity as he noted the dark splotches under the young man's eyes, the pathetic droop of his shoulders, the evidences in every facial line of the grim inward struggle that was going on in the brave, supersensitive soul. Garner put down his book and went into the little consultation-room in the rear and stood at the window which looked out upon a small patch of corn in an adjoining lot.