“He always brought me a cake with raisins in it,” Jud said huskily. And then, like some wild animal touched by danger, the youth had sprung back against the wall of the cell. “Hey! Trying to pull soft stuff on me? Nothing doing, I don’t talk.”
“You’ve had your share of bitter days, haven’t you?” Dr. Stone asked quietly.
The hard eyes wavered.
“I knew your father, Jud. It doesn’t seem possible that his son could butcher a man for a few dollars.”
“It wasn’t a few dollars,” the lad cried thickly. “It——”
Joe shivered. Then this had really been a murder for a lot of dollars. The youth had choked off the sentence and stood against the stone wall shaken by the appalling significance of what he had said.
“Jud,” the blind man said, “don’t try to fool me and don’t try to fool yourself. You’re just a poor, miserable kid who’s caught in a squeeze that’s too tight for him. Don’t you think you ought to tell me.”
The chin wasn’t a hard chin now. It quivered, tried to steady itself; and suddenly, like a tree that snaps in a storm, Jud Cory broke. One moment he stood against the wall, still suspicious, still afraid; the next he was on the side of his cot, his head in his hands, sobbing.
“You don’t know what it’s been like in here, Doctor. Everybody telling me I was a murderer and asking what I did with the body. When I said I’d kill him I was mad. I didn’t mean it. I tell you, Doctor, I didn’t mean it.”
The blind man groped across the cell, and sat upon the cot, and one hand reached out and rested on the boy’s shoulder.