Frightened and ill-at-ease, Stella haltingly told what she had heard. When she had finished, Ben Vickers was grimly silent. He turned to his work table and stood toying with some papers there, his back to the others.
"Good lass!" Keef O'Hara said. "Say that in court and we'll see Jay and Madrid hang as high as Mount Tacoma."
"It won't be that easy," Tesno said. "There were other witnesses to that conversation. They would probably swear to a different version, make it seem that Stella misunderstood."
"Jay didn't have to kill," Ben Vickers said darkly. "He was a good engineer. This is a rough business. We've all been ruthless at times, I guess. But outright murder...."
O'Hara nodded sharply. "Sure, it makes a man wonder."
"Jay got his start in Dakota," Ben said. "Worked for a man whose team ran away and took him over a cliff. Jay took over the contract. In Idaho he had a partner who was killed in a fall from a trestle. Nobody ever figured out what he was doing up there in the middle of a snow storm."
Ben turned away from the table, and the three men exchanged startled glances. It seemed to Tesno that they were all thinking about the same thing.
"About the only way you can get a man like Jay is in court," Ben said. "And then you're likely not to get him. I hate to think of what a smart lawyer might do to Stella on the stand."
"I vould tell only the truth," Stella said.
"Another thing," Ben said. "You never saw this boiler-wrecker up close, Jack. How could you swear it was Palma?" He shook his head dismally. "Fact is, we have precious little on Jerome J. Jay."