“That so?”

“Yes—­that’s so.  Just because I worked for Warren ain’t no reason why you should arrest me for his murder.  Suppose I had wanted to kill him—­and I didn’t—­didn’t have no reason at all.  But suppose I had wanted too—­you know bloody well that I didn’t do it.”

“Why do we know that?”

“Because you know he was killed by a woman!”

“Aa-a-ah!  That’s what you think, eh?”

“I know a woman killed him.”

“You were present?”

“Bah!  Trying to trap me—­are you?  Well, I ain’t going to be trapped.  I don’t know nothin’ about it.  Like I said from the first.”

“But you do know something about it,” insisted Carroll icily.  “And I’d advise you to come clean with us.”

“There ain’t nothin’ to come clean about.”

“You say we know that a woman killed Warren.  You seem pretty confident of that yourself.  Well, we happen to know that you know who this woman was.  Who was she?”

For the first time Barker’s eyes shifted.  “You know as well as me who she was?”

“Who was she?” Carroll’s voice fairly snapped.

“It was—­Miss Hazel Gresham!”

Carroll stared at the man.  “Listen to me, Barker—­you’re lying and we know you’re lying.  You know as well as we do that Miss Gresham was at her own home when Warren was killed.  I don’t want any more lies!  Not one!  Now tell us the truth!”

Barker stared first at Carroll—­then at Leverage.  An expression of doubt crossed his face.  It was patent that these men knew more than he had credited them.  Finally he shrugged his shoulders—­

“Well—­Mr. Carroll, that bein’ the case—­I ain’t goin’ to stick my head in a noose for nobody!”

“You’ve decided to tell us the truth!”

“I have.”

“You know who killed Roland Warren?”

“Yes—­I know who killed Roland Warren!”

“Who was it?”

Barker’s face went white.  Leverage and Carroll leaned forward eagerly—­nervously.  It seemed an eternity before Barker’s answer came—­but when it did, his words rang with conviction—­he uttered a name—­

“Mrs. Naomi Lawrence!”

CHAPTER XVIII

“AND NOTHING BUT THE TRUTH—­”

Barker’s words reverberated through the room—­to be succeeded by an almost unnatural stillness; a silence punctured by the ticking of the cheap clock on the mantel, by the crackling of the flames in the grate, by the whistling of the wind around the corners of the gaunt gray stone building which housed the police department.

The accused man looked eagerly upon the faces of the two detectives; then, slowly, his chest expanded with relief:  he saw that they believed him.

And Carroll did believe.  It was not that he wanted to—­he had fought himself mentally away from that conviction time after time; had threshed over every scintilla of evidence, searching futilely for something which would clear this radiant woman whom he had met but once.  Carroll’s interest—­however platonic—­was intensely personal.  The woman had impressed herself indelibly upon him.  It was perhaps her air of game helplessness; perhaps the stark tragedy which he had seen reflected in her eyes when he had first entered her home and saw that she knew why he had come.