A. "Only where I am employed. I am now living at the Clark ranch."
Q. "What is your business?"
A. "I am Mr. Clark's valet."
Q. "It was you who found Mr. Clark's revolver?"
A. "Yes."
Q. "Tell about how and where you found it."
A. "I made a search early in the evening. I will not hide from you that
I meant to conceal it if I discovered it. A man who is drunk is not
guilty of what he does. I did not find it. I went back that night, when
the people had gone, and found it beneath the carved woodbox, by the
fireplace. I did not know that the sheriff had placed a man outside the
window."
"Get that, too," Bassett said, putting down the paper. "The Frenchman
was fond of you, and he was doing his blundering best. But the sheriff
expected you back and had had the place watched, so they caught him. But
that's not the point. A billiard room is a hard place to hide things in.
I take it yours was like the average."
Dick nodded.
"All right. This poor boob of a valet made a search and didn't find it.
Later he found it. Why did he search? Wasn't it the likely thing that
you'd carried it away with you? Do you suppose for a moment that with
Donaldson and the woman in the room you hid it there, and then went back
and stood behind the roulette table, leaning on it with both hands, and
staring? Not at all. Listen to this: Q. "You recognize this revolver as the one you found?"
A. "Yes."
Q. "You are familiar with it?"
A. "Yes. It is Mr. Clark's."
Q. "You made the second search because you had not examined the woodbox
earlier?"
A. "No. I had examined the woodbox. I had a theory that--"
Q. "The Jury cannot listen to any theories. This is an inquiry into
facts."
"I'm going to find Melis," the reporter said thoughtfully, as he folded
up the papers. "The fact is, I mailed an advertisement to the New York
papers to-day. I want to get that theory of his. It's the servants in
the house who know what is going on. I've got an idea that he'd stumbled
onto something. He'd searched for the revolver, and it wasn't there.
He went back and it was. All that conflicting evidence, and against it,
what? That you'd run away!"