See what I mean, Chaplain? What the hell if the whole town did know in its collective hearts that I’d killed Sid Kilgo! I’d laugh at them and snap my fingers in their faces. Let them prove it! It was so damn simple nobody could ever prove it.
After the Big Name scurried out of my house, I had a couple drinks and went to bed. It was bad, then, for I kept seeing Sid’s face and the pain and life washing out of it.
Then I heard their knock and went downstairs. There were three of them, but this Pete Blane did all the talking. He shoved me in a chair, fired questions at me. He told me that Sid Kilgo was dead. But after he had talked to the Big Name, Pete Blane apologized. I laughed at him, and he took his two stooges and left the house.
I was safe. I went to bed.
I was awakened by a hellish pounding on the front door. I stared at the window. It was just breaking dawn. I shivered, wondering what the hell was up, and slipped on a robe. I went downstairs, blinking sleep out of my eyes. It was Pete Blane and his two stooges.
Pete said, “I’m arresting you for murder, Smith.”
“The hell you say! I’m clean. I got an alibi!”
“Not for this murder, you haven’t.” He clicked handcuffs on me.
“Take these damn things off! I’ll have you busted. I didn’t murder Sid.”
“I’m not talking about that murder, Smith. I’m talking about old Justin Kilgo, Sid’s rather.”
I got weak in the knees. “Justin...”
“His housekeeper came to work just a few minutes ago. She found him dead in the kitchen. He’d been shot through the Chest. The M. E. said he died about an hour ago.”
“But that don’t mean a damn thing! Why would I kill Justin?”
“Maybe because he saw you murder his son.” Pete Blane gave me a hard jerk and I went stumbling after him. My blood was so chilled it caused knots to gather about my heart.
“But look, Blane,” I pleaded. “You’ve got no evidence.”
He laughed in my face. “I’ve got the best evidence ever given to a D.A. On the cream-colored linoleum of his kitchen floor, Justin Kilgo wrote your name as his killer, Ralph Smith, wrote it with his own blood while he was lying there.”
I knew then what he had done, Chaplain. But how could I ever prove that Justin Kilgo, knowing he was going to die so soon anyway; knowing, too, that I was the only one who had any possible motive for killing his son — how was I to prove that the old man had committed suicide and pinned it on me?
The chaplain looked about the tiny cell, not seeing anything really, just thinking. He looked back at Ralph Smith in his prison grey. He listened to the watch tick.
“And there was nothing you could do?”
“Sure,” Ralph Smith said bitterly. “Plenty. In the first place there are several Ralph Smiths in this town. With a slick lawyer I could have tied the jury in knots.”
“Yes?”
“Sure, I could have claimed my real name is something else. The slick lawyer could have planted a letter or note in Justin Kilgo’s things showing he knew days before he wrote that name on his kitchen floor that I’m not Ralph Smith. No jury would have believed, then, that he meant me.”
“I know,” Chaplain M’Canless said. “I can see that. But having lived here as Ralph Smith, you would have to prove that your name is something else.”
Wearily, Smith nodded. “And I could do that. But they might have lynched me in this town. They called it a sordid crime of passion...”
“You mean...?” the chaplain gasped.
“How do you think I knew of Sid Kilgo’s setup in the first place?” Smith buried his shaking face in his palms. “Yeah — I could actually prove that I’m Alonzo Threkkle...”
The chaplain recovered his composure somewhat. “Shall we pray?” he said softly.