"Why?" inquired the judge.
"Hicks says Miss Malroy's been acting mighty queer ever since
Charley Norton was shot--distracted like! He says he noticed it,
and that Tom Ware noticed it."
"How does he explain the boy's disappearance?"
"He reckons she throwed herself in, and the boy tried to drag her
out, like he naturally would, and got drawed in."
"Humph! I'll trouble Mr. Hicks to step here," said the judge
quietly.
"There's Mr. Carrington and a couple of strangers outside who've
been asking about Miss Malroy and the boy, seems like the
strangers knowed her and him back yonder in No'th Carolina," said
the sheriff as he turned away.
"I'll see them." The sheriff went from the room and the judge
dismissed the servants.
"Well, what do you think, Price?" asked Mahaffy anxiously when
they were alone.
"Rubbish! Take my word for it, Solomon, this blow is leveled at
me. I have been too forward in my attempts to suppress the
carnival of crime that is raging through west Tennessee. You'll
observe that Miss Malroy disappeared at a moment when the public
is disposed to think she has retained me as her legal adviser,
probably she will be set at liberty when she agrees to drop the
matter of Norton's murder. As for the boy, they'll use him to
compel my silence and inaction." The judge took a long breath.
"Yet there remains one point where the boy is concerned that
completely baffles me. If we knew just a little more of his
antecedents it might cause me to make a startling and radical
move.
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