Part 2

“I should say I have!” giggled Ellie. “Jim, he was always having his picture took. I don’t know why; he wasn’t such a looker. I’ve probably got a dozen of ’em lying around in my dresser or my trunk, down to Hartville.”

“Send me just one, a late one,” Mary Lee instructed, trying not to make it seem too desperately important and at the same time to impress the woman with the idea that it was necessary. “Do you wish to have the lot sold, in case I find it has been deeded or conveyed to you and turned into cash?”

“No sale!” exclaimed Ellie, rising. “No sale! I want the lot. A boyfriend of mine who works for the railroad tipped me off to get hold of it if I could. My boy friend is fireman on the midnight limited. I’m going back on that train. You can address me at General Delivery, Hartville, as soon as you find out anything. I know you must be busy. I hope you can win your case, Miss Lee. Is the man good looking, that they got for shooting Steve? Well, don’t you trust him, Miss Lee. Take a tip from me. Men are all alike.”

She was gone. Mary Lee sat and stared at the door.

So, Jim Knowles had been in Big Neck to see Steve Laramie. A “long time ago”? And Jim Knowles was dead. He had drowned himself. He had found life not worth living. And Ellie Knowles thought that Steve Laramie would give her a lot of land upon which the railroad, some time soon, might want to build a new station for Big Neck.

As early as she dared Mary Lee called at the jail, the next morning, for another interview with her client. He greeted her with a sort of ironic cheerfulness.

“Good morning, Miss Lee. Is this the day we find out whether or not I am guilty?”

“The case will not go to trial to-day,” she answered. “It will probably not be called up again until to-morrow. That means we have got one more day left to discover whether life is going to be worth living for you. I want you to try to answer some questions that I shall ask you--and I want you to remember that I am going to believe everything that you say to me. So don’t lie to me. If you do not want to answer the questions, say nothing. The first one is: ‘What is your real name?’”

He shook his head, silently.

“Very well. The next one is: ‘Do you know Ellie Knowles?’”

His face went bloodless.

“Ellie Knowles!” he repeated sharply. “What has she been doing? What has she told you? Do you mean that she--_has she squealed_?”

“You do not wish to have her brought into this case as a witness?” inquired Mary Knowles, ignoring his questions, calm and relentless, now that she had had an answer of a sort that more than satisfied her.

“No,” he said emphatically, “I don’t want her to get into this. Of course not. My God! It looks as if I’d even bungled----”

He checked himself, regarded her searchingly and asked in a whisper: “Has _he_ made--his get-away?”

Mary Lee nodded. “Yes,” she said, “he has made his get-away. It is not going to be necessary for you to shield him any longer.”

“He’s made his get-away!” mused the prisoner. “Where---- No, I don’t want to know where, even if you know. Are you sure he is safe? Are you sure they can’t get him?”

“Before I answered that,” she said, “I want you to tell me where you were and what you were doing on the night that Steve Laramie was shot.”

Mary Lee recognized an advantage when she had it, and cruel as she felt she was being toward this desperate and distracted man, she held to her advantage.

“Believe it or not,” he answered bluntly, “I was on my way, with a rifle, to Steve Laramie’s house on the night he was shot. What do you think of that? Are _you_ going to believe me if I say I didn’t shoot him?”

“But you _didn’t_ shoot him,” she responded. “Did you?”

The look of distress that came into his face told her that she had roused, at least, some powerful emotion which had broken down his ability to keep that face a mask.

“No,” he said wearily, “I didn’t shoot Steve Laramie, because, when I got there, _he was already dead_.”

“Yes,” said Mary Lee.

“You believe that?” he demanded incredulously.

“It would do you no good to tell me lies,” she said. “It wouldn’t even help you to hang.”

“You wouldn’t advise me to tell that to a jury, would you?” he drawled, with a suspicion of a quirk to his lips.

Mary Lee did not answer. She was thinking. One thing she was thinking was that this man had a sense of humor, grim and grisly as it might be, and there was hope for him.

“You found Steve Laramie already dead,” she repeated, “and did not dare, of course, to report it--because you had gone to see him, a rifle in your hands.”

“That’s it,” he said, nodding. “Nobody would have believed I didn’t shoot him or that I didn’t intend to shoot him, even if the rifle I had with me had not been fired--and couldn’t be fired because it hadn’t any firing pin. Can you beat that?” he finished.

“Whose rifle was it?” came her quick question.

“It belonged to the bohunk that got caught under the load of logs. I told him I wanted to take it to town to get the firing pin fixed so we could try for a deer in the woods.”

“Where is it now, do you know?”

“I reckon it’s out at camp, ’less some one stole it.”

“You did not intend to shoot Steve Laramie,” she charged swiftly, “because you knew the rifle could not be fired.”

“I--I could have got it fixed,” he said, seeming to withdraw suddenly from his mood of eager confidence.

“Not that late at night--and you didn’t get it fixed,” she shot at him. “You went to see Laramie with a rifle that could not be fired and--you found him dead. And the rifle that they found lying in the railroad yard was not the one you carried. It had been fired.”

She rose as if satisfied and ready to go. He rose with her and his face bore a look of alarm.

“What are you going to do?” he demanded. “Wait! There is something you haven’t told me. How can you be sure they won’t get the man who left that rifle?”

“He is dead,” she said simply, and turned and went rapidly toward the door.

Before she got to the door she stopped and turned and looked at him. He stood, staring, as still as a statue, his shoulders drooping, his hands hanging lax by his side. It was the attitude of a man utterly discouraged, beaten. Mary Lee went slowly back to him.

“You see,” she said softly, “Jim found that life was not worth living. Now, Jim wouldn’t want you to hang. Think how useless it would be! Why, even Ellie doesn’t want you to hang.”

“Ellie!” he exclaimed. “She doesn’t know who I am.”

“No,” Mary admitted, “she doesn’t--but she doesn’t want even the stranger who is charged with shooting Laramie to hang. And I don’t want you to hang. You are not going to hang.”

Mary Lee’s soul was in her eyes as she looked up at him, begging him to cling to life. The powerful, mysterious magic which Judge Thurman had invoked was working. In the dull eyes of Billy Knowles, alias Watts Lifeworth, there began to flicker a little, warm flame. He drew in a deep, shuddering breath.

“Mary Lee,” he breathed, one of his hands coming up slowly, just touching her fingers, holding them as gently as if they were wax, when they crept into his and clung bravely, “Mary Lee, if my life _could_ be worth anything to somebody else--I have bungled everything. I went to see Laramie to try to do something for my brother Jim. Jim had been there--ahead of me. I was too late. Don’t you see that the least I could do was to try--to cover him? Don’t you see?”

“It is going to mean a lot to me to win this case,” said Mary Lee. “You _can_ help me.”

“Mary Lee,” he said in a whisper, and his eyes were like lamps newly lighted, “I’ll spend the rest of my life doing anything you think I ought to do.”

“That is going to be a long, long time,” Mary Lee said, smiling tremulously.

And it was.

[Transcriber’s note: This story appeared in the April 7, 1930 issue of _The Popular_ magazine.]