Page:Keeban (IA keeban00balm).pdf/93

 who wanted to know how I happened to run into Mrs. Scofield's car at eleven in the evening.

I wanted to know something before I answered this; I wanted to know that the witnesses, Shirley and Thurston and the butler, were being held by the police.

All three were; so there could be no harm in keeping what I knew. You can always tell what you've kept to yourself but never call back what you've chattered. I thought, "When Jerry warned me of this murder, he said 'not a word to any one.' If I say he warned me against Shirley, and the news gets out, not only the police'll be after him; the crowd he trains with now will go for him and get him, surely." So I said to Mullaney about my collision with Shirley's car, "You have the report on that accident."

"So you stick to it that 'twas an accident?"

I nodded.

"Then tell us, please, what was you doing up that way alone at that time so that you had the little accident?"

I didn't like his tone; I didn't like it at all.

There was no possibility of my convincing him of the existence of Keeban; and the impossibility of it only made me surer of Keeban,