Clint nodded.
The Governor reached in a drawer, slammed out two bound volumes of typewritten transcript.
“There’s the record in the case.”
Clint stared at it for a moment, then shrugged his shoulders.
“If you doubt her guilt, why don’t you commute the sentence?”
The Governor puffed reflectively on his cigar.
“Hang it, Clint, I don’t know how I feel. I don’t doubt her guilt, and yet — well, I’d dismissed the matter from my mind until the other night when you broke loose with that psychological patter about circumstantial evidence. You made me think, and now I don’t know just how I do feel about the case.”
Clint shook his head after the manner of a teacher chiding a disobedient child.
“I must learn to keep my mouth shut,” he said. “It’s hard to realize one is talking to the highest executive in the State when one is at a card game—”
“Oh, forget it, Clint. Be serious. Cut the comedy. I have half an idea you deliberately started all that talk about criminal justice in order to raise a doubt in my mind!”
Clint raised one eyebrow.
“Really?” he drawled.
“Yes, really. Anyhow, that’s neither here nor there. But here’s what I’m up against. Unless I sign a pardon or a commutation of sentence that woman is going to die within two weeks. She’s a mother, two grown children. She has one grandchild.”
Clint nodded, that amused nod of superiority which the executive found so irritating.
The Governor waved his cigar toward the typewritten transcript.
“This case came up from a backwater of the State, a regular cow-county. The people in that county all know each other. The district attorney could have called every one on the jury by his first name. Jane Thurmond’s son engaged a city lawyer to go down and defend her.
“He was a good lawyer in the city. But he went up against a local combine. The district attorney had been in partnership with the trial judge. The people all figured it was a chance to show everybody how good their district attorney was. He licked the ‘slick city feller.’ That jury really didn’t vote on the woman’s guilt. They voted that a home town lawyer was just as good as the slick city lawyers.”
Clint Kale yawned, patted his lips in a deprecatory gesture.
“The evidence?” he asked.
The Governor flushed.
“All right, if I’m wearying you, I’ll be brief. The evidence is this. The woman had a place. It was mortgaged. She was desperately in need of funds. Old Sam Pixley was the town miser. He was murdered. Whoever committed that murder knew where he kept his money. It was in a strong box under his bed, in a little cubby-hole cunningly built into the floor.
“The woman had acted as Pixley’s housekeeper. She went to his house once every week and straightened up. The rest of the time Pixley did his own cooking and cleaning.
“He was found dead in his bed. He had been hit over the head with a club, several times.
“Then the murderer had moved the bed, opened the trap door in the floor, pried the lid off the box, and taken what money there was. Just how much there was no one knows. There were some bonds, a few diamonds set in old-fashioned jewelry and some money. The bonds were Hanover Irrigation District bonds, perhaps some others.
“The murderer cleaned up on the bonds and jewelry. The only things that weren’t taken were some stocks that were valueless, some promissory notes, and a packet of letters.”
Clint leaned forward, flipped his cigarette into the cuspidor, took a pencil from his pocket, opened a leather bound notebook.
“The valueless stocks?” he asked.
The Governor thumbed through the pages of the transcript.
“American Carbonator, Incorporated,” he said. “They were old stocks. A clever promoter had organized the company fifteen years before and victimized several of the town’s prominent men. Sam Pixley knew the stocks weren’t any good, but he’d paid money for them, so he kept them in with his valued possessions.
“The body was found the next morning. That afternoon Jane Thurmond paid off her mortgage in cash. The cashier at the bank identified one fifty-dollar note that had been torn and pasted with adhesive tissue. He had paid that note to Pixley in cashing a check for him less than a week before the murder.
“Remember, Clint, this is a small community we’re talking about. Everybody knows everybody else. Everybody’s business is everybody’s business.”
“Perhaps,” suggested Clint, “Sam Pixley put the torn bank note into circulation.”
The Governor shook his head.
“Pixley never put money into circulation. He took it out of circulation, and kept it out. He’d lost money in a bank failure once. After that he cashed his checks and hid the cash.”
Clint nodded.
“That all the evidence?” he asked.
“Good Lord, no! Jane Thurmond was interrogated. She admitted she’d not earned the money. Finally she said she found it, all wrapped up in a bundle and dropped on her doorstep. The mortgage was eleven hundred and fifty dollars. She said there was exactly eleven hundred and fifty dollars in the package that was dropped on her doorstep. Not a very likely story.”
Clint regarded the executive through half closed eyes.
“Go on,” he said.
“That started an investigation. Jane Thurmond was taken to the scene of the crime, accused of murder. She denied her guilt, but was somewhat rambling as to her statements of where she’d been the night of the crime. One thing she was certain of, she hadn’t been near Pixley’s place.
“That was proved to be false. Two witnesses had seen her, one going, one coming. But she had left before the crime was committed. That’s one point in her favor. Pixley must have been killed shortly after midnight. Jane Thurmond was seen leaving the place about ten thirty. It’s the theory of the prosecution that she returned and committed the crime.
“There’s a witness by the name of Ezra Hickory who says he saw Jane Thurmond leave her house shortly before midnight. He doesn’t know where she went or what she did, but he swears she was carrying a club, something that looked like an ax handle.
“Subsequently they found the bloodstained ax handle. It was hidden in the barn on Sam Pixley’s property. It fitted an ax head that was found in Jane Thurmond’s woodshed.”
Clint held his pencil poised over his notebook.
“Didn’t Mrs. Thurmond finally admit she’d been to Sam Pixley’s house?”
“Yes. She eventually admitted it. She said some one had telephoned her that Sam Pixley had said he’d be willing to take over the mortgage. She went over to see. Sam said nothing doing. The woman left. That’s her story.”
“Any finger-prints?” asked Clint.
“Not a finger-print, not on the ax handle, not on the box, nowhere in the place. There were some old fingerprints on the ax handle. They belonged to Mrs. Thurmond. That’s settled. It’s her ax handle. She finally admitted that, but claims she doesn’t know how it got there.”
“That all?”
“That’s all.”
“And what do you want me to do?”
“Clint, I want you to go down there, Middlevale, Middlevale County, and get the real inside facts on that crime. You can do it. If that woman dies I want to feel certain she’s guilty.”
Clint’s half closed eyes held something of a mocking glitter.
“There’s enough evidence there to convict a dozen defendants. You shouldn’t feel any doubt in your mind.”
The Governor groaned.
“I didn’t, not until you gave that little dissertation on circumstantial evidence, and how facts lied. Then I began to feel uneasy. You were so cocksure, so coldly final, and you’re nearly always right.”
Clint smiled enigmatically.