“Where did you put him?”
“Well, sir, I didn’t know anything at all about who he was, and thinking I might have heard a car motor stop down there made me kind of suspicious.”
“You didn’t say anything to this man about hearing the car stop?”
“No. I wasn’t even certain I had heard a car. I thought I might have — and the way the dog acted I thought a car had stopped.”
“Did the man tell you anything about having driven up in an automobile?”
“No. He said he just couldn’t remember a thing, that he just found himself walking along the road.”
“You knew that was a lie?”
“Well, to tell you the truth, I thought the guy was hot.”
“So what did you do?”
“Well, it was a cold, drizzly night and I didn’t want to turn him out, but I didn’t want to take any chances. I had a spare room with a cot in it and some blankets were there. I told him that I ran a bachelor’s place, and that he’d have to get in a bed without sheets, just some blankets.”
“And what did he say?”
“He seemed tickled to death. So I put him in that room.”
“And then what?”
“And then,” Overbrook said with a grin, “I took Prince, that’s the dog, and put him in the living room, and I told Prince to watch him and keep him in there, and then I went back to bed and went to sleep. I knew that that fellow could never get out of that room without Prince nabbing him.”
“You feel absolutely certain that he didn’t leave the room after he once entered it?”
Overbrook grinned and said, “When I tell Prince to keep somebody in a place and to watch him, why you can gamble Prince is going to do it.”
“How big a dog is Prince?”
“He weighs about eighty-five pounds. He’s a lot of dog.”
“Then what happened?”
“Well, then, the next day this man Mason came and there was a party with him, and a woman that said she was this man’s wife, and everything seemed to be all hunky-dory, so they had a grand family reunion with a lot of billing and cooing, and this woman seemed just crazy to get her husband away from there and that was okay by me.”
“In other words, you accepted everything at its face value?”
“I still thought the guy was hot,” Overbrook said, “but I wasn’t sticking my neck out.”
“So they went away?”
“That’s right.”
“Then what happened?”
“Well,” Overbrook said, “nothing happened, until the next morning.”
“And then?”
“Well, about daylight the next morning I began doing a lot of thinking. I remembered noticing Fleetwood’s tracks and I thought I’d see if I couldn’t back-track him a ways.”
“Now this was Wednesday morning?”
“That’s right.”
“So what did you do?”
“Well, I started out and picked up Fleetwood’s tracks, and then I back-tracked him. I was careful not to step in his tracks. I just walked along...”
“On this diagram,” Danvers interrupted, “there’s a line of dots which are labeled FLEETWOOD’S TRACKS TO THE HOUSE.”
“That’s right. Those are his tracks.”
“And another line of dots going in an opposite direction labeled OVERBROOK’S TRACKS FOLLOWING FLEETWOOD’S TRAIL.”
“That’s right.”
“And those are your tracks?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Now those tracks follow along parallel with the tracks left by Fleetwood?”
“Yes, sir. I back-tracked him down to where the car had stopped, and I started to circle around and then all of a sudden I seen these tracks where a woman had jumped out of the automobile and run back to the highway, and then I looked and saw a woman’s tracks coming back again from the highway and getting in the automobile apparently to drive it off. So I knew I’d better call the officers. It looked like a woman had been shut up in the luggage compartment.”
“So then what did you do?”
“Well, I kept right on walking to the hard ground without looking around any. You can see where these tracks of mine circle right up into the high ground up here. I have a farm road up there that runs out to my grain field.”
“A farm service road?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And what did you do?”
“I walked up to that road and went back to the house and kept thinking things over; so then I took my tractor and trailer and loaded on a lot of scrap lumber, so people could get out there without messing things up any, and put the lumber down.”
“How did you put it down?”
“Why the way a person would put down lumber so as to save tracks that way. I’d put down a board and then walk out along that board and put down another board and then walk out along that board and put down another board until I had boards all the way out to where the car had stopped, and then I walked back along the boards, got in my tractor and drove back to my house, got my jalopy out of the shed and drove in to where there was a telephone. I called the sheriff and told him that I’d been putting up a man that said he had amnesia and I thought he might be hot and that I’d tracked him out to where he’d parked his automobile and, sure enough, I’d found there’d been a woman in the back end of the car and she’d jumped out and run down to the highway, and then after a while apparently she’d sneaked back and picked up the car and driven off.”
“At that time had you heard of Allred’s death?”
“No, sir. I hadn’t.”
“Cross-examine,” Danvers said.
Mason smiled reassuringly at the witness.
“So Fleetwood came to your place on Monday night and was there until sometime Tuesday?”
“That’s right; until you came and got him.”
“During that time he stayed in the house?”
“Not all of the time.”
“You didn’t stay in the house?”
“Me? No. I was out around the place doing chores.”
“You left Fleetwood alone there?”
“Some of the time, yes.”
“Fleetwood could have walked away and gone anywhere he wanted to?”
“Sure.”
“You didn’t tell the dog to guard him then?”
“No, the dog was with me.”
“You and the dog are quite close?”
“I’m fond of him and he’s fond of me.”
“He accompanies you wherever you go?”
“Everywhere,” Overbrook said, “except when I’ve got some job for him to do like watching somebody or something. Aside from that, my dog’s with me all the time.”
“The dog is loyal to you and devoted?”
“Yes.”
“And you could have left him to watch Fleetwood and the dog would have kept him there?”
“Sure, but I couldn’t have done it without Fleetwood knowing what I was doing.”
“And you didn’t want to do that?”
“It didn’t seem exactly hospitable.”
“Weren’t you afraid Fleetwood would steal something and...”
Overbrook’s grin was slow and good-natured. “Mr. Mason,” he said, “the stuff I got out in my cabin isn’t the stuff a man like Fleetwood would steal. I’ve got a little bacon and some flour and a little salt and some baking powder. I have some blankets and some cots to put ’em on, but — well, Mr. Mason, there isn’t anything there for anybody to steal. I live kind of simple, myself.”
Mason said, “It didn’t occur to you to back-track Fleetwood to see where he came from until Wednesday morning?”
“Well, I just kept thinking things over all the time. Things kept churning around in my mind and I couldn’t get them straightened out. The way you folks had showed up and taken this man away with you, and all this stuff, I just couldn’t get the thing out of my mind. So I started looking around and then just as soon as I seen the tracks made by this woman — you could see she was running.”