for yourself and failed to report it to us, you made yourself an accessory. Under the law, you’re guilty right along with Haig. However, even if the Federal charge was reduced to obstructing justice or compounding a felony, there’s still the matter of prior jurisdiction. . . .”
I wasn’t sure as to the accuracy of all this legal gobbledegook, but it didn’t matter. He would know even less about it. And it was working. He leaned forward, staring at me.
“The State may want to hold you on a charge of murder,” I went on. “That would take precedence, of course.”
“Murder?”
I nodded. “We can’t be sure, of course, until we exhume the body, but the local District Attorney is interested. He feels there is a good chance Haig was still alive when you found him, and that you killed him for the money. . . .”
Cliffords broke in. “But he wasn’t, Mr .Ward. He was dead, I tell you. He’d been dead for days. That’s how come I happened to find him; it was all them birds.”
I had a hunch he was telling the truth, but the thing now was to keep him guessing and scared.
“It doesn’t matter,” I said. “When the body is exhumed, they may be able to tell. Just what you’ll be tried for is none of my business, anyway. I’m here merely to bring you in. And, of course, to recover the money.”
“Oh, I’ll show you where it is,” he said eagerly. “Will that help? I mean . . .”
“I can make no deals,” I said, being stern about it. “Of course, obviously it won’t hurt your case any, especially if you haven’t spent too much of it.”
“Oh, I hardly spent any at all.” Then his face fell. “But I did burn all them bonds and things, when I burned the satchel.”
He’d merely saved me the trouble of doing it myself, but I shook my head gravely. “That’s not so good,” I said. “Don’t you see that establishes willful intent?”
A couple more hours of this, I thought, and I should be able to pass the bar exam.
He sighed. “I’m sure sorry, Mr. Ward.”
I shook my head sympathetically. “I am, too, in a way, in spite of all the trouble you caused us. I mean, you weren’t a criminal—at least, up until now. And at your age—well, even ten years. . . .”
“Ten years?” he repeated slowly. I had him going now.
“Forget I said that,” I told him quickly. “I shouldn’t have. I mean, I’m not a judge. I’m an arresting officer. But tell me, what in the name of Heaven did you do it for? You didn’t spend much of it, you say. What did you want with it?”
He looked down at his hands. “Well, sir, it’s kind of a silly thing, I reckon. It got hold of me when I seen how much there was and when I got to thinking about it afterward. If I pretended like it was mine long enough, and nobody come along to take it away from me, I could mebbe take and do this thing I been thinking about all my life. One of them sort of things you know you ain’t ever going to do, but you just keep thinking about anyway.”
“What’s that?” I asked. We were wasting time, but it interested me.
“I wanted to buy a coconut farm,” he said simply.
“Coconut. . .?” I stared at him, and then I saw the dream. It was all over the round, lost, wistful face—the face of the world’s eternal patsy. He was like a child thinking about Christmas morning.
“On one of them islands,” he went on softly, not even looking at me. “Down south, you know. Just a one-island farm, but I would own the whole island and every single, blessed thing on it. I’d live on it, in a big house on top of a hill, and there’d be all these niggers. I’d wear boots, and one of them explorer’s hats, and I’d be good to ‘em. You know, things like doctoring them when they was sick, and holding trials when one of ‘em stole something from another one.
“There wouldn’t be any other white people except this store-keeper that I didn’t like and that I’d make him jump like Billy-be-damned when I said something to him, and then of course the straw-boss and his wife. The straw-boss, you understand, is the one that handles the niggers and that I give the orders to, and his wife would look just