He had the chisel in his hand, and showed it to Hennion.
Hennion swung away in his chair toward the light and examined the battered handle with the straggling, ill-cut, and woe-begone face traced there.
He turned slowly and took a newspaper from his desk, rolled up the chisel in the newspaper, thrust it into a drawer, locked the drawer and turned back to the muttering Shays.
"I says, 'Wha' for? Wha's that for?' Then I come to that place, and there ain't nothin' there. He got under quick, he did. He stayed there. He never come up. I watched. He never come up. Oh, my God! Misser Hennion, I ain't goin' to stay there! Folks was comin' on the bridge. I ain't goin' to stay there!"
"Misser Hennion! I went down under along the bridge, where there wa'n't anybody."
"Me? Nothin'! I went to sleep by the bridge. Then I got breakfast at Riley's 'All Night.' Then I come here. I ain't said a word, excep' to Riley."
"Me! I says, 'Give me some coffee and an egg sandwich,' and Riley says, 'Ye're a dom little gutter pig, Jimmy,' and tha's every word."
"All right. But you've got to mind this, or I get out from under you. You leave out Hicks' dropping that chisel, or your picking it up. He dropped nothing; you picked up nothing. Understand? He hit Coglan with something he had in his hand. Whatever it was, never mind. He put it in his pocket and carried it off. You followed. You saw him jump off the bridge. That's all. Tell me the thing again, and leave that out. Begin where Hicks waked you."
"I want you to get it fixed. Oh, never mind why! Fire away!"
While Shays repeated the story Hennion swung to and fro in his swing chair.
He had not seen the chisel these halfdozen years, but he knew the battered handle and the woful cherub face as the face of an old friend. He knew the niche in the tool chest where it belonged, and the spot where the tool chest stood in the room high over the mansards, from whose windows one looked through the upper branches of the trees out on the Muscadine. There in the summer the maple leaves would flicker in the sunlight, and in winter through bare branches one could see the river. There Milly used to sit on the floor with a white apron on and a red ribbon, and chatter like a sweet-voiced canary bird.