He repeated his story of the evening, how he had been with Mr. Tracy until about ten o'clock, and then had gone to his room and to bed.
"You heard no unusual sounds during the night?"
"No," said Everett, but it seemed to me he had hesitated.
Hart must have noticed this, too, for he said, "Are you quite sure? No sounds inside the house or out?"
Apparently Charlie Everett was a truthful man. But it was equally evident he did not want to testify further.
"I must press you for an answer, Mr. Everett," the Coroner prodded him.
"Well, to be strictly accurate, I may say that I thought I heard the sound of a boat on the lake some time after midnight."
"I don't know. And it may not have been any. I was asleep, and I partially awaked and seemed to hear a slight sound as of paddles. But it may well be that I dreamed it, for I heard no further sounds."
"No, except that I seemed to have been asleep some hours. I thought nothing of it, and directly went to sleep again."
I thanked my lucky stars that he hadn't! That he hadn't seen Alma Remsen, in her canoe, some time after midnight!
But if the Coroner thought much about this bit of evidence he gave no sign of doing so, and the rest of the inquiries he put to Everett were of a stereotyped sort and led nowhere.
Then came Billy Dean. That cheerful young man was chipper as always and told all he had to tell in a clear and concise way.
"Did you hear any sound in the night as of a passing boat?" Hart asked him.
"No," Dean declared, and his voice was steady and all would have been well but that the silly chap turned brick red from the roots of his hair to the top of his collar.
"Then," said Hart, with a full intention of embarrassing him, "why are you blushing like a turkey cock?"
"I'm not!" Dean stormed at him, getting redder yet. "But you barge into me with sudden questions and it knocks me off my base."
Clever! His winning smile and his sudden carrying of the war into the enemy's quarters succeeded, as I was sure he had hoped, in diverting the jury's attention from his palpable mendacity.
"Then you heard no boat?" Hart went back to his subject.
"I heard a motor boat, but that was about twelve o'clock," Dean said, reminiscently. "I heard none later, for I went to sleep then."