Burgess stood by the window with his back to them. The governor spoke
to him, and he nodded and left the room. In a moment he returned with
two men and closed the door quickly.
“Hello, warden; sit down a moment, will you?”
The governor turned to a tall, slender man whose intense pallor was
heightened by the brightness of his oddly staring blue eyes. He
advanced slowly. His manner was that of a blind man moving cautiously
in an unfamiliar room. The governor smiled reassuringly into his white,
impassive face.
“I’m very glad to see you, Mr. Avery,” he said. He rose and took Avery
by the hand.
At the name Tate’s head went up with a jerk. His chair creaked
discordantly as he turned, looked up into the masklike face behind him,
and then the breath went out of him with a sharp, whistling sound as
when a man dies, and he lunged forward with his arms flung out upon the
table.
The governor’s grip tightened upon Avery’s hand; there was something of
awe in his tone when he spoke.
“You needn’t be afraid, Avery,” he said. “My way of doing this is a
little hard, I know, but it seemed the only way. I want you to tell
me,” he went on slowly, “whether Tate was at the bungalow the night
Reynolds was killed. He was there, wasn’t he?”
Avery wavered, steadied himself with an effort, and slowly shook his
head. The governor repeated his question in a tone so low that Burgess
and the warden, waiting at the window, barely heard. A third time he
asked the question. Avery’s mouth opened, but he only wet his lips
with a quick, nervous movement of the tongue, and his eyes met the
governor’s unseeingly.
The governor turned from him slowly, and his left hand fell upon Tate’s
shoulder.
“If you are not guilty, Tate, now is the time for you to speak. I want
you to say so before Avery; that’s what I’ve brought him here for.
I don’t want to make a mistake. If you say you believe Avery to be
guilty, I will not sign his pardon.”
He waited, watching Tate’s hands as they opened and shut weakly; they
seemed, as they lay inert upon the table, to be utterly dissociated
from him, the hands of an automaton whose mechanism worked imperfectly.
A sob, deep, hoarse, pitiful, shook his burly form.
The governor sat down, took a bundle of papers from his pocket, slipped
one from under the rubber band which snapped back sharply into place.
He drew out a pen, tested the point carefully, then, steadying it with
his left hand, wrote his name.
“Warden,” he said, waving the paper to dry the ink; “thank you for your
trouble. You will have to go home alone. Avery is free.”