Edgar Rice Burroughs: The Efficiency Expert

25. CHAPTER XXV. CIRCUMSTANTIAL EVIDENCE. (continued)

Jimmy had been in jail for about a week when he received a visitor. A turnkey brought her to his cell. It was Harriet Holden. She greeted him seriously but pleasantly, and then she asked the turnkey if she might go inside.

"It's against the rules, miss," he said "but I guess it will be all right." He recalled that the sheriff had said that the girl's father was a friend of his, and so assumed that it would be safe to relax the rules in her behalf. He had been too long an employee of the county not to know that rules are often elastic to the proper pressure.

"I have been wanting to talk to you," said the girl to Jimmy, "ever since this terrible thing happened. Somehow I can not believe that you are guilty, and there must be some way in which you can prove your innocence."

"I have been trying to think out how I might," said Jimmy," but the more I think about it the more damning the circumstantial evidence against me appears."

"There must always be a motive for a crime like that," said Harriet. "I cannot believe that a simple fear of his discharge would be sufficient motive for any man to kill his employer."

"Not to kill a man who had been as good to me as Mr. Compton was," said Jimmy, "or a man whom I admired so much as I did him. As a matter of fact, he was not going to discharge me, Miss Holden, and I had an opportunity there for a very successful future; but now that he is dead there is no one who could verify such a statement on my part."

"Who could there be, then, who might wish to kill him, and what could the motive be?"

"I can only think," said Jimmy, "of one man; and even in his case the idea is too horrible--too preposterous to be entertained."

Harriet Holden looked up at him quickly, a sudden light in her eyes, and an expression of almost horrified incredulity upon her face. "You don't mean--" she started.