The Desert Moon Mystery by Kay Cleaver Strahan

"Damn the key in Mary's pocket! " Sam exploded. "I'm beginning to think I was right, at first, when I said that Mary locked the door, absent mindedly, and dropped the key in her pocket herself."

I judged that I could wait until my turn came to mention that the key in my pocket was the old pass-key, and not the key to the attic door. In the next minute I wished that I had not waited, but had told it so that Sam might have busied his mind with that.

"Well, John," he said, "does that finish up the part of the story Danny couldn't tell?"

"I think so, dad."

"All right. Now, Danny, what did you mean, a few minutes ago, when you warned me to be careful, like you did?"

"I-" Danny stammered, "-wanted you to be careful about what you said, in anger."

"In other words, you wanted me to be careful about saying anything that would seem to implicate John?"

She did not answer.

"If John was guilty," Sam insisted, "would you want him to go scot free?"

"John is not guilty."

"How do you know that?"

"I know it in the same way that you all seem to know that Chad was not guilty. I know John."

"That's all right. But you can't know John's innocence like we know Chad's; because, from the time Gaby came downstairs, until we all set out to look for her, Chad was not out of my sight. He was at the piano. He walked to the barn with me. He stayed in the barn with me. He walked back to the house with me. He was with us all during supper."

"You," said Danny, "say that Chad was in the barn with you during all of that hour. I wonder whether Chad, if he were alive, could swear that you were in the barn with him, during all of that hour?"

"What do you mean by that, my girl? " Sam questioned.

Danny sat and stared at him, her eyes wide, her lips bitten tight; sat and looked as if she were frightened plumb out of her senses, and did not say one word.

"You meant something when you said that," Sam insisted. "Now what was it? Come, speak up."

It was no way for him to talk to her, feeling as she felt, and her sister not yet in her grave. I was downright ashamed for him. I guess the others felt as I did, for Hubert Hand said, "Never mind. Lay off that, Sam. What do you expect to get from an hysterical girl. You don't deserve it; you let me down flat; but, just to prove that I'm a white man, I'll say that I know you were in the barn all the time. Of course, if I wasn't there, my testimony for you wouldn't amount to much. But you know damn well I was there; and I know damn well that you were. So let up on the little lady. Mary's turn, next, isn't it?"

"Hold on! " Sam said. "Since Danny's gone this far, she shouldn't grudge an extra word or two. Come, now, Danny. I don't aim to treat you mean, and you know I'm sorry for you, and feel for you in your trouble. But what is it you have on your mind?"

She sat there, still as a mouse; her big eyes growing bigger from fright.