“Shall I call a servant--to prevent a scene? Your guests may overhear.... It wouldn’t read well in the papers.” The Governor hesitated, for he was a vacillating man, timorous, a mirror reflecting stronger images than his own. “I---- Possibly you had better go quietly,” he said. “I shall not go,” Carmel said. “You shall hear me. I will not leave except by force--and then you will have your scene.... It is too late for me to care what happens now. If you dare to eject me I promise you a scene....” “But--er--young woman----” “My name is Miss Lee, and you will address me so,” she said. “If you will listen to me five minutes, I will go.” “Nonsense!” said Fownes. “Why did she come? What is it all about? This is most unpleasant,” said the Governor. “Why did I come? What is it about.... It is about _murder_!” “Murder!... What--murder?” “The murder of Sheriff Churchill of Gibeon.” “But he was not murdered. He ran away, absconded.” Fownes laughed. “You have all the facts in that matter, Governor.” “I think so....” “You have no facts.” Carmel clutched his sleeve. “This man, if he has given you the facts you have, has lied to you.... Sheriff Churchill is dead. He did not abscond. He was killed doing his duty by men who feared detection.” “What are you saying? What is this, Fownes? What does she mean?” “Politics,” said Fownes, in a voice he tried to keep steady. “It is not politics. Sheriff Churchill was lured from his home and killed. I know. By the crowd of men in Gibeon who are making themselves rich by smuggling whisky over the border.... There is a wholesale traffic, Governor. I have seen it. I, myself, discovered a _cache_ of hundreds of bottles in the woods.... It is no petty bootlegging, but a great, wholesale traffic....” “Nonsense!” said Fownes. “The headquarters of it is the Lakeside Hotel. That is the point of distribution.... Deputy Sheriff Jenney, whom this man has come to ask you to appoint sheriff in Mr. Churchill’s place, is a crony of the proprietor. He is in it, as I shall prove. But he is not the head of it.... These men, because I printed in my paper what I discovered, came to wreck my plant. I believe they are ready to do with me as they did with Sheriff Churchill.... So I have come, I have forced my way to you, to beg you not to make that appointment. It gives these lawbreakers, these murderers, control of the legal machinery of the county. Governor, do you know Jared Whitefield?” “I--do,” said the Governor. “He is a good man, a capable man, an honest man, and he has agreed to accept the appointment as sheriff and to clean out this association of lawbreakers. That is my purpose in coming here--to ask his appointment of you.”