"But they are only making out their friend to be a murderer!"
"They seem not to mind that. According to their code he was simply doing his job. Instead of getting his pay for it he was murdered. They wish to avenge him by helping to convict his murderer. I might say that if it was not for me they would probably choose a more direct way of avenging him, but I have persuaded them that it would be a much more terrible punishment to bring the murderer into court."
His Honor wagged his head. "You have been keeping strange company, young lady!"
"I suppose you know that these gunmen, gangsters, burglars and so on are not very credible witnesses."
"They are not my principal witnesses, sir. I rely chiefly on Mr. Slaughter, the different professional men, the servants, the second taxi-driver, all of whom are obviously disinterested."
"Where did you get so much information about what constitutes evidence and so on."
"We had legal advice, sir. Not from Mr. Corveth, but from another lawyer, who once defended Spike Talley."
"We had the house on Thirty-Ninth street searched from top to bottom without discovering any clues as to what became of the body. It was not until we went to Mr. ... to the rich man's country place, that we began to make progress. We learned there, that two days after the murder, that was Sunday, the owner brought a barrel up from the city in the back of his automobile. He informed his servants that it contained a new poison with which he intended to spray his fruit trees--I should explain that he is an extensive raiser of fruit, and under his supervision the barrel was put in a little shed in one of the orchards where the spraying apparatus, the poisons and so on were kept."
"Can't you establish a connection between the barrel and the house on Thirty-Ninth street?"
"To a certain extent, yes. When we learned of the barrel some of us went back to the Thirty-Ninth street neighborhood to investigate. We have a grocer who will testify that he sold such an empty barrel to the man in question, who was particular to see that he got a perfectly fitting head to the barrel. He told the grocer he wanted to ship some china up to his country place. He carried the barrel away in his car."