"I understand it."
"Has anyone promised you anything?"
"No, sir."
"Why are you giving it, then?"
"Because the stone was there," said Garrity. "And I said it wasn't. That's all."
They carried the chain out into the yard and Garrity stretched it on the hard ground, the brass tags clinking, and the crowd poured out and stood in a ring. Moberly hooked his steel tape to the end ring and walked the reel out alongside and knelt and looked.
"Sixty-five feet, four and a quarter inches," he said. "A true chain is sixty-six."
"Anybody could cut a link out of a chain," said Whitcombe loudly. "Last night. This morning. This is theater."
Moberly brushed off his knees. "Mr. Garrity, show me the tally tags." He held up the chain for the crowd. "Brass tags every ten links, so a chainman can tell by feel where he is. Between the forty tag and the round middle tag, ten links. Between the round tag and the sixty, coming back, nine. And the joint here has been closed by hand with pliers. You can see the tool marks. Under the rust." He turned. "A man who cut this out this morning, Mr. Whitcombe, would have had to rust it over by noon. I have not seen that done."
Somebody laughed, and stopped.
Cora found herself beside Gus Lindahl, who was staring at the chain with the deep private calculation she knew from arithmetic period.
"Ninety-nine," he said under his breath. "That's what we did in the spring. The school lot." He looked up at her, scandalized. "We did the whole sum right, and it was wrong."