“Old as I am and sick as I am,” he said very deliberately, “I’ve a great mind to get up and kick your behind.”
I paid no attention to that, repeating:
“Was she jealous?”
“She was,” he said, not yelling now, “and domineering, and spoiled, and suspicious, and greedy, and mean, and unscrupulous, and deceitful, and selfish, and damned bad–altogether damned bad!”
“Any reason for her jealousy?”
“I hope so,” he said bitterly. “I’d hate to think a son of mine would be faithful to her. Though likely enough he was. He’d do things like that.”
“But you don’t know any reason why she should have killed him?”
“Don’t know any reason?” He was bellowing again. “Haven’t I been telling you that–”
“Yeah. But none of that means anything. It’s kind of childish.”
The old man flung the covers back from his legs and started to get out of bed. Then he thought better of it, raised his red face and roared:
“Stanley!”
The door opened to let the secretary glide in.
“Throw this bastard out!” his master ordered, waving a fist at me.
The secretary turned to me. I shook my head and suggested:
“Better get help.”
He frowned. We were about the same age. He was weedy, nearly a head taller than I, but fifty pounds lighter. Some of my hundred and ninety pounds were fat, but not all of them. The secretary fidgeted, smiled apologetically, and went away.
“What I was about to say,” I told the old man: “I intended talking to your son’s wife this morning. But I saw Max Thaler go into the house, so I postponed my visit.”
Elihu Willsson carefully pulled the covers up over his legs again, leaned his head back on the pillows, screwed his eyes up at the ceiling, and said:
“Hm-m-m, so that’s the way it is, is it?”
“Mean anything?”
“She killed him,” he said certainly. “That’s what it means.”
Feet made noises in the hall, huskier feet than the secretary’s. When they were just outside the door I began a sentence:
“You were using your son to run a–”
“Get out of here!” the old man yelled at those in the doorway. “And keep that door closed.” He glowered at me and demanded: “What was I using my son for?”
“To put the knife in Thaler, Yard and the Finn.”
“You’re a liar.”
“I didn’t invent the story. It’s all over Personville.”
“It’s a lie. I gave him the papers. He did what he wanted with them.”
“You ought to explain that to your playmates. They’d believe you.”
“What they believe be damned! What I’m telling you is so.”
“What of it? Your son won’t come back to life just because he was killed by mistake–if he was.”
“That woman killed him.”
“Maybe.”
“Damn you and your maybes! She did.”
“Maybe. But the other angle has got to be looked into too–the political end. You can tell me–”
“I can tell you that that French hussy killed him, and I can tell you that any other damned numbskull notions you’ve got are way off the lode.”
“But they’ve got to be looked into,” I insisted. “And you know the inside of Personville politics better than anyone else I’m likely to find. He was your son. The least you can do is–”
“The least I can do,” he bellowed, “is tell you to get to hell back to Frisco, you and your numbskull–”
I got up and said unpleasantly:
“I’m at the Great Western Hotel. Don’t bother me unless you want to talk sense for a change.”
I went out of the bedroom and down the stairs. The secretary hovered around the bottom step, smiling apologetically.
“A fine old rowdy,” I growled.
“A remarkably vital personality,” he murmured.
At the office of the Herald, I hunted up the murdered man’s secretary. She was a small girl of nineteen or twenty with wide chestnut eyes, light brown hair and a pale pretty face. Her name was Lewis.
She said she hadn’t known anything about my being called to Personville by her employer.
“But then,” she explained, “Mr. Willsson always liked to keep everything to himself as long as he could. It was– I don’t think he trusted anybody here, completely.”