“Not you?”
She flushed and said:
“No. But of course he had been here such a short while and didn’t know any of us very well.”
“There must have been more to it than that.”
“Well,” she bit her lip and made a row of forefinger prints down the polished edge of the dead man’s desk, “his father wasn’t–wasn’t in sympathy with what he was doing. Since his father really owned the papers, I suppose it was natural for Mr. Donald to think some of the employes might be more loyal to Mr. Elihu than to him.”
“The old man wasn’t in favor of the reform campaign? Why did he stand for it, if the papers were his?”
She bent her head to study the finger prints she had made. Her voice was low.
“It’s not easy to understand unless you know– The last time Mr. Elihu was taken sick he sent for Donald–Mr. Donald. Mr. Donald had lived in Europe most of his life, you know. Dr. Pride told Mr. Elihu that he’d have to give up the management of his affairs, so he cabled his son to come home. But when Mr. Donald got here Mr. Elihu couldn’t make up his mind to let go of everything. But he wanted Mr. Donald to stay here, so he gave him the newspapers–that is, made him publisher. Mr. Donald liked that. He had been interested in journalism in Paris. When he found out how terrible everything was here–in civic affairs and so on–he started that reform campaign. He didn’t know–he had been away since he was a boy–he didn’t know–”
“He didn’t know his father was in it as deep as anybody else,” I helped her along.
She squirmed a little over her examination of the finger prints, didn’t contradict me, and went On:
“Mr. Elihu and he had a quarrel. Mr. Elihu told him to stop stirring things up, but he wouldn’t stop. Maybe he would have stopped if he had known–all there was to know. But I don’t suppose it would ever have occurred to him that his father was really seriously implicated. And his father wouldn’t tell him. I suppose it would be hard for a father to tell a son a thing like that. He threatened to take the papers away from Mr. Donald. I don’t know whether he intended to or not. But he was taken sick again, and everything went along as it did.”
“Donald Willsson didn’t confide in you?” I asked.
“No.” It was almost a whisper.
“Then you learned all this where?”
“I’m trying–trying to help you learn who murdered him,” she said earnestly. “You’ve no right to–”
“You’ll help me most just now by telling me where you learned all this,” I insisted.
She stared at the desk, chewing her lower lip. I waited. Presently she said:
“My father is Mr. Willsson’s secretary.”
“Thanks.”
“But you mustn’t think that we–”
“It’s nothing to me,” I assured her. “What was Willsson doing in Hurricane Street last night when he had a date with me at his house?”
She said she didn’t know. I asked her if she had heard him tell me, over the phone, to come to his house at ten o’clock. She said she had.
“What did he do after that? Try to remember every least thing that was said and done from then until you left at the end of the day.”
She leaned back in her chair, shut her eyes and wrinkled her forehead.
“You called up–if it was you he told to come to his house–at about two o’clock. After that Mr. Donald dictated some letters, one to a paper mill, one to Senator Keefer about some changes in post office regulations, and– Oh, yes! He went out for about twenty minutes, a little before three. And before he went he wrote out a check.”
“Who for?”
“I don’t know, but I saw him writing it.”
“Where’s his check book? Carry it with him?”
“It’s here.” She jumped up, went around to the front of his desk, and tried the top drawer. “Locked.”
I joined her, straightened out a wire clip, and with that and a blade of my knife fiddled the drawer open.