The Senator interrupted him in a hoarse angry tone: “This is nonsense! I will not have my daughter subjected–”
Ned Beaumont laughed brutally. “Sure it’s nonsense,” he said. “And your bringing the stick you killed him with back home, and wearing his hat because you’d run out bare-headed after him, is nonsense too, but it’s nonsense that’ll nail you to the cross.”
Senator Henry said in a low scornful voice: “And what of Paul’s confession?”
Ned Beaumont grinned. “Plenty of it,” he said. “I tell you what let’s do. Janet, you phone him and ask him to come over right away. Then we’ll tell him about your father starting after him with a gun and see what he says.”
Janet stirred, but did not rise from the floor. Her face was blank.
Her father said: “That is ridiculous. We will do nothing of the sort.”
Ned Beaumont said peremptorily: “Phone him, Janet.”
She got up on her feet, still blank of face, and, paying no attention to the Senator’s sharp “Janet!” went to the door.
The Senator changed his tone then and said, “Wait, dear,” to her and, “I should like to speak to you alone again,” to Ned Beaumont.
“All right,” Ned Beaumont said, turning to the girl hesitating in the doorway.
Before he could speak to her she was saying stubbornly: “I want to hear it. I’ve a right to hear it.”
He nodded, looked at her father again, and said: “She has.”
“Janet, dear,” the Senator said, “I’m trying to spare you. I–”
“I don’t want to be spared,” she said in a small flat voice. “I want to know.”
The Senator turned his palms out in a defeated gesture. “Then I shall say nothing.”
Ned Beaumont said: “Phone Paul, Janet.”
Before she could move the Senator spoke: “No. This is more difficult than it should be made for me, but–” He took out a handkerchief and wiped his hands. “I am going to tell you exactly what happened and then I am going to ask a favor of you, one I think you cannot refuse. However–” He broke off to look at his daughter. “Come in, my dear, and close the door, if you must hear it.”
She shut the door and sat on a chair near it, leaning forward, her body stiff, her face tense.
The Senator put his hands behind him, the handkerchief still in them, and, looking without enmity at Ned Beaumont, said: “I ran out after Taylor that night because I did not care to lose Paul’s friendship through my son’s hot-headedness. I caught up with them in China Street. Paul had taken the stick from him. They were, or at least Taylor was, quarreling hotly. I asked Paul to leave us, to leave me to deal with my son, and he did so, giving me the stick. Taylor spoke to me as no son should speak to a father and tried to thrust me out of his way so he could pursue Paul again. I don’t know exactly how it happened–the blow–but it happened and he fell and struck his head on the curb. Paul came back then–he hadn’t gone far–and we found that Taylor had died instantly. Paul insisted that we leave him there and not admit our part in his death. He said no matter how unavoidable it was a nasty scandal could be made of it in the coming campaign and–well–I let him persuade me. It was he who picked up Taylor’s hat and gave it to me to wear home–I had run out bareheaded. He assured me that the police investigation would be stopped if it threatened to come too near us. Later–last week, in fact– when I had become alarmed by the rumors that he had killed Taylor, I went to him and asked him if we hadn’t better make a clean breast of it. He laughed at my fears and assured me he was quite able to take care of himself.” He brought his hands from behind him, wiped his face with the handkerchief, and said: “That is what happened.”
His daughter cried out in a choking voice: “You let him lie there, like that, in the street!”