"What!" It was jolted out of me. After a moment's thought, I finished, "Then I've got to know who the woman was that visited this room last night."
For a long while she made no reply, studying Worth's profile as he stared steadily into the fire. No signal passed between them, but finally she came to her decision and said,
"Mr. Boyne, ask Worth what he thinks I ought to say to that."
Instead, "Who was it, Worth?" I snapped, speaking to the back of the young man's head. The red came up into the girl's face, and her eyes flashed; but Worth merely shrugged averted shoulders.
"You can search me," he said, and left it there.
I looked from one to the other of these young people: Worth, whom I loved as I might have my own son had I been so fortunate as to possess one; this girl who had made a place of warmth for herself in my heart in less than a day, whose loyalty to my boy I was certain I might count on. How different this affair must look to them from the face it wore to me, an old police detective, who had bulled through many inquiries like this, the corpse itself, perhaps, lying in the back of the room, instead of the blood-stain we had there on the rug; what was practically the Third Degree being applied to relatives and friends; with the squalid prospect of a court trial ahead of us all. If they'd seen as much of this sort of thing as I had, they wouldn't be holding me up now, tying my hands that were so willing to help, by this fine-spun, overstrained notion of shielding a woman's name.
"Barbara," I began—I knew an appeal to the unaccountable Worth would get me nowhere—"the facts we've got to deal with here are a possible murder, with this lad the last person known—by us, of course—to have seen his father alive. We know, too, that they quarreled bitterly. We know all this. Outside people, men who are interested, and more or less hostile, were aware that Worth needed money—needs it yet, for that matter—a large sum. I suppose it is a question of time when it will be known that Worth came here last night; and when it is known, do you realize what it will mean?"
Worth had sat through this speech without the quiver of a muscle, and no word came from him as I paused for a reply. Little Barbara, big eyes boring into me as though to read all that was in the back of my mind, nodded gravely but did not speak. I crossed to the shelves and took down the diary whose leather back bore the date of 1916. As I opened it, finding the place where its pages had been removed, I continued,
"You and I know—we three here know—" I included Worth in my statement—"that the crime was neither suicide nor patricide; but it is likely we must have proof of that fact. Unless we find the murderer—"
"But the motive—there would have to be motive."