"Yes," he replied, hastily. "But what business of yours—or anybody's, for that matter—is that?" A moment later he caught himself. "That is," he added, "I mean—how did you know that? It was a sort of secret, I thought, between us. She broke it off—not I."
"She broke off the engagement?"
"Yes—a story about an escapade of mine, and all that sort of thing, that kind mutual friends do so well for one in repeating—but! by Jove, I like your nerve, sir, to talk about it—to me. The fact of the matter is, I prefer not to talk about it. There are some incidents in a man's life, particularly where a woman is concerned, that are a closed book."
He said it with a mixture of defiance and finality.
"Quite true," hastened Kennedy, briskly, "but a murder has been committed. The police have been called in. Everything must be gone over carefully. We can't stand on any ceremony now, you know—"
At that moment the telephone rang and Shattuck turned quickly toward the hall as his valet padded in after having answered it softly.
"You will excuse me a moment?" he begged.
Was this call what he had been waiting for? I looked about, but there was no chance to get into the hall or near enough in the den to overhear.
While Shattuck was at the telephone, Kennedy paced across the room to a bookcase. There he paused a moment and ran his eye over the titles of some of the books. They were of a most curious miscellaneous selection, showing that the reader had been interested in pretty nearly every serious subject and somewhat more than a mere dabbler. Kennedy bent down closer to be sure of one title, and from where I was standing behind him I could catch sight of it. It was a book on dreams translated from the works of Dr. Sigmund Freud.
Kennedy continued to pace up and down.