Hammond had called her up one morning to assure her that her son’s affairs were progressing rapidly, and to say that the case had been given a place on the calendar which would be reached in a week or two. She was so glad that it would soon be over.
All during her luncheon, which she ate alone—Howard had telephoned he would be detained in the city—she thought of the approaching trial, and her heart warmed as she pictured the great lawyer defending her son. What a man he was! What a friend he had proven! And, what was as much to Marjorie Benton in her straitened circumstances, how much it meant to both Howard and herself that John Hammond persisted in his purpose to handle the matter without fees.
She looked up from the book she had been idly scanning at her solitary meal to see her son standing in the door. So white and strained he was, so actually ill he seemed that the mother’s hand went to her throat to ease the choking lump that rose. What could have happened now?
“Howard!” she cried chokingly. “What is it, dear? What is wrong?”
Without a word, he crossed to his mother’s chair and laid before her the paper he held. The black type stared up at her, and for a moment, she could not take it in.
PROMINENT LAWYER KILLED IN STREET
AS AUTOS COLLIDE
JOHN HAMMOND, FORMER SENATOR
DIES INSTANTLY
Tears that had not come for so long to the eyes of Marjorie Benton, who had believed they had dried forever, gathered under the hot lids. She could not read further. She looked up at her son, standing there with his hopeless expression, and her arms went out to him as she hid her face on his rough coat.