Also, I was prepared to fight for her. And if the fight could be helped on by incriminating some one else, so much the better.
We started for Mrs. Dallas’s home, which was only a short walk along the lake shore.
Keeley was quiet as usual, and gave me fully to understand that he bore no ill will over my refusal to confide in him more fully.
“You see, Gray,” he said, talking things over with me in the old, friendly fashion, “there’s no use blinking the accepted fact that those who benefit most by the death of a rich man are the ones to be suspected. I know how you feel about Alma, but as you care for her, you, of course, deem her innocent. Therefore you can’t feel that she is in any danger from an investigation by detectives. If I were you I should welcome all possible questioning of her, feeling sure that she would have satisfactory explanation for anything that might seem suspicious.”
“That’s all very well, Kee, if the detectives were not such dunderheaded idiots. You know I don’t mean you, but that March Hare and that Hart that panted at the inquest, have it in for the girl, and they are ready to turn anything she may say against her.”
“Oh, not so bad as that. But it complicates things, your having gone dotty over her.”
“Sorry for the complications, but not sorry for the rest of it. I say, old man, do you suppose she’d look at me?”
“She might do worse,” said Kee, as he eyed me appraisingly.
Although he spoke lightly I welcomed his words as a good omen and turned in at the Dallas place, determined to do all I could to help him.
It was a pleasant cottage, unpretentious and homelike, and we were admitted by a trim-looking maid, and conducted to a small reception room.