Boy of 14 Enters.
Webster Guerin lived across the street. He was a boy of attractive manners and he won the affection of Dora McDonald.
Slander gives one reason for that affection; the woman gives another.
Stole Him as a Boy, Slew Him as a Man, Says Archie Guerin.
Archie Guerin, Webster Guerin's brother, told how Mrs. Dora McDonald had taken a violent fancy to Webster when he was a boy of 14, and Archie 13, or thereabouts; how she would meet them on their way home from school and whisk Webster into the mansion, keeping him two, three or four hours; how she used to waylay Webster on his way home from church; how she followed him through the years until she got the notion that he was falling in love with Avis Dargan; how she put detectives on the boy's trail and sat for hours in a cab opposite the Omaha Building to see whether Miss Dargan entered; how she threatened to shoot him; how she would break out into wild and vehement declarations of her love, wailing that she "worshiped every hair of his head," and that she would kill him before she would lose him.
How she came into the studio on the day Webster was shot, asserting that she had "told that old slob everything" (meaning her husband), and said she was going to New York; how Webster had replied that he was "through with her," to which she retorted, "I am not through with you; do you think I would kill myself without first putting a bullet into your head?" How Mrs. McDonald had requested him to leave the studio, and how he had refused to do so until Webster joined his request to hers; how Archie and the two boys employed in the studio had gone away and left them to act out the tragedy by themselves behind doors that were closed and locked; how Archie had gone to the Windsor Clifton Hotel to meet Harry Feldman, with whom he had a business appointment; how Feldman had become alarmed when he heard that Mrs. McDonald and Webster were alone in the studio, urging Archie to call Webster on the telephone; how he and Archie stepped to the 'phone, called up the studio, and after a gruff "hello" from a policeman got back the staggering news: "Your brother has been murdered."
Mike McDonald Deluded by Wife.
"Mike" seemingly was deluded. He may have had suspicions of his wife, but his suspicions seem to have been quieted by the woman.
Even when Guerin followed her to California she dared to wire Mike: "Web Guerin is coming; fear I shall be compromised; shall I come back?"
It was such a frank admission that the gambler urged her to have mettle. "Stick," he sent back word. "Don't let anyone bluff you."