“Terrible nothing,” exclaimed the colonel. “I’m damned glad he’s dead!”
Shannon looked at him in astonishment, but Mrs. Pennington understood, for the colonel had told her all that Eva had told him.
“He was a bad man,” said Shannon. “The world will be better off without him.”
“You knew him?” Colonel Pennington asked in surprise.
“I knew him in Hollywood,” she replied.
She knew now that they must all know sooner or later, for she could not see how she could be kept out of the investigation and the trial that must follow. In her heart she feared that Custer had killed Crumb. The fact that he had drunk so heavily that afternoon indicated not only that he had overheard, but that what he had heard had affected him profoundly—profoundly enough to have suggested the killing of the man whom he believed to have wronged the woman he loved.
“The first thing to do, I suppose,” said the colonel, “is to notify the sheriff.”
He left the room and went to the telephone. While he was away Mrs. Pennington and Shannon discussed the tragedy, and the older woman confided to the other the experience that Eva had had with Crumb the previous night.
“The beast!” muttered Shannon. “Death was too good for him!”
Presently the colonel returned to them.