“I never saw this man you say was Tom Durham in my life except the one time when I was there at Aunt Amelia’s place and he came in and, as I told you, Aunt Amelia didn’t introduce him.”
“Then why should Minerva want him shadowed?”
“She didn’t want him shadowed. She wanted to find out just who he was and just what his relationship with Aunt Amelia was.”
“How did she know he knew your Aunt Amelia?”
“I don’t know a thing in the world about it, Donald, honestly I don’t. Minerva Carlton came to me Saturday morning. She’s been in touch with me two or three times while she was here. On Saturday morning she seemed a little triumphant, as though she’d had something that was bothering her, but was getting the better of it. She was all excited. She gave me a cheque for five hundred dollars and told me that she wanted me to go to your office and get you to find out who a man was and all about him, but that he mustn’t know he was being investigated. She said that he knew Aunt Amelia, and that was the first I knew of him. After she’d described him, I knew that he was the man I’d seen there at Aunt Amelia’s.”
“And you don’t know what he wanted with your Aunt Amelia?”
“Heavens, no. Minerva said he’d be there at four.”
“You don’t know whether he was trying to sell her stock or trying to marry her, or…”
“I don’t know. He may have been a life insurance salesman for all I know. I handed you a song and dance so that you could go to work, and in case anything happened there wouldn’t be any trail that would lead back to Minerva. She was desperately anxious about that. She said that if anything happened and the thing was botched up in any way, she must have it so that the lead could only go back as far as me. It must never be traced to her.”
I said, “And all this time, Minerva was holding out on you.”