“I don’t think I have. I’m trying not to. He’s helping me, and he’s a gentleman.”
“I gathered,” Ashbury said acidly, “that you’d taken him into your confidence. You didn’t take me.”
“I know I didn’t, Dad. I should have. I’m going to tell you now.”
“Not now,” he said. “Later. Donald, what’s your idea?”
I said hotly, “I’m not trying to horn in on the Ashbury millions or thousands or hundreds or whatever the hell they are. I’ve tried to give you a square deal, a—”
His hand came over to rest on my arm. The fingers tightened until I could feel the full strength of the man’s grip. “I’m not kicking about you, Donald,” he said. “It’s Alta. Usually, men flock around her, and she makes them jump through hoops. It makes me sore the way she treats them, not sore at her, but sore at my sex for standing all that damn bossing around—” Abruptly, he turned to face Alta, and said, “And you may feel relieved to know that before I left, I told Mrs. Ashbury she could see her lawyer, arrange a settlement, go to Reno, and get a quiet divorce, and take her son with her. Now then, Donald, what’s the idea?”
I said, “The brains back of this whole business is a lawyer by the name of Crumweather. I thought I could head things off and put the screws on him. I can on one end of it. I can’t on the other. There’s been too much stock sold.”
“How much?”
“I don’t know. Quite a smear. There’s going to be an awful squawk go up.”
“How about the Commissioner of Corporations?”