“Well,” said the reporter’s voice at her elbow, tense with some suppressed excitement, “this is the time he did it! No enterprising Filipino and housemaid around this time. Read that and weep!”
Across the flimsy sheet of the Redfield Home News it ran in letters three inches high: Ex-fiancé of Murdered Girl Blows Out Brains. Prominent Clubman Found Dead in Garden at Eleven Forty-five This Morning.
“I’ve got a peach of a story started over the wires this minute,” said the reporter exultantly. “Here, boy, rush this stuff and beat it back for more. I couldn’t get your sandwich.”
“Well,” said the red-headed girl in a small awed voice—“well, then, that means that he did it himself, doesn’t it? That means that he couldn’t stand it any longer because he killed her, doesn’t it?”
“Or it means that he good and damn well knew that Susan Ives did it,” muttered the reporter, shaken from Olympian calm to frenzied activity. “Here, boy! Boy! Hi, you, rush this—and take off the ear muffs. It’s a hundred-to-one bet that he knew that Sue’d done it, and that he’d as good as put the knife in her hand by telling her where, when, and why it should be managed. . . . Here, boy!”
“He didn’t!” said the red-headed girl fiercely. “He didn’t know it. How could——”
“The Court!” sang Ben Potts.
“How could he know whether she——”
“Silence!” intoned Ben reprovingly.
Mr. Orsini and Mr. Lambert were both heading purposefully for the witness box.