“Oh, they want to know all about the child, everything they can find out. They usually make the girls give them the names of the fathers. The girls hate to do that… It’s strange the way they try to protect the men who have betrayed them. It’s the natural loyalty women have for men. Women are a lot more loyal to men than men are to women, Mr. Mason.”
Mason took a last drag at his cigarette and ground it out in the ash tray.
“All right,” he said. “Let’s get back to Tidings.”
Freel said, “Tidings tried to pump me. He wanted to find out everything I knew. I think he was looking for some flaw somewhere, something that would show that Byrl Gailord wasn’t…”
“Wasn’t what?” Mason prompted.
“Wasn’t entitled to the money.”
Mason stared thoughtfully for several seconds at the faded carpet. Freel studied him with the anxious scrutiny of a marksman who is anxious to see just where his bullets have struck in the target.
“Did the Home investigate that story about the torpedoed ship?” he asked.
“Oh, yes. Yes, indeed, Mr. Mason. They made a very complete investigation. They always want information about the parentage, you know. That information means dollars and cents to any home.”
Mason got up from his chair, walked over to the narrow window with its dingy lace curtain over the lower portion of it. He raised a tattered, green shade, and stood with his elbows resting on the molding which divided the upper from the lower part of the window, and stared meditatively down into a dingy alley and at the blank wall of a brick building opposite.