The Judge leaned forward and waited attentively.
“The other matter,” said Linda, “was relative to Saturday. There may not be a thing in it, but sometimes a woman’s intuition proves truer than what a man thinks he sees and knows. I haven’t seen a thing, and I don’t know a thing, but I don’t believe your gardener was sick last week. I believe he had a dirty job he wanted done and preferred to save his position and avoid risks by getting some other Jap who had no family and no interests here, to do it for him. I don’t believe that your car, having run all right Friday night, was shot to pieces Saturday morning so that Donald went smash with it in a manner that might very easily have killed him, or sent him to the hospital for months, while Oka Sayye carried off the honours without competition. I want to ask you to find out whether your regular gardener truly was ill, whether he has a family and interests to protect here, or whether he is a man who could disappear in a night as Japs who have leased land and have families cannot. I want to know about the man who took your gardener’s place, and I want the man who is repairing your car interviewed very carefully as to what he found the trouble with it.”
Linda paused. Judge Whiting sat in deep thought, then he looked at Linda.
“I see,” he said at last. “Thank you very much for coming to me. All these things and anything that develops from them shall be handled carefully. Of course you know that Donald is my only son and you can realize what he is to me and to his mother and sister.”
“It is because I do realize that,” said Linda, “that I am here. I appreciate his friendship, but it is not for my own interests that I am asking to have him taken care of while he wages his mental war with this Jap. I want Donald to have the victory, but I want it to be a victory that will be an inspiration to any boy of white blood among any of our allies or among peoples who should be our allies. There’s a showdown coming between the white race and a mighty aggregation of coloured peoples one of these days, and if the white man doesn’t realize pretty soon that his supremacy is not only going to be contested but may be lost, it just simply will be lost; that is all there is to it.”
The Judge was studying deeply now. Finally he said: “Young lady, I greatly appreciate your coming to me. There may be nothing in what you fear. It might be a matter of national importance. In any event, it shows that your heart is in the right place. May Mrs. Whiting and I pay you a visit some day soon in your home?”
“Of course,” said Linda simply. “I told Donald to bring his mother the first time he came, but he said he did not need to be chaperoned when he came to see me, because my father’s name was a guarantee to his mother that my home would be a proper place for him to visit.”
“I wonder how many of his other girl friends invited him to bring his mother to see them,” said the Judge.
“Oh, he probably grew up with the other girls and was acquainted with them from tiny things,” said Linda.
“Very likely,” conceded the Judge. “I think, after all, I would rather have an invitation to make one of those trips with you to the desert or the mountains. Is there anything else as interesting as fish hooks and Victrola needles and wooden legs to be learned?”