“Now you buck up,” she said authoritatively. “You must. I don’t know what this means till I’ve had time to look and to hear, but I can make a fairly good guess. Whatever it is, I can tell you without either looking or hearing that we’re going to fight.”
Marcia sat back on the floor. She exposed a pitiful face.
“Fight!” she cried passionately. “Fight? It’s all very well for the innocent to fight, but how can the guilty wage battle?”
Nancy looked at the woman she loved—her efficient partner, the being upon whom she had come to depend for hope and help and human companionship when stiff bones and gray days and a sordid stomach and nerves that pulled and muscles that twitched were upon her. With a gesture that was truly regal, she shook open the papers and carefully went through them. Then she looked at the formidable sum total at the bottom. It would practically wipe out the savings of six years for Marcia and cut heavily into her own.
“Do you owe this?” she asked tersely.
Marcia shook her head.
“They’re vultures,” she said. “They prey equally on the quick and the dead.”
Nancy stared at Marcia. The thumb and first finger of her right hand were busy working her lower lip into folds.
“Marcia,” she said softly, “you’ve never told me anything, and I’ve never asked; but now we’re at the place where I must know. So tell me. Were you the mother of a child born of Martin Moreland?”
Marcia promptly and emphatically shook her head.