"Jealous?" O'Mally suggested.
"Desperately jealous. As soon as the thing opened up before me I saw how matters stood. He was secretly crazy about Miss Whitehall and was easy until Barker cut in, then he got alarmed. Barker was a bigger man than he, and there was no doubt about it that she liked Barker. When he realized that he put it up to me straight. He'd sized me up pretty thoroughly by that time and knew that I'd—what's the use of mincing matters—do his dirty work for him."
O'Mally inclined his head as if he was too polite to contradict.
"He offered me good money and all I had to do was to watch her and Barker and report what I heard or saw. It was a cinch—I was on the spot, the only other person in the office a fool of a stenographer, a girl, who hardly counted."
"What was the result of your—er—investigations?"
"That Barker was in love with her too. He came often on a flimsy excuse that he wanted to build a house in the tract. She was friendly at first, then for a while very cold and haughty—as if they might have had a quarrel. Then they seemed to make that up, and get as thick as thieves."
"Did she seem to care for Harland?"
"Not exactly—anyway not the way he did for her. She was always awfully nice to him—the few times he came into the office—gentle and sweet, but not the way she was with Barker. She was two different women to them—with Harland a sort of affable, gracious winner, but with Barker a girl with a man she's fond of, natural, glad to see him, no society stunts.
"A little before Christmas I caught on to the fact that she was receiving letters from Barker, and Harland offered me extra money if I'd get their contents. This wasn't so easy. Generally she took them away with her, but twice she left them on her desk. All I had to do then was to stay overtime and when she was gone, copy them. That way I got on to something that phazed us both—she and Barker were up to some scheme."
O'Mally moved slightly in his chair.