"It wasn't so bad. Some reporters called me up but when they found how little I knew they left me alone. I hadn't anything exciting to say. Both interviews were nothing but business."
"But let me ask you a question—not for publication this time, just as a thing I'm curious about. It was only a few hours after you saw him that Harland killed himself. Wasn't there anything unusual in his manner, anything to suggest that he was not himself?"
She looked down at the purse she was holding in her lap, and said slowly, clasping and unclasping the catch:
"I didn't notice anything—unless perhaps he was a little irritable and nervous. I certainly never would have thought he was in the state of a man contemplating suicide."
"And you would have known," said the chief. He turned to George in explanation. "As Harland's partner, Miss Whitehall would have known him well enough to notice any marked change in him."
I was watching her closely and as the glances of the two men met I saw uneasiness well up through the quietude of her face. Then for the first time I suspected that she was not as composed as she seemed. Her words confirmed the suspicion, they came quickly in hurried denial:
"No—I didn't know him well. I saw him very seldom. We were not in the least—what—what you'd call friends or even close acquaintances. It was all purely business."
The chief nodded, a slight, Mandarin-like teetering of his head, which gave the impression of a polite agreement in a matter that didn't interest him.
"Purely business," he murmured, then again turned to George. "What Miss Whitehall says would bear out the general idea that it was that last interview which drove Harland to desperation."
As they spoke she looked from one to the other, a glance that passed over both faces as quick as a lightning flash. Before they could turn, it was gone and her eyes had a dense, dead look as if she had dropped some inner veil over them. Then I knew that the brain behind that smooth white forehead was something more than alert, it was on its guard, wary and watchful.