His small gray eyes sent a glance piercing into mine, full of a quick, arrested attention.
"Why—why—the ruin of Mr. Harland."
"Oh, that," he was easy again, "I thought you meant the suicide. I don't know whether she knew or not. Waiter"—he turned and made one of those grandstand plays to the waiter—"take this away and bring on the next."
"She'd have known that night as soon as she heard he was dead but I guess she was so paralyzed she didn't think of herself."
"I don't know what she thought of. She wasn't in the office."
I dropped my eyes to my plate. Eliza crossing on the ice didn't have anything over me in the way she picked her steps.
"Oh, she'd gone before it happened?"
"Yes. I left early myself that night—before she did. I was halfway home when I remembered some papers I'd said I'd go over and had to hike back for them. She was gone when I got there. And just think how gruesome it was, when I was going down in the elevator Harland jumped, struck the street a few minutes before I reached the bottom."
Could you beat it! Knowing what had been done in that closed office, knowing what was going to be done while he was sliding down from story to story and then getting it off that way, as smooth as cream. A sick feeling rose up inside me. I wanted to get away from him and see an honest face and feel the cold, fresh air. Dining with a gunman wasn't as easy as I'd thought.
Tony Ford, leaning across his plate, tapped on the cloth with his knife handle to emphasize his words: