"He must have been up that side corridor waiting. When he heard the gate shut and the car go down, he came out, walked to the hall window and jumped. Ugh!" he gave a wriggling movement with his broad shoulders. "That takes nerve!"
I suppose sometimes in crowds you pass murderers, but you don't know them for what they are. Probably never again if I lived to be a hundred, would I sit this way, not only conversing with one, but conversing about his crime. It wasn't what you'd look back on afterward as one of the happy memories of your life, but it was a red-letter experience. I had a vision of telling my grandchildren how once, when I was young, I talked with one of the blackest criminals of his day on the subject of the deed he'd helped commit.
"It's a fortunate thing he left no family." It was something to say, and I had to keep him moving along the same line. "You'd suppose he'd have married again, being wealthy and handsome."
Mr. Ford, who was lighting a cigarette, smiled to himself and said: "So you would."
"And I guess he could have had his pick. Maybe he cared for someone who didn't reciprocate."
He threw away the match and lolled back in his chair.
"Maybe," he said with a meaning secret air.
It wouldn't have taken a girl just landed at Ellis Island to see that he wanted to be questioned. It was out on him like a rash. So not to disappoint him and also being curious I asked:
"Was he in love with someone?"
He said nothing but blew a smoke ring into the air, staring at it as it floated away. I waited while he blew another ring, the look on his face as conscious as an actor's when he has the middle of the stage. Then he spoke in a weighty tone: