“I don’t suppose he knew,” she said with contempt. “I tried to tell him what she was, but it only made him fearfully angry. He said people misjudged her and that I was just nasty jealous.”
“How did your father feel?” Shayne probed.
“Frankly, I suspected afterward it was something Pops and Nora cooked up together,” she confessed after a brief hesitation, her brooding gaze fixed on Shayne, “to get Ralph away from his job and in partnership with Pops to make this new plastic. Because that’s what happened. She began working on Ralph, giving him delusions of grandeur, and convincing him he was being unfairly exploited by Vulcan. Up to that time he was happy with the arrangement and with his work. They paid him a very good salary and he never thought of complaining until Nora got her hooks into him.”
“Are you saying you suspect your father sent his mistress to make love to Ralph Carrol,” Shayne asked incredulously, “and marry him, in order to persuade him to quit his job as research chemist for Vulcan and team up with him? He didn’t know about this new plastic at that time. It hadn’t been discovered yet, or invented, or whatever. What you suggest would imply an extraordinary and blind faith in Carrol’s ability to come up with something very valuable.”
Ann said, “Nuts. If you think, for one moment, Pops ever invested a nickel in blind faith, you just don’t know Pops. He can talk himself blue in the face without convincing me the new plastic wasn’t in the bag before he ever sicked Nora onto Ralph. Don’t you see? That’s why he did it.”
Shayne tugged at his left ear lobe and studied the girl with narrowed eyes. “Then you think the lawsuit is completely justified? That Ralph did break faith with Vulcan and reserve for his own benefit a discovery actually made while in their employ and while utilizing their research facilities?”
“Certainly,” she said impatiently. “I’m practically positive of it, even if I can’t prove it. And there’s something else I’m morally certain of, too, even if I can’t prove it, either. That is, that Ralph came to his senses, after finding out what sort of woman Nora was, and, as soon as the divorce was final, he was going to quit Pops and go back to Vulcan and admit he was wrong.”
“If that were true,” said Shayne absently, “it would remove any motive at all for Vulcan desiring his death. If they were aware of his intention,” he added after a moment’s hesitation.
“I know. And while you’re being logical about it you can go right ahead and mark that down as a motive for Pops. Now that Ralph is dead, the lawsuit will probably drag along for months or years and probably end in some sort of compromise. Don’t think I haven’t thought about that,” she went on fiercely, a hint of color coming into her white face. “It’s all I have thought about since I heard about Ralph this morning. That, and where Pops was last night when it happened.” She lifted her coffee cup with trembling fingers and drained it, while her eyes met his in a cold blue challenge.
Shayne took a sip of cognac and didn’t say anything.