Now he had to tell her.
“No use doin’ that, little girl. No use at all.”
Johnny’s manner brought the girl to her feet.
“What are you saying?” she asked falteringly.
“He won’t come.” The words left the boy’s lips slowly. “The man you’re waiting for is dead!”
CHAPTER XIII
“HE IS MY FRIEND!”
Call it intuition, a sixth sense, or what you will, a feeling of loss which she could not explain gripped Molly Kent. That Crosbie Traynor was dead was tragic; that he had been killed was even more of a shock, but it did not account for the grief which choked her.
Johnny told himself he had never been more witless. Why had he been so abrupt? For the first time in his life he saw tears in Molly Kent’s eyes, and questions which he would have to answer. But even though he knew that she would have the facts from him, he still sought to withhold them. This, of course, because he saw no way of telling the complete truth without putting the girl’s father under suspicion.
In twenty minutes Johnny managed to become so involved that a child would have known that he was telling less than half of what he knew. It definitely added to Molly’s misery. Also, it awakened in her a sense of shrewdness which left Johnny helpless.
“Just what did all this have to do with your leaving the Diamond-Bar?” she asked flatly.