“Catch that man!” the butler shouted.
The taxi driver jumped out and caught Dorn. He struggled to tear free, while Dorothy screamed at the butler to let her go. Vicki reached Mrs. Heath just as the woman tried to slip away. Out of nowhere a policeman appeared on the run.
“What’s all the shouting about?” he demanded. “What’s the matter here?”
From the top of his house steps Marshall Bryant told them all to come into the house. “Pay the driver his fare,” he directed the butler, “so he can go.” The policeman herded the rest of them into the house, with Dorothy screaming now at Dorn. Vicki walked in beside Mrs. Heath who looked as if she, too, had slept in her clothes last night. Mrs. Heath scornfully would not even glance in Vicki’s direction.
They all sat down in the room with the parakeets, where Mrs. Bryant and Lucy waited together. Marshall Bryant explained the situation briefly to the policeman, who said:
“You’d better phone the precinct for a couple of detectives, Mr. Bryant. This is out of my jurisdiction. I’ll stay until they get here, though.”
Mr. Bryant instructed the butler to telephone. Then he said to Dorn: “Talk!”
Thurman Dorn sat crumpled in a chair, head bent. He plucked at his fingers as he almost inaudibly told the whole story.
He had always had to struggle along and economize, he said, and he felt that as an educated man he was entitled to more than a small-salaried job. His mother and his fiancée, too, were ambitious and resentful of “scrimping along.” They felt they were entitled to wealth just as much as people like the Bryants. Thurman Dorn was determined to get rich as quickly as possible. His attitude was “Once you have a great deal of money, people won’t care or dare ask how you acquired it.”