Guy Little smiled broadly and winked again.
"Ain't he got the manner of a dook?" he whispered admiringly. And to his employer, "Say, Packard, it's the little Temple girl. Terry Temple, you know. An'——"
Even Terry started and drew back a quick step from the closed door. She did not know that a man's voice could pierce to one's soul like that.
"An'," went on Guy Little hurriedly, knowing that he must rush his words now if he got them out at all, "she's jus' drove all the way from Red Crick—in a Boyd-Merrill, Twin Eight car—had tire trouble on the road—an' done the trip in fifty-three minutes!"
He got it all out. A deep silence shut down after his words. A silence during which a man's eyes might have opened and stared, during which a man's mouth too might have opened and closed wordlessly, during which a man's brain might estimate what this meant, to drive forty miles in fifty-three minutes over such roads as lay between the Packard ranch and Red Creek.
"It's a lie!" shouted Packard. "She couldn't do it."
"I want Doctor Bridges——"
"Sh!" Guy Little cut her short. "I got the ol' boy on the run. Leave it to me." And aloud once more: "She done it. She can prove it. An'——"
There came a snort of fury from the locked room followed by the noise of a chess-board and set of men hurled across the room and by an old man's voice shouting fiercely:
"It's a cursed frame-up. Bridges, you're a scoundrel and I can beat you any three games out of five and I'll bet you ten thousan' dollars on it, any time! An' as for that thief of a Temple's squidge-faced girl— Come in. Damn it all, come in and be done with it!"