“No, it’s no use, Ted, not yet,” Ivy was saying. “You none of you seem to understand quite. It’s different for Mum; she’s got the business to look after, and she doesn’t think of anything else. I can’t forget how good Dad always was to me, and we just couldn’t do anything he wouldn’t have liked.”
“You mean he wouldn’t have liked you to—to walk out with me?” put in Ted, half resentfully.
Ivy blushed in spite of herself. “It wasn’t that, exactly,” she replied. “Mind, he never said anything to me, but I’ve got it out of Mum since. He always wanted me to—to get on in the world, and be a credit to the education he’s given me. And I feel that even now he’s dead, I’ve got to try and do what he wanted.”
“It isn’t that there’s anybody else?” he suggested with a note of anxiety in his voice.
“There isn’t anybody else, Ted,” she replied, looking him straight in the face. “But I’m not going to promise anything until I’ve got over the shock of his being killed like that. Oh, Ted, who can have done it? He hadn’t an enemy in the world, not a real enemy, I mean.”
Ted shook his head helplessly. “I can’t make it out,” he replied. “I can’t believe Wal Snyder had anything to do with it. After all, if—if he wanted to be friends with you, it wasn’t the way to go about it.”
“Wal Snyder must have known perfectly well that I’d never have had anything to do with him,” exclaimed Ivy indignantly. The disclosure of that episode at the inquest had roused her to a pitch of anger she rarely displayed. “Besides, he’s too much of a worm to do a thing like that. I’d like to see him hanged, just the same.”
Ted tactfully disregarded this piece of feminine logic. “It must have been some lunatic, or perhaps, whoever it was mistook your father for someone else,” he replied vaguely.
“And sent him that telephone message first,” she struck in, with a touch of scorn. “No, poor Dad was murdered deliberately. Oh, Ted, if only I were a man, and could find out who did it!”
Ted, looking at her clenched hands and tear-filled eyes, felt suddenly the urge of a great resolve. “Ivy, if I were to find out who it was, would you marry me?” he exclaimed impulsively.