“Ah-ha! No wonder the door didn’t slam.”
“Ma says his head has been hurting him all day.”
“Maybe he tried to use it.”
“I feel sorry for that old geezer, Jerry. I honestly believe that he’s in trouble.”
“Trouble? What kind of trouble?”
“As we know, he’s mixed up in this secret, whatever it is. And I think that his trouble to-day is worry. Before we go to bed to-night, suppose we tell him some of the things we know and offer to help him. That may bring him out of his shell. We’ll have to do it, of course, when Ma isn’t around.”
Ungrateful bums that we were, the idea never had percolated into our noddles to stay in the kitchen after eating and help Ma with the late supper dishes. And finding her deep in the dish pan on our return to the house, we felt kind of cheap. Thoughtlessness like that doesn’t get a fellow anything. So, to sort of square ourselves, we grabbed a couple of wiping towels and got busy.
“Mrs. Doane,” says Poppy, as he cleverly massaged the gravy bowl, “did the thought ever come to you that there might be something sort of questionable about Mr. Danver’s sudden death?”
A plate fell from the woman’s hands into the dish water.
“Oh, dear!” she cried, looking frightened. “Why do you bring up such a dreadful subject at a time like this? Yes, if you must know the truth, I have been worried over Mr. Danver’s death. I have had strange suspicions. And these suspicions have troubled and unnerved me more than you can imagine. Outside of Pa, I’m pretty much alone in the world. And, as I have told you before, he isn’t much company. It’s a waste of time talking with him about anything out of the ordinary. So I never told him about this. In fact, until now, I never have fully opened my mind on the subject to anybody. But somehow I have a great deal of trust in you boys. And it is a big comfort to me to have somebody to lean on.”