"Can I come in?" she asked with tremulous abruptness.
"Please do," said David.
She entered and moved to the foot of the couch where she could look down on Rogers. "I've come to say something—and to say good-bye," she announced.
"Say good-bye?" Rogers sat up. "Good-bye? Why? Oh, you have a new position?"
"No. I've no right to be here. You won't want me when you know. So I'm going."
Her face tightened with the effort of holding down sobs. The two men looked at her in wonderment, waiting.
"You know how broke up I was when you told me about yesterday afternoon," she went on, "and how mad I was at Mr. Chambers. And then to find out what I have!... Here's what I've come to tell you. Yesterday afternoon and last night my father was drinking a great deal. I wondered where he got the money. This morning I went through his clothes while he was asleep; there were several dollars. I asked him about it. He lied to me, of course. But I got the truth out of him in the end.
"You remember that detective you told me about last night. When he left here yesterday about noon he happened to see my father sweeping off the sidewalk. He began to talk to my father, got my father to drinking, gave him some money. And after a while my father—he'd learned it somehow—he told the detective—he told him you were Red Thorpe."
The two men were silent a moment, looking at the strained face down which tears were now running.
"So that's how it happened!" Rogers breathed.