“That was beastly to shock you so,” Lance O’Leary was saying with honest contrition. “I hope you’ll forgive me, Miss Keate, I’m really awfully sorry.”
“Did you say—Dr. Letheny is dead?” I asked, bringing out the words with the peculiar difficulty that one experiences in dreams.
“He is dead,” he answered gravely.
“Not—not—— Tell me how he died.”
“Are you sure you can stand it? You’ve got to know sometime.”
“Go on,” I said, bracing myself.
“He has been dead for more than twelve hours. He was in the closet in Room 18.” He paused, regarding me doubtfully, but at my horrified gesture continued: “He had received a blow of some kind. It fractured his skull. He must have died immediately.”
“Wait.” Rising I walked to the window, stared with unseeing eyes at the rain-drenched landscape, found my palms were stinging under the pressure of my fingernails, unclinched my hands, clinched them again and turned to face O’Leary. It was true that I had felt no fondness for Dr. Letheny—but I had often worked at his side.
“I say, Miss Keate,” Lance O’Leary was protesting boyishly, “I’m awfully sorry to have been so brutal about it. But you see, I had to know whether this was news to you or not. Someone locked that closet door, you know. And in my business we suspect everything—everybody—the very walls themselves.”
I was too deeply shocked to be indignant at the lack of compliment in his implication; after a moment he continued.