“You know, then, where we learned what we know?”
“That’s easy,” he said bitterly. “She’s told you enough, I daresay. She doesn’t know it all, of course. Any more than I do,” he added.
“Will you give us the letters?”
“I haven’t said I have them. I haven’t admitted I wrote that one on the desk. Suppose I have them, I’ll not give them up except to the District Attorney.”
“By ‘she’ do you refer to Miss Jeremy?” I asked.
He stared at me, and then smiled faintly.
“You know who I mean.”
We tried to assure him that we were not, in a sense, seeking to involve him in the situation, and I even went so far as to state our position, briefly:
“I’d better explain, Hawkins. We are not doing police work. But, owing to a chain of circumstances, we have learned that Mr. Wells did not kill himself. He was murdered, or at least shot, by some one else. It may not have been deliberate. Owing to what we have learned, certain people are under suspicion. We want to clear things up for our own satisfaction.”
“Then why is some one taking down what I say in the next room?”