“What had your brother to do with Hoode?” Anthony interrupted. He felt that unless she were kept severely to the point her self-control would vanish altogether.
“He was his secretary until Archie took his place—about six months ago. I—I never knew why Jimmy left, he wouldn’t tell me. He wouldn’t tell me, I say!”
Anthony shifted uneasily in his chair. There had been a note of hysteria in those last words.
Suddenly she was on her feet. “He did it! He did it!” she wailed, her hands flung above her head. “Oh, Christ! he’ll be—oh, Jimmy, Jimmy!” And then she began to laugh.
Anthony jumped at her, took her by the shoulders, and shook. The ivory-white flesh seemed at once to chill and burn his clutching fingers. With every movement of his arms her head lolled helplessly. Knowing himself right, he yet detested himself.
The dreadful laughter changed to sobbing; the sobbing to silence.
“I’m s-sorry, p-please,” she said.
Anthony’s hands fell to his sides. “I,” he said, “am a brute. Please sit down again.”
They sat. A silence fell.
At last he broke it. “Then you were so impressed by the sincerity of your brother’s letter that you determined you must try to stop him. Is that right?”