Graham was very much awake and responded instantly to their gentle knock. As soon as he heard who they were he assured them he could get out of bed and in a moment unlocked and flung open the door. Landis helped him into bed again.
Wincing once or twice he settled himself on his back and looked at his visitors with quizzical irritation. “Do you suppose,” he demanded, “that I can get to sleep with a herd of elephants prowling outside my door? You can’t tell me that one lone flat-footed cop could make all that noise!”
With a remorseful chuckle, Landis swung one of Graham’s bedroom chairs into the hall and requested the policeman to sit down on it instead of tramping up and down. Pleased and slightly astonished, the cop sat down at once. Landis returned to the side of Graham’s bed in time to catch his answer to a question of Bernard’s.
“I know I’ve begged off answering twice. Your two questions involved the same thing. But I’m in no mood now to keep anything to myself any longer. I’ll only ask you to keep absolutely confidential what I’m going to tell you. For I’m morally certain that it can’t affect the case!” He glanced at Landis rather anxiously.
“You know we’ll do that if we can!”
Bernard nodded.
“Unless it does affect the case—and even then if we can!” he agreed.
“All right,” said Graham with a wry smile, “here goes! About five months ago—early in May—Mr. Brent told me that Mr. Harrison had a little highly confidential work he wanted done for him and that he, Mr. Brent, had recommended me for it. Of course, I was delighted, telephoned Mr. Harrison’s secretary, made an appointment and went to see him at his office.
“Mr. Harrison beat about the bush a bit and finally told me that he wanted me to go back to New York, drop everything else and find a young girl named Ethel Cuddy.”