I grinned. “Sure she was. I’m just getting all of you placed. Did Dr. Burton go to the foyer right away?”
She nodded. “Well... maybe not right away. He went pretty soon. I was in the dining-room and heard him go by the door.”
“Okay.” I got up from my chair. “Now I’m going to ask you to do something. I suppose I shouldn’t tell you it’s important, but it is. You go to the dining-room and start taking down the glasses, or whatever you were doing after you told Dr. Burton. I’ll walk past the dining-room door and on to the foyer. Was Dr. Burton going fast or slow?”
She shook her head and her lip began to quiver. “He was just going.”
“All right, I’ll just go. You hear me go by, and you decide when enough time has passed for the first shot to go off. When the time has come for the first shot, you yell Now loud enough for me to hear you in the foyer. Do you understand? First you’d better tell—”
I stopped on account of her lip. It was getting into high. I snapped at her, “Come on out of that. Take a look at Mrs. Burton and learn how to behave yourself. You’re doing this for her. Come on now.”
She clamped her lips together and held them that way while she swallowed twice. Then she opened them to say:
“The shots all came together.”
“All right, say they did. You yell Now when the time comes. First you’d better go and tell the people inside that you’re going to yell or they’ll be running out here—”
Mrs. Burton interposed, “I’ll tell them. Rose, take Mr. Goodwin to the study and show him how to go.”