“Oh — not intimately. I had seen him frequently the past few months, mostly at the Sperling home in New York or here.”
“Were you on good terms with him?”
“No.”
It was a blunt uncompromising no. Archer snapped, “Why not?”
“I didn’t like what I knew of the way he practiced his profession. I didn’t like him personally — I just didn’t like him. I knew that Mr. Sperling suspected him of being a Communist, and while I had no evidence or knowledge of my own, I thought that the suspicion might easily be well founded.”
“Did you know that Miss Gwenn Sperling was quite friendly with him?”
“Certainly. That was the only reason he was allowed to be here.”
“You didn’t approve of that friendship?”
“I did not, no, sir — not that my approval or disapproval mattered any. Not only am I an employee of Mr. Sperling’s corporation, but for more than four years I have had the pleasure and honor of being a friend — a friend of the family, if I may say that?”
He looked at Sperling. Sperling nodded to indicate that he might say that.