“Let’s hear it,” I said. “Enough to go on. Is Uncle Dan a gambler?”
“No.” Her face turned to me. “I’m trembling. Look, my hand’s trembling. I’m afraid of him.”
“Then what is he?”
“He runs a drugstore. He owns it. That’s where we’re going to see him. I know what Helen thinks — she thinks I should have told, but I couldn’t. My father and mother died when I was just a kid, and Uncle Dan has been good to me — as good as he could. If it hadn’t been for him I’d have been brought up in an orphans’ home. Of course Bill wanted to tell Art Kinney last night, but he didn’t on account of me, and that’s why he’s not telling the cops.”
“Maybe he is telling them, or soon will.”
She shook her head. “I know Bill. We decided we wouldn’t tell, and that settled it. Uncle Dan made me promise we wouldn’t tell before he said what he wanted.”
I grunted. “Even so he was crowding his luck, telling you two about the program before signing you up. If he explained the idea of doping the Beebright, why—”
“But he didn’t! He didn’t say how it was to be done, he just said there was an easy way of doing it. He didn’t tell us what it was; he didn’t get that far, because Bill said nothing doing, as I knew he would.”
I eyed her. “You sure of that? He might have told Bill and not you.”
“He couldn’t. I was there with them all the time. Certainly I’m sure.”