“I don’t know where he is,” I said firmly.
“So Dunn tells me. But if you — the fact is, I was looking for you before — when they sent for me—”
I wouldn’t have said that at that moment he was living up to much of anything. He was close to pitiful. He was trying to keep from trembling but couldn’t, and his voice sounded as if his throat was badly in need of oiling.
I said, “Here I am, but I’m in one hell of a temper. You don’t look very happy yourself.”
“I suppose — I don’t. This ghastly — right here — with all of us here.”
“Yeah, sure. It wouldn’t have been so bad if she’d been all alone in the house.”
I was hoping he’d resent that enough to quit looking pathetic, but his mind was too occupied even to realize it was an ill-timed jest. All he did was move ten inches closer to me and speak in a lower and more urgent tone:
“Do you want to earn a thousand dollars?”
“Certainly. Don’t you?”
“For nothing,” he said. “Really nothing. I’ve just had a talk with Skinner, the district attorney. I didn’t tell him about my being behind those curtains — you know — when you came in and saw me. It would have been — it would have sounded too damned silly.” He pulled one of the poorest imitations of a jolly little laugh in my long experience. “It was silly — the silliest thing I ever did in my life. I’ll give you — I mean, when they question you — if you forget you saw me there — you’ll earn a thousand dollars — just to save me the embarrassment — I haven’t got that much with me, but you can take my word—”