"He couldn't read anything but the simplest words. The tutors his father hired and fired to get some learning into that man! He was just hopeless, that's all."
Doak smiled. "Well, he seems to have done all right without it. I'd like to have his money."
"And his brain?" Martha asked.
"Just his money," Doak said. "And maybe I'll get some of it before I give up on him."
He happened to glance at Martha after he finished saying that. Her face was coldly skeptical and he had an uncomfortable feeling that his lie hadn't registered with her at all.
In his room, as he undressed, as he hung his clothes in the small closet, he felt the folded thickness of the dupligraphed magazine in his jacket pocket.
What more did he need? Tomorrow he'd take the first train back to Milwaukee and the first plane from Milwaukee. Here was evidence and he realized now it wasn't something he would be wise to tackle alone. A few weeks' work by a half dozen operatives and the entire publisher-reader organization would be spotted and ready for one unified move.
Local authorities were subject to local loyalties and one leak could scare off the whole organization. He could be back in Washington before noon, which would give him a full day and a half of free time, of June time. To say nothing of the nights.
Why should he hang around this whistle stop for a wasted week-end, holding kitchen conversations with the unmighty living?
But that Martha, that lovely, that proud and knowing gal.... The crickets helped him to Dreamland.