Dr. Stone sat up straight. “The Calico Heiress?”
Freeman’s fingers still played imaginary music. “Exactly, Doctor,” he said quietly. “The newspapers have made the family fairly well known. Fine old traditions—that sort of thing. Let this book of Anthony’s appear and my marriage to Miss Panner would be overboard.”
“And with it the Panner fortune,” the doctor observed dryly.
“That, too,” Ran Freeman admitted without emotion.
The pipe had gone out. The blind man ran the bowl absently along one sleeve. Dishes clattered in the kitchen.
“It seems,” the doctor said, “you’ve given yourself sufficient motive for murder, Freeman.”
“We all have sufficient motive,” Freeman said frankly. “How long could Waring remain a cashier if his past were dug out? How long would King be manager of a brokerage house? How long would Lawton have enough credit left to stay on in his business?”
The room fell into silence, and Joe felt sweat on the palms of his hands. These men discussed murder as other men might have talked of the loss of a button from a coat. Dr. Stone put the pipe away and turned his sightless eyes toward the spot from which Waring’s voice had sounded.
“You say Anthony wrote you?”
“All of us. A devilish letter telling what was going into the book concerning us. Do you get that? Paying off, after all these years, the old score; ramming in the knife and turning it around. Giving us the prospect of months of anticipation and worry waiting for the book to appear. So we came up here——”