"Hurt Father? No."
"But Mr. Blatchford—"
"Dead," she answered dully.
"They killed him, then!"
"Yes; they—" She iterated. He was telling her now—unnecessarily—that he had had nothing to do with it; it was the others who had done that.
He released her and wiped the blood from his eyes with the heel of his hand. "The poor old man," he said, "—the poor old man!"
She drew toward him in the realization that he could find sympathy for others even in such a time as this.
"Where's the key?" he demanded of her. He stared over her again but without surprise even in his eyes, at her state; if she was there at all at that time, that was the only way she could have come.
"The key?"
"The key for the battery and magneto—the key you start the car with."