'He must be out of his mind,' snapped Johimy. 'Doesn't he claim a court found him guilty?'
'Yes, but he understands , . .'
'Look here, sir. You say he's about out of his mind?'
'The man is trying to beheve what he does not beUeve,' said the chaplain severely.
'I have to do something,' Johnny said. 'Tell me what I am to dol'
The chaplain said, in a moment, 'You care for this girl, his daughter? You have her welfare at heart?'
'I do. I have.' Johnny's voice began to shake with foreboding.
'Yes, I thought so. I will say this to you. If you ever become personally certain that this man Dick Bartee is a murderer, then feel released from your promise. Make it your responsibility to decide.'
'Mine?' said Johnny.
'Mr. Copeland may help you some. But I rather think the dead lady—the girl's aunt—gave it to you.'
'I'll—do the best I can,' choked Johnny.
He hung up. The lawyer, who had been listening in, said sympathetically, 'I'll help you tell her.'
But Johnny said angrily, 'You heard? McCauley is out of his mind?'
'Yes. Sad.'
'Did you hear Father Klein say whether to tell her? Yesterday he thought we must. How long do you think McCauley may have been out of his mind? We don't know, said Johnny. 'We are basing an awful lot of theory on that man's integrity. If it weren't for McCauley, would it have crossed our minds that Bartee read a letter? Or plotted to meet Nan? Or any of it?'
'Why don't you—er—hunt around a little?' the lawyer said unhappily. 'I guess it's true enough that we can always break her heart another day.'
Johnny bought himself two sandwiches and a small carton of milk. He drove to the park where he sat on a bench, ate one-and-a-half sandwiches and fed the other half to some birds. During tliis time he tried not to thinjc at all. At the
end of the time, a sentence came clear and cool into his head, and he knew exactly what he was going to do.
He drove to the fat-walled stucco fortiess where Roderick Grnncs lived.
'I've got an old murder case,' Johnny told him, 'that I am going to dig into for reasons of my own. I don't ask you to take an interest at all but I do a.sk you this: Would you be willing to say, to anyone who inquires, that I'm working on it for you?'
Roderick Grimes took him by his lapels. 'Come in here. If you think you are going to say no more—Sit down. Expound.'
Johnny sat down. 'You can't use this,' he warned. 'Or even talk about it. I'll have to have your word. Any decision to talk has to be mine.' Mine, his heart echoed.
'Granted.'
So Johnny expounded.
'You're right,' Grimes said at the end. 'It's possible, and even probable, that this McCauley is slightly off his rocker. A guilty man who has made up a fantasy to bury the guilt under. Either so that he can see himself as a noble martyr, or because this makes the punishment he desperately needs all the more Qjuel.' -'•
John nodded unhappily.
'On the other hand, your Dick Bartee sounds like—what was that phrase?—a ring-tailed doozer, all right. According to Rush.'
'Yeah,' said Johnny miserably.
'I'll back you up,' said Grimes. 'I'll even—No, I won't either. I was going to say I might even come down and throw my weight around. But I can't ofiFer. Know why?'
'Why?'
'Because I'm the armchair type,' said Grimes, 'creaking back, neither young nor spry, nor foolish. All's safe enough, if McCauley's a psycho. But hasn't it occurred to you that Dick Bartee, if he's a killer, may not sit still while you snoop among his Httle secrets?'
'He's not going to murder me' scoffed Johnny.
'My boy,' said Roderick Grimes quaintly, 'you could be murdered and you'd never know it. Well, report to me, mind. Of course, if I can't use it, I won't pay you.'
'I realize that,' Johnny grinned.
'Meanwhile,' promised Roderick Grimes, 'I'll do you another favor. I will sit here and think about it.' Johnny felt comforted, somehow.
CHAPTERS
Johnny spent the rest of the day hunting old newspapers and magazine indices for accounts of the murder of Christy McCauley, in Hestia, Cahfomia, seventeen years ago. A no-good, drunken, womanizing bum had killed his young wife. Only the prominence of the Bartee family gave the stale plot much news value. Nothing new.
He walked into his parents' house about eight o'clock in the evening and was shocked stock-still on the carpet by the sight of his father at the card table, playing a placid game of Russian Bank with a pretty girl named Dorothy Padgett.
