'Who?'
'Yes, who? You did care for me, Alice. You can't tell me . .. Why, you . . . you've been . . .'
Alice shrugged. Then she said, more softly, 'Innes, I don't dislike you. I like you quite well. It's only that I can't let you sign that will still thinking what isn't true.'
Innes said, 'I don't understand you.'
'I'm sorry.'
'Are you breaking our engagement?'
'You're to do that.'
'But, Alice . . .'
'Oh, do it,' she cried, 'and get it over!'
She couldn't leave. Someone had to be with him. He was in danger. She turned her back. She wished she'd waited to speak until Fred was available. Someone knocked on the door.
She opened it for Art KiUeen.
Fred pulled the car up at the dcxitor's dcx)r, shoved his cap back on his head, and setded as if to wait.
'Want to come in?'
'Do I?' Fred jumped. 'Say, thanks. Listen, Td bust sitting out here. You've got me going, Mr. Duff. I want to know, myself.'
'Curiosity is useful for us detectives,' Duff said. 'It makes us nibble away at impossible problems. We shall now poke around in the attic, as it were, of Dr. Follett's memory. Something might turn up, eh?'
'Come on,' said Fred.
The doctor was in and waiting for them. He seemed to have recovered a normal reticence, and he hid behind a bland show of pohte welcoming small talk. Duff oudasted these prehminaries by being perfectly reticent himself. The doctor was forced to say, at last, 'Well, Mr. Duff, I wonder what I can do for you?'
'I think,' said. Duff, 'you can tell me about the Whitlocks. Innes Whitlock has asked me to do what I can to find out whether or not his bad luck has been entirely accidental.' The doctor looked uncomfortable. 'And the present roots in the past,' said Duff.
'I don't know what I can tell you. I haven't been in that house for twenty-five years, until the day before yesterday. I suppose you already know why not?'
'I understand that your marriage offended Miss Maud.'
'!It did. Yes, it did. But that was years ago, sir, and surely it can't have a thing to do with what's going on up there now.'
'I don't suppose it has,' Duff said. 'But still, I'd like to hear your version of it.'
'She thought I was courting her. Maybe I was. Although I thought not. I mean to say, my calls there may have made it seem that I was more interested in her than I actually was. I don't know. I don't know.'
'Tell me,' said Duff, 'do they use the phrase 'going with' m Ogaunee?'
'Oh, yes, yes. Yes, they do.'
'And if a young man is 'going with' a girl, it means he's serious?'
'It. . . yes, it does. But the Whidock giris . . .'
'Go on.'
''They ought not,' said the doctor, ''to have been so simple-minded.'
'You mean you wouldn't have expected the village convention to hold in their case?'
'I wouldn't. And I didn't. You see, they were different.'
'Tell me what they were like.'
The doctor frowned. 'I don't know how to tell you. They were important here. Their father was an important man. So a young doctor, wanting to get along, naturally went to call there. You see, they were traveled. They seemed elegant and . . . well . . . cosmopolitan. You can see how I missed supposing that frequent calls would mean that I was committing myself.'
'Yes, I see,' said Duff. 'You called on Miss Maud?'
'I called at the house,' the doctor said. 'Somehow or other, I usually saw Maud. I came to know her better than the others. Of course, Isabel was just a bit young for me. A restless nervous youngster, flying in and out.'
'And Gertrude?'
'Oh, Gertrude was the most elegant of the three. The least . . . er . . . approachable. I really don't know what used to become of Gertrude.'
'She withdrew, perhaps?'
'Yes, she did, rather.'
'It's so often the girls,' said Duff, 'who decide which sister's property the man is.' The doctor looked a little startled. 'Miss Maud was attractive?'
