“So far as that goes, alcoholism and kidney trouble are frequently connected. Nevertheless, with all due respect to your mother’s brother, there is no reason whatever to suspect that Sherm Pike died of anything but what Doctor Weinsap said he died of.”
“You’re far too credulous, sugar. You’ll believe anything fantastic, even when the truth is as clear as can be.”
“I’m sorry. What, precisely, is the truth?”
“The truth is that Sherman Pike committed suicide. That’s perfectly evident.”
“Is it? Why?”
“Because of what has happened, of course. It’s the one thing that would explain why Sara Pike would do what she has to Beth Thatcher and you.”
“I’m not sure, but something in your reasoning seems wrong. It’s backwards or something. Maybe you’re starting with a basic assumption that isn’t proved.”
“You had better leave the reasoning to me, sugar. You’ll have to admit that I’ve been more successful at it to this point than you have been. You’ll see. It will turn out that Sherman Pike committed suicide in some way because Beth Thatcher threw him over for you, and all this time Sara Pike has been brooding about it, knowing the truth, and when Beth came back to town, Sara met her and suddenly cracked up and killed her. Probably she has become somewhat crazy from keeping all this inside her for so long. Something like that is extremely hard on the mind. Everyone knows it.”
“Sara took Sherm’s death hard, all right, but that was natural. He was a little older than she, a brilliant, sensitive guy with a good future, as everyone thought, and she was nuts about him. For a long time after he died, she was practically a recluse. Never went anywhere or saw anyone.”
“There you are again. You keep trying to argue one way, but everything you say goes the other. No, no, sugar, you can’t dissuade me. Sara Pike did it and tried to put the blame on you, I’m certain of that now, and it only remains to find out exactly how.”
“Yes? It seems to me that it also remains to prove it.”
“You’re right for once. Idiots like Hector Caldwell and Cotton McBride must have everything done for them completely. Don’t worry, however. Now that I’ve begun so well and gone so far, I’ll surely think of a way to finish successfully.”
She was still sitting there on the table with her legs hanging over, and I was still in the chair, although I had removed my head from her knees some time ago, when she had started to swing her legs and concentrate, and I got up and walked over to the window and looked out at the place under the trees where the two boys had been, but were not now, and after a while I turned and went back to where she was standing, having slipped off the edge of the table while I was gone.
“Look,” I said. “Will you do something for me? Will you please do it?”
“I may and I may not. It depends.”
“If you love me a little yet, in spite of everything, you’ll do it.”
“As a matter of fact, I love you a great deal yet, in spite of everything, and so if I will do it if I love you, I suppose I’ll do it.”
“All right. Go home. Go home and say a prayer or curse or cry, but let me come out of this in my own way. Nothing can be proved against me, and it’s only a matter of time until I’ll be released.”
“Do you really want me to?”
“I do. I really do.”
“It’s plain that you have no faith in me.”
“I just don’t want you to get hurt or into trouble.”
“I thought I was doing so well, too.”
“You’ve done fine, and I appreciate it, but now it’s time to let someone else do the rest.”
“All right. I can see that it’s no use. It was foolish of me to try.”
It was time for her to go, and she went as far as the door, where she stopped. She looked very small and somehow beaten, looking back, and there was something shining in her eyes.
“God-damn son of a bitch,” she said.
And then she left, but she didn’t go home. She went, instead, to the office, where Millie Morgan was.
“Hello, there, Sid,” Millie said. “How’s the investigation going?”
“It’s going very well, as a matter of fact. For a while it hardly went at all, but then it began going better, and now it’s practically finished. Are you still available?”
“Yes, I am. I was about to ask if you couldn’t make some use of me. There’s very little to do around here right now, and I’m getting bored. I was even considering asking my engineer in for a scrimmage. What do you want me to do?”
“First I had better brief you on my conclusions. From several things that were said, it became apparent that the person who called Gid on the telephone and arranged to meet him in Dreamer’s Park was not Beth Thatcher, as the person claimed, but someone else who knew Rose Pogue, which Beth didn’t. It was easy to understand from this that Beth was dead at the time of the call, already killed, and that whoever called had killed her and wanted to incriminate Gid if possible out of pure spite. It’s my opinion at present that the killing was done somewhere besides the park, and the body taken there afterward. From some other significant things that I won’t bother to explain just now, it
