It was the lieutenant who cried quits.
“Oh, for God’s sake,” he cried as a finale. “I’m God damned sick of the whole case! You can all get murdered for all I care. I’m going home to bed.”
He flung out, growled something at the detective in the passage, slammed the door after himself.
The four of us left in my living room looked bleakly at each other. We’d been pretty well drained of emotion. I know I’d been wrung by pity for Mr. Grant.
I said so.
Looking back, I’m glad I did.
I said, “I don’t think it was you that attacked me, Mr. Grant. I’d never in the world believe it.”
“You’d be right,” he said gently.
“To hell with the police,” Mr. Buffingham said. “I’m going to bed.” He lurched wearily out and upstairs.
Mr. Grant and Hodge stood up, too.
“I won’t say, ‘Must go so soon?’” I said, trying to be light. “I know you’re desperately tired. I am.”
I walked forward to be at the door when they left, walked past the chair where the lieutenant had sat. Automatically I stooped to pick up a sheet of paper fallen to the floor.
“I hope you both get a good night’s sleep; I feel I can sleep safely with that detective—Why, look, Hodge, this is the copy of Rose Liberry’s suicide note! Lieutenant Strom must have dropped it when he put your timetable away!”
Hodge leaned over me to read. Mr. Grant grew interested, too; when I looked up he stood beside me, reading.
Without a word or a sign he slipped to the floor.
“He’s fainted!” cried Hodge. “Here, let me get him on the couch.”
He was curiously light when we lifted him. The detective in the hall came in; together the three of us worked to bring Mr. Grant back to consciousness.
He came back quickly, lay quiet for a while, his face sunken and white but his eyes bright.
“So many questions,” he murmured.
He closed his eyes, seemed to doze a little.
“I knew Lieutenant Strom was being too hard on him.” I felt indignant at the lieutenant. “Let him stay here awhile. There’s no hurry for him to get upstairs.”
The detective, instead of going back to the hall, hovered near the windows, watching. I sat by the couch. Presently Mr. Grant’s eyes opened; he smiled at me faintly.
“What was I looking at? Oh yes. The paper. What was it you called it?”
“It was something we turned up this morning. I don’t suppose you’d remember, but there was a big scandal in Gilling City years ago. A girl named Rose Liberry committed suicide. Her suicide note was very dangerous to someone, and it was destroyed. But the one man living who saw it remembered it very clearly. That was his copy.”
To my surprise he nodded.
“I remember. The Liberry case. A great scandal. I remember very well. I—knew the family. But there wasn’t any suicide note. I remember very well. No note.”
“We just found out about it today,” I repeated.
I hesitated, but he was obviously interested, waiting. There was no one else who could hear except Hodge and the detective. Why shouldn’t I tell him? Here was someone who at least remembered. A friend of the family. One of those who ought to know. But I didn’t want to bring Mr. Waller in.
“We tracked down the policeman who was the first official at the scene of the suicide. We were able to prove Mrs. Garr had been paying him money. So Lieutenant Strom forced him to confess he had found a suicide note and that the money was a bribe Mrs. Garr had paid to let her destroy it.”
“Destroy? But the note—”
“Mr.—the policeman remembered it perfectly. He couldn’t forget. It had been eating at his mind ever since. He wrote it down for Lieutenant Strom just as it was, just as he found it.”
Mr. Grant closed his eyes; he was so pale I called out to Hodge, but he hadn’t fainted again. He opened his eyes after a few minutes.
“Very interesting. Very interesting,” he murmured.
He sat up in another few moments; Hodge and the detective moved to help him upstairs. When he was on his feet, he turned to me absently, as if his thoughts were far away.
“Very interesting. I remember the case well. The girl’s parents—I remember them well. Great blow, the girl’s death was. The—the circumstances. This makes such a change. The note—would you mind if I studied it? I would return it to the lieutenant in the morning, of course. Very interesting.”
I hesitated again. Lieutenant Strom might be furious. But it wasn’t an original; if the note were lost, couldn’t Mr. Waller be forced to make another copy? I looked at Mr. Grant. A faint pink was coming into his face now; he looked, somehow, like a lost, pathetic old child, asking a favor.
“I don’t see why not,” I said gently and gave it to him.
He took it in his right hand, carefully; I didn’t think he’d lose it. I heard the three pairs of feet slowly going upstairs; Hodge and the detective stayed awhile in Mr. Grant’s room before they came down again.
“Something funny about that.” Jones followed Hodge into my living room. “I think he had the wind up about that note.”
“It was strange how interested he was, wasn’t it? He was worn out before, though. It must have been the strain of the questioning that made him faint.” I was still puzzling over the request to study the note that night. What did he mean, “study it”?
“I disagree with you,” Hodge said thoughtfully. “I was thinking how well he stood up under the questioning. The lieutenant’s barbs didn’t seem to penetrate. He beat Strom out. No, I think Jones here is right. It was the note that knocked him cold.”
“But what could that mean?”
“A lot or nothing,” Hodge said. “He said he knew the family. To friends of the family that scandal must have been a world-shaker. They’d remember. Then this note. It’s so obvious it
