to it and he would be foolish to endanger it by jumping in and out of character with each opening of his door.
"We can talk here?" I asked.
"What is it?"
It was so much, so many things, that I could lump them all only in the obvious, emotional statement, "I've come to see you."
"Why?"
Since he seemed to demand a practical reason, "Shirley Scofield is being paid the insurance money to-day."
He knew that. "Yes, she got a bunch of it this morning, some yesterday and some a couple of days ago. That's why you tried to look me up day before yesterday, was it?"
"Partly," I said.
"That's all right about her getting the money."
"You mean she wasn't in the scheme to get the money?"
He spoke to me now like Jerry of Astor Street days, I was always slower of wit than he and he was used to telling me obvious things as he did now. "Of course she was after the money, Steve." He stopped a moment and then said, "But not that way."
