"I'm not accusing you, Walter; I'm here to get an explanation from you."
It was not the sentence that had caught Peewee; it was the name. Was the other man in the room the one who might be his father? He hesitated. While he did so the room next to the one the men were in which had been dimly lighted became suddenly dark and he could no longer hear the men's voices. This phenomenon must have been produced by one of the men closing a door between the rooms. He crept into the dark room cautiously, and discovered that folding doors between the two rooms had been closed, but that by crouching close to the doors he could hear almost plainly. It was now again the deeper-voiced man who was speaking.
"Just this. Lampert, the old barn boss whom we discharged some years ago, came to me to-day. His daughter, he said, had died in some rooming house on the West Side. He rambled mysteriously and insultingly, about our family being the ones who ought to bury her. I didn't believe his story; I thought it was only a touch for money, but I couldn't let his insinuations pass.
