said then he'd know his father had reasons for not wanting the light turned on Personville. He got terribly angry. I don't think Mr. Elihu was going to do anything, but he got sick again, and things went along like they did."
"Donald Willsson didn't confide in you?"
"No." It was almost a whisper.
"Then you learned this—where?"
"I'm trying—trying to help you find the murderers," she said earnestly, looking at me with chestnut eyes that had pleas in them. "You've no right to—"
"Just now you'll help me most by telling me where you got this dope."
She stared at the desk again, chewing her lower lip. I waited. Presently she said:
"My father is Mr. Elihu's secretary."
"Thanks."
"But you mustn't think that we—"
"It's nothing to me," I assured her. "What was Willsson doing in Hurricane Street last night at a time when he had a date with me at his house?"
She said she didn't know. I asked her if she had been with him when he told me, over the phone, to come to his house at ten o'clock. She had.
"What did he do after that? Try to remember every least thing that was said and done from then until you left at the end of the day."
She leaned back in her chair, shut her eyes and wrinkled her forehead.
"You called up—if it was you he told to come to his house—around two o'clock. Mr. Donald dictated some letters after that—one to a paper mill, one to Senator Keefer about some changes in post office regulations and— Oh, yes! He went out for about twenty minutes, a little before three o'clock. But just before he went he wrote out a check."
"For whom?"
"I don't know, but I saw him writing it."
"Where's his check book? Carry it with him?"
"No, it's here." She jumped up, went around to the front of his desk and tried the center drawer. "Locked."
I joined her in front of the drawer, straightened out a wire clip, and with that and a blade of my knife fiddled the drawer open. The girl took out a thin flat First National Bank check book. The last used stub was marked $5,000. Nothing else. No name. No explanation.
"He went out with this check," I said, "and was gone twenty minutes. Long enough to get to the bank and back?"
"It wouldn't take him more than five minutes to get there."
"What else happened just before he wrote the check? Did he get any mail, any messages, any phone calls?"
"Let's see." She shut her eyes again. "He was dictating a letter and— Oh, how stupid of me! He did have a phone call, and he said, 'Yes, I can be there at ten, but I shall have to hurry away to keep an engagement.' Then again he said, 'Very well, at ten.' That was all he said except, 'Yes, yes.' several times."
"Man or woman he was talking to?"
"I don't know."
"Think. There'd be a difference in his tone."
She thought and said: "Then it was a woman."
"Did Willsson leave before you did in the evening?"
"No. He— I told you my father is Mr. Elihu's secretary. He and Mr. Donald had an engagement for that evening—something about the papers' finances. My father came in a little after five. They were going to dinner together after they left here, I think."
That's all the Lewis girl could give me. The rest of my pumping brought up nothing. We frisked the dead man's desk—nothing. I went up against the girl at the switchboard—nothing. I put in half an hour working on city editors and the like—nothing.
I went away from the Herald tickling my brains with the information I had
