Miss Maitland Private Secretary Part 14

A pause fell, and his next remark caused the detective to deflect his gaze from the darkling street to the head of the steps:

"Did you notice a chap about here yesterday-a fat, untidy looking man in a Panama hat and a brown sack suit?"

Mr. Larkin had and wanted to know where Willitts had seen him.

"In Sommers' garage. He was hiring a motor, wanted to see the country-and Sommers telling him I knew it well, asked me to go with him."

"Did you go?"

"I did; I had nothing else to do. We went a long way, through Berkeley and beyond. He's what you'd call here 'some talker' and curious-I'd say very curious if you asked me."

"Curious about what?"

"Everything in the neighborhood, but especially the robbery."

"Did he have any theories about it?"

"None that I hadn't heard before."

The detective laughed:

"That accounts for the drive-hoped he'd get some racy gossip about the family out of you."

"Maybe that _was_ his idea."

"Of course it was. I'll bet he pumped you about Price."

"I don't know that I'd call it pumping-he did ask some questions."

Willitts was sitting with his elbows on his knees, his hands supporting his chin. The light from the open door behind him lay over his back, gilded the top of his smooth head and slanted across his cheek. He was not smoking and he was very still, facts noted by Mr. Larkin.

The detective stretched, yawned with a sleepy sound and said:

"So it's still a subject of popular curiosity, is it?"

"Yes, _it_ is, but why should Mr. Price be?"

The valet's voice was low and quiet, holding a quality hard to define; the listener decided it was less uneasiness than resentment. After a moment's silence he spoke again, very softly, as if the words were self-communings:

"I'd like to know who the feller is."

Mr. Larkin's feet came down from the rail striking the floor with a thud. He sat up and looked at his friend:

"I can tell you. He's a detective, Gus O'Malley, employed by Whitney & Whitney."

Willitts' hands dropped and he squared round:

"A detective! _That's_ it, is it? _That_ accounts for the milk in the cocoanut. I might have guessed it. And what's he after me for?"

"You lived at Gra.s.slands. Something might be dug out of you."

"But tell me, why should he be curious about Mr. Price?"

He had dropped one hand on the flooring and supported by it leaned forward toward his companion. The boyish good humor had gone from his face; it looked sharp-set and pugnacious.

The other shrugged:

"Ask _him_. All I can tell you is that Whitney & Whitney are Mrs.

Janney's lawyers."

Willitts pondered, and while he pondered his eyes stared past the shadowy shape that was Mr. Larkin into the vine-draped blackness of the porch. Then he said:

"Mrs. Janney's down on Mr. Price. She's all for her daughter. I think she 'ates 'im."

The two h's dropped off with a simple unconsciousness that surprised Mr.

Larkin. Never before in his intercourse with Willitts had he heard the letter so much as slighted. He made a mental note of it and said dryly:

"So I've heard."

The man again relapsed into thought, his glance riveted on the darkness, his expression obviously perturbed. Suddenly he looked at the vague bulk of Mr. Larkin and said sharply:

"'Ow do _you_ know so much about 'im?"

Mr. Larkin's answer came out of the shadow with businesslike promptness:

"Because I'm a detective myself."

For a moment the valet's face seemed to set, lose its flesh and blood mobility and harden into something stony, its lines fixed, vitality suspended,-a vacuous, staring mask. Then life came back to it, broke its iciness, and flooded it with a frank, almost ludicrous astonishment.

"You-you!" he stammered out, "and me never so much as thinking it! Would any one, I'm asking you? Would-" he stopped, his amazement gone, a sudden belligerent fierceness taking its place, "And are you after Mr.

Price too?"

Mr. Larkin laughed:

"I'm after no one at this stage. I'm only a.s.sembling data. If O'Malley's got to the point of finding a suspect he's far ahead of me."

Willitts' excitement instantly subsided; his answer showed a hurried urgence:

"No, no-he didn't say anything one could take 'old of-only a few questions. And it's maybe all in my feelings. I couldn't bear a person to think evil of Mr. Price. It 'urts me; I'd be sensitive; I might see it if it wasn't there."

"If you got that impression I guess it _was_ there."

This remark, delivered with a sardonic dryness, appeared to rekindle Willitts' anger. It flared up like the leap of a flame:

"Then to 'ell with 'im. If they're working up any dirty suspicions against my gentleman they've come to the wrong man. I've got nothing to say; there's no information to be wormed out of _me_ for I 'ave none.

Umph-lies, trickery-that's what _I_ call it!"

He dropped back into his former position, his angry breathings loud on the silence, mutterings of rage breaking through them.