"What do you want me to do?"
"Nothing-yet. Except listen to me."
"It's pretty serious, what you're saying. Or at any rate intimating. I suppose I know what you mean."
"That's what I mean. That's exactly what I mean."
"However, as I understand it, your mother wasn't with your father at the time-"
"She wasn't with my mother either. At the time. But she had been."
"Will you let me think this over?"
"Please do."
"You're a little wrought up today."
"And I haven't told you all."
"What else?"
"…I can't tell you. That, I can't make myself believe. And yet-never mind. Forgive me, Walter, for coming in here like this. But I'm so unhappy."
"Have you said anything to anybody about this?"
"No, nothing."
"I mean-about your mother? Before this last?"
"Not a word, ever, to anybody."
"I wouldn't if I were you. And especially not to-your stepmother."
"I'm not even living home now."
"No?"
"I've taken a little apartment. Down in Hollywood. I have a little income. From my mother's estate. Just a little. I moved out. I couldn't live with Phyllis any more."
"Oh."
"Can I come in again?"
"I'll let you know when to come. Give me your number."
I spent half the afternoon trying to make up my mind whether to tell Keyes. I knew I ought to tell him, for my own protection. It was nothing that would be worth a nickel as evidence in court, and for that matter it was nothing that any court would admit as evidence, because that's one break they give people, that they have to be tried for one thing at a time, and not for something somebody thinks they did two or three years before this happened. But it was something that would look mighty bad, if Keyes found out I knew it, and hadn't told him. I couldn't make myself do it. And I didn't have any better reason than that this girl had asked me not to tell anybody, and I had promised.
About four o'clock Keyes came in my office and shut the door.
"Well, Huff, he's showed."
"Who?"
"The guy in the Nirdlinger case."
"What?"
"He's a steady caller now. Five nights in one week."
"…Who is he?"
"Never mind. But he's the one. Now watch me."
That night I came back in the office to work. As soon as Joe Pete made his eight o'clock round on my floor I went to Keyes's office. I tried his desk. It was locked. I tried his steel filing cabinets. They were locked. I tried all my keys. They didn't work. I was about to give it up when I noticed the dictation machine. He uses one of them. I took the cover off it. A record was still on. It was about three quarters filled. I made sure Joe Pete was downstairs, then came back, slipped the ear pieces on and started the record. First a lot of dumb stuff came out, letters to claimants, instructions to investigators on an arson case, notification of a clerk that he was fired. Then, all of a sudden, came this:
Memo, to Mr. Norton
Re. Agent Walter Huff
Confidential-file Nirdlinger
With regard to your proposal to put Agent Huff under surveillance for his connection with the Nirdlinger case, I disagree absolutely. Naturally, in this case as in all cases of its kind, the agent is automatically under suspicion, and I have not neglected to take necessary steps with regard to Huff. All his statements check closely with the facts and with our records, as well as with the dead man's records. I have even checked, without his knowledge, his whereabouts the night of the crime, and find he was at home all night. This in my opinion lets him out. A man of his experience can hardly fail to know if we attempt to watch his movements, and we should thus lose the chance of his cheerful cooperation on this case, which so far has been valuable, and may become imperative. I point out to you further, his record which has been exceptional in cases of fraud. I strongly recommend that this whole idea be dropped.
Respectfully
I lifted the needle and ran it over again. It did things to me. I don't only mean it was a relief. It made my heart feel funny. But then, after some more routine stuff, came this:
Confidential-file Nirdlinger
SUMMARY-investigators' verbal reports for week ending June 17th:
Daughter Lola Nirdlinger moved out of home June 8, took up residence in two-room apartment, the Lycee Arms, Yucca Street. No surveillance deemed necessary.
Widow remained at home until June 8, when she took automobile ride, stopped at drug store, made phone call, took ride two succeeding days, stopped markets and store selling women's gowns.
Night of June 11, man caller arrived at house 8:35, left 11:48. Description:-Tall, dark-age twenty-six or seven. Calls repeated June 12, 13, 14, 16. Man followed night of first visit, identity ascertained as Beniamino Sachetti, Lilac Court Apartments, North La Brea Avenue.
I was afraid to have Lola come down to the office any more. But finding out they had no men assigned to her meant that I could take her out somewhere. I called her up and asked her if she would go with me to dinner. She said she would like it more than anything she could think of. I took her down to the Miramar at Santa Monica. I said it would be nice to eat where we could see the ocean, but the real reason was I didn't want to take her to any place downtown, where I might run into somebody I knew.
We talked along during dinner about where she went to school, and why she didn't go to college, and a whole lot of stuff. It was kind of feverish, because we were both under a strain, but we got along all right. It was like she said. We both felt easy around each other somehow. I didn't say anything about what she had told me, last time, until we got in the car after dinner and started up the ocean for a ride. Then I brought it up myself.
"I thought over what you told me."
"Can I say something?"
"Go ahead."
"I've had it out with myself about that. I've thought it all over, and come to the conclusion I was wrong. It's very easy when you love somebody terribly, and then suddenly they're gone from you, to think it's somebody's fault. Especially when it's somebody you don't like. I don't like Phyllis. I guess it's partly jealousy. I was devouted to my mother. I was almost as devoted to my father. And then when he married Phyllis-I don't know, it seemed as though something had happened that couldn't happen. And then-these thoughts. What I felt instinctively when my mother died became a dead certainty when my father married Phyllis. I thought that showed why she did it. And it became a double certainty when this happened. But I haven't a thing to go on, have I? It's been terribly hard to make myself realize that, but I have. I've given up the whole idea, and I wish you'd forget that I ever told you."
"I'm glad in a way."
"I guess you think I'm terrible."
"I thought it over. I thought it over carefully, and all the more carefully because it would be most important for my company if they knew it. But there's nothing to go on. It's only a suspicion. That's all you have to tell."
"I told you. I haven't even got that any more."
"What you would tell the police, if you told them anything, is already a matter of public record. Your mother's death, your father's death-you haven't anything to add to what they already know. Why tell them?"
"Yes, I know."
"If I were you, I would do nothing."
"You agree with me then? That I haven't anything to go on:
"I do."
That ended that. But-I had to find out about this Sachetti, and find out without her knowing I was trying to find out.
"Tell me something. What happened between you and Sachetti?"
"I told you. I don't want to talk about him."