Dorothy said, "I don't see what you think you're going to do. The Bartees aren't going to break down and tell you a lot of stuff that never came out before. Dick isn't going to admit it, if he ever killed anybody. You'll have to tell Nan the whole business, Johnny, because that is all you will be able to do."
Johnny said angrily, "I am not going to tell her unless I've got a lot more reason to think there's something to it. And you're not going to tell her imtil I say so."
Dorothy said nothing,
"Promise me that, Dot, or I'll—"
'^ouni what?'' she asked coolly.
They drove in silence a mile or two.
Johnny said at last, "Well, what are we going to do? In your independent judgment." He smiled at her. "You've got rights, Dot. I'm sorry."
She said, siuprising him, "I can see how hard it is—for you. You are going to look pretty jealous and mean, aren't you?"
"That's right," he said grimly, in a moment.
"How long ago wa5 this murder?" she asked.
"Seventeen years," he snapped. Dorothy had made him smart and sting.
"But Dick was just a kidi"
"Fifteen years old."
"But that's impossible!"
"Nope, not impossible. I haven't told you about another talk I had . . ." So now he gave her the George Rush eye-view of Dick Bartee.
"Anything else you haven't told me?" she asked him mildly when he had finished.
He reflected. Couldn't talk about the money. That would come too close to connecting Nan with the Bartees. He said, "Something else, one way or the other, is what I'm after."
Dorothy was silent a long time. Then she said, "I wonder why you don't trust me."
"I still don't know what you're going to do," he said in exasperation. "Look, if I were positive . . . but I'm not. Dotty. I just don't know. I want to protect Nan from any kind of hurt, and it's hard for me. You're right, I'm going to look jealous and mean if I tell all this. Yet I've got to know. Why can't you see that?"
"I see that," said Dorothy in a moment, gravely. "I'll be quiet, Johnny. Not that I agree, but because I'd be a fool to do what you don't want me to do, when I know there's something more you haven't told me."
He didn't speak.
"I will trust you,'' she said. "I know you always have looked out for Nan."
He felt relieved. He picked up her left hand. He wanted to make her know he was grateful, so he started to raise it to his hps. Dorothy snatched it away. "The Bartees might
throw you out," she said brightly, "but if they let me in, I'll be your inside spy."
"It's not a very pretty job," he said ruefully.
"What do we care about that," she said, "if Nan's engaged to a murderer?"
He couldn't answer.
Five times it was on the end of Johnny's tongue to tell her the rest of it. Five times he stopped before he told.
Aunt Emily's face. There goes the meaning of my life. The face of McCauley. // I have been wrong, I pray the Lord. Dick Bartee's face. No reason that I know . . . The old man's letter, kind and wise . . . the little girl all happiness.
Who was Johnny Sims to decide against them all?
CHAPTER 9
It was alm«st five o'clock in the afternoon by the time they turned into a road that ran between vast flats of what seemed to be pure sand. Johnny had seen this country when rows of twisted sticks stretched across as desolate and unproductive-looking a landscape, as one would see this side of the moon. At this season the sticks were hidden in green.
This private road, thought Johnny, was the 'long, long driveway' that Chnton McCauley had walked on a midnight, long years ago. It made a loop around a knoll with a tuft of trees upon it that stood up like a hairy wart on the smooth face of the land. Johnny noted another road leading away to the back.
He took the narrow tum-o£F into the thicket of trees that curved up to the door of a huge wooden house of Victorian design which was painted, gingerbread and all, a soft pale piuplish color. The efiPect was rather pleasing.
They parked and went up the steps. Double wooden doors with old-fashioned etched glass in their upper portions. The doors to which Clinton McCauley had fitted his key? Johnny punched a bell-button,
A neat maid opened the doors. Dorothy asked for Nan. They were let in.
They stepped upon a red carpet. Surely, thought Johnny, not the same red carpet upon which Clinton McCauley had found the candlestick lying. But, if not, it was a replacement that repeated. There was a lot of red carpet. The hall was fifteen feet wide and it went far and deep into the old mansion. He thought he could tell, by an alteration in the hght, where the stairs went up, on the left, about half-way back.
To their inmiediate right, an arch was shut off by two tightly closed sliding doors. To their left an arch had no doors at aU and from this room, as if she came around tlie comer somehow, Nan appeared.
She moved hghtly. Johnny saw that she had regained that dancing air, the effect of some inner joy that he, J. Sims might have to destroy. Behind her loomed Dick Bartee, the tall blond man, easy in his own place, not a type who showed surprise. Then the two girls were exchanging httle jabberings of surprise and explanation.
Johnny said to Dick in the proper undertone, "I wonder if I could wash?"
Bartee nodded. ''Under the stairs. Just go on down the haU."
So Johnny set off upon the red carpet. He knew very well that he might not be within these walls but this once, and he wanted to look at the study. It lay across from the bottom of the stairs that wound up in a square pattern to the left. Johnny went into the little lavatory, remained a judicious time. When he opened its door he did not step out. He stood and inspected, across the fifteen feet of the hall, the old man's study where Christy McCauley had been beaten to death with an iron candlestick seventeen years ago.
The small square room was wide open. Sliding doors here, too, but not shut. There was a mantel piece diiectly opposite, in the outside wall. There were glass-covered bookcases, a hbrary table. The safe, he thought, was probably behind the picture, a rustic scene that hung over the mantel. At least he couldn't spot it, elsewhere. Then, with shock, his exploring eyes perceived that he was being watched by a lizard gaze from the wrinkled old face of an ancient woman in a wheel chair.
Johnny was nobody to skulk sheepishly away. He moved out of the lavatory, closed its door, marched across the red carpet, entered the study. "Ma'am," he addressed her, "my name is John Sims. I am a friend of Nan Padgett."
The old lady regarded him with some interest.
"How do you do?" he said.
"They haven't come to take me to my tea," she said. "So I don't do very well."
"Then I'll take you," he said, "if youll tell me where."
The old lady let out a rusty chuckle. "To the parlor," she said. "I want my tea."
Johnny saw how to release the brake on the wheelchair. Then he got behind it and pushed it out into the hall. He turned to his left and the old lady did not object. So Johnny pushed on towards the front doors and then he turned her into the big room from which Nan had come.
"Motherl" said a man's voice. "Oh, I see!"
The old lady was chortling witii delight. "Young man's name is John Sims," she said triumphantly. "Well? Tea?"
The man who had spoken held out his hand. "Thanks for bringing my mother in, Mr. Sims," he said pleasantly. "I'm Bart Bartee."
A thin worft^n with bronze hair, a sharp prow of a nose and a small chin hurried to take his place at the pushing-bar of the chair. "I'm Blanche Bartee. You surprised us."
"Surprised you, didn't I?" said the old lady with relish. "Miss Adams makes me wait." .
"No reason why you should wait," said Blanche soothingly. She pushed tlie old lady to a position down the huge room.
"I should think not. In my house," the old lady said.
Bart spoke. "Come in. Come in. Sit down. Mother has tea, but the rest of us have something a little more stimulating. Join us?"