Free Payoff for the Banker by Frances and Richard Lockridge Page B

looked.”
    â€œWhen I saw Josh,” the girl said. There was a kind of resignation in her voice. “I tried not to.”
    â€œWhen you saw Josh,” Pam said. She hesitated. “You see, my dear,” she said, “I had to tell Bill about that. You see I had to.”
    â€œI don’t know,” the girl said. “Perhaps you did. It’s all—it’s all wrong. I don’t know what I thought—why I called.”
    â€œYou called because you were frightened,” Pam said. “You sounded frightened.” Pam looked at her a moment intently. “And now you aren’t,” she said. “Or you’re frightened differently.”
    â€œI’m not frightened,” the girl said. “It was a shock—it would be a shock, wouldn’t it? To find Josh’s father there, dead—to find anybody in your apartment, shot, when you—when you just came home in the evening by yourself.” She paused. “And what was he doing there?” she said. “Why there?”
    Pam looked at Jerry, who lifted his shoulders slightly and said, “Precisely.” He said nothing further. Mary Hunter and Pam waited a moment, and he still said nothing further.
    â€œAnyway,” the girl said, “maybe I was frightened. Just at first. I knew him—I used to know him, anyway. It was my apartment. I found him. I was afraid—I was afraid the police wouldn’t understand.”
    â€œPrecisely,” Jerry said. They both looked at him.
    â€œThere’s only one other thing they would want,” he added. “A motive. Did you have a motive, Mrs. Hunter?”
    The girl spoke quickly and said, “No—no, of course not.” She said it so very quickly that Pam looked at her oddly, and then looked at Jerry. He, also, was looking at Mary Hunter, and he seemed to be waiting. The girl looked at Pam North and then at Jerry North and said the obvious.
    â€œWhat motive could I have?” said she.
    There was another little pause. There seemed, Pam thought, to be more pauses in the conversation than conversation. It was a pause—an uneasy pause—marred a little by words.
    â€œPrecisely,” Jerry said. He seemed, Pam thought, to have taken a fancy to the word. She was sorry; it was not a word she much cared for. But she was not surprised to see that Jerry was looking at her with an evident inquiry in his glance, or that he was moving as if to rise. She picked up her bag.
    â€œAnd since you haven’t,” Jerry said, “you naturally aren’t frightened. Since you aren’t frightened, you don’t want us to—you don’t want us as seconds, or whatever you had in mind. We’re bound, as I said, to tell Bill Weigand what you’ve told us—and suggested to us. We don’t have to go on with it.”
    He pushed the table a little aside and stood up.
    â€œAnd,” he said, “you probably want rest and quiet. And won’t mind if we get along. All right?”
    â€œI—” the girl said.
    Pam stood up too. They waited a moment looking down at her. She looked up at them.
    â€œI didn’t mean—” said she, and broke off again.
    â€œThere wasn’t anything to mean,” Jerry told her. “You—you called a doctor. An amateur doctor, as it happens. You got well before the doctor came.”
    Pam laid a hand on his arm. He looked at it a moment and then looked back at the girl. And for a fraction of a second longer he waited.
    â€œAre you well, Mrs. Hunter?” Pam said, beside him.
    The slender girl looked up at them for a moment longer, and then she—very slowly—shook her head. And her eyes had tears in them—painful tears.
    â€œI didn’t kill him,” she said. “I swear I didn’t kill him.”
    â€œBut,” Jerry said, “you had a motive. Or something the police would call a motive, if they wanted to.” He did not