“Then you found out all about his candidacy?”
“It wasn’t hard.”
“Where did you see those names? the names of the supporters?” The memory of the indignant Rufus Hollister browbeating Lieutenant Winters was still fresh in my memory.
Langdon looked embarrassed. “I … happened to find them, see them, I mean … in the Senator’s study.”
“When he wasn’t there?”
“You make it sound dishonest. No, he asked me to meet him there day before yesterday; I got there before he did and I, well …”
“Looked around.”
“I was pretty shocked.”
“It’s all over now.”
He mashed his cigarette out nervously. “Yes, and I might as well admit that I’m glad. He could never have been elected in a straight election but you can never tell what might happen in a crisis.”
“You think that gang might have invented a crisis and tried to take over the country?”
He nodded, looking me straight in the eye. “That’s just what I mean. I know it sounds very strange and all that, like a South American republic, but it could happen here …”
“As Sinclair Lewis once said.” I glanced at the sheet of paper in the typewriter. A single sentence had been written across the top: “And therefore think him as a serpent’s egg Which, hatch’d, would as his kind grow mischievous, And kill him in the shell.” Langdon was suddenly embarrassed, aware that I was reading what he had written. “Don’t look at that!” He came over quickly pulled the sheet of paper out of the typewriter. “I was just fooling around,” he said, crumpling the sheet into a tight ball and tossing it into the wastebasket.
“A quotation?” I asked.
He nodded and changed the subject. “Do you think Pomeroy did it?”
“Killed Rhodes? I suppose so. Yet if he was going to kill the Senator why would he have used his own 5-X, throwing suspicion on himself immediately?”
“Anybody could have got at the 5-X.”
“Yes but …” A new idea occurred to me, “Only Pomeroy knew how powerful one of those cartons of dynamite would be. Anybody else would be afraid of using something like that, if only because they might get blown up along with the Senator.”
Langdon frowned. “It’s a good point but …”
“But what?”
“But I’m not so sure that Pomeroy didn’t explain to us that afternoon about the 5-X, about the cartons.”
I groaned. “Are you sure he did?”
“No, not entirely … I think he did, though.”
“Yet isn’t that peculiar?” I was off on another tack. “Just why should he want to talk about his stuff in such detail?”
We talked for nearly an hour about the murder, about Ellen, about politics.… I found Langdon to be agreeable but elusive; there was something which I didn’t quite understand … he suggested an iceberg: he concealed more than he revealed and he was a very cool number besides. At last, when I had set his mind at ease about Ellen, I left him and went downstairs.
In the living room I found Ellen and Mrs. Rhodes, pale but calm; they were talking to a mountainous, craggy man who was, it turned out, Johnson Ledbetter, the Governor of Senator Rhodes’ home state.
“I flew here as quick as possible, Miss Grace,” he said with Midwestern warmth, taking Mrs. Rhodes’ hands in his, a look of dog-like devotion in his eyes.
“Lee would have appreciated it,” said Mrs. Rhodes, equal to the occasion. “You’ll say a few words at the funeral tomorrow?”
“Indeed I will, Miss Grace. This has shocked me more than I can say. The flag on the State Capitol back home is at half-mast,” he added.
As the others wandered into the room, Ellen got me aside; she was excited and her face glowed. “They’re going to read the will tomorrow, after the funeral.”
“Looks like you’re going to be a rich girl,” I said, drying my sleeve with a handkerchief … in her excitement she had slopped some of her Scotch Mist on me. “I wonder if the police have taken a look at it yet.”
She looked puzzled. “Why should they?”
“Well, darling, there’s a theory going around that people occasionally get removed from this vale of tears by overanxious heirs.”
“Don’t be silly. Anyway tomorrow is the big day. That’s why the Governor’s here.”
“To read the will?”
“Yes, he’s the family lawyer. Father made him Governor a couple of years ago. I forget just why … you know how politicians are.”
“I’m beginning to find out. By the way, have you gotten into that Langdon boy yet?”
“What an ugly question!” she beamed; then she shook her head. “I haven’t had time. Last night would have been unseemly … I mean after the murder. This afternoon I was interrupted.”
“I think he’s much too innocent for the likes of you.”
“Stop it … you don’t know about these things. He’s rather tense, I’ll admit, but they’re much the best fun … the tense ones.”
“What a bore I must’ve been.”
“As a matter of fact, you were; now that you mention it.” She chuckled; then she paused, looking at someone who had just come in. I looked over my shoulder and saw the Pomeroys in the doorway. He looked pale and weary; she, on the other hand, was quite lovely, her attack of grippe under control. The Governor greeted them cordially. Ellen left me for Walter Langdon. I joined the Governor’s group by the fireplace. For a while I just listened.
“Camilla, you grow younger every year!” intoned the Governor.
Mrs. Pomeroy gestured coquettishly. “You just want my vote, Johnson.”
“How long are you going to be with us, Governor?” asked Pomeroy. If he was alarmed by the mess he was in, he didn’t show it; except for his pallor, he seemed much as ever.
Mrs. Rhodes excused herself and went in to the dining room. The Governor remarked that he would stay in town through the funeral and the reading of the will; that he was flying back to Talisman City immediately afterwards: “Got that damned legislature on my hands,” he boomed. “Don’t know what they’ll do next.” He looked about him to make sure that no members of the deceased’s family were near by; then he asked: “How did your session with the Defense Department go?”
Pomeroy shrugged. “I was at the Pentagon most of the day … I’m afraid the only thing they wanted to talk about was the … accident.”
“A tragical happening, tragical,” declared the Governor, shaking his head like some vast moth-eaten buffalo.
Pomeroy sighed: “It doesn’t do my product much good,” he said. “Not of course that I’m not very sad about this, for Mrs. Rhodes’ sake, but after all, I’ve got a factory back home which has got to get some business or else.”
“How well I know, Roger,” said the Governor with a bit more emphasis than the situation seemed to call for. I wondered if there was any business connection between the two. “We don’t want to swell the ranks of the unemployed, do we?”
“Especially not if I happen to be one of the unemployed,” said Roger Pomeroy dryly.
“I always felt,” said his wife who had been standing close to the Governor, listening, “that Lee’s attitude was terribly unreasonable. He should’ve done everything in his power to help us.”