"Certainly."
"But only as a friend, Mr. Huff. Not as somebody-in the insurance business. Until I feel I know my own mind, it has to be in the strictest confidence. Is that understood, Mr. Huff?"
"It is."
"I'm forgetting something. I was to call you Walter."
"And I was to call you Lola."
"It's funny how easy I feel with you."
"Go ahead."
"It's about my father."
"Yes?"
"My father's death. I can't help feeling there was something back of it."
"I don't quite understand you, Lola. How do you mean, back of it?"
"I don't know what I mean."
"You were at the inquest?"
"Yes."
"One or two witnesses there, and several people later, to us, intimated that your father might have-killed himself. Is that what you mean?"
"No, Walter, it isn't."
"Then what?"
"I can't say. I can't make myself say it. And it's so awful. Because this isn't the first time I've had such thoughts. This isn't the first time I've been through this agony of suspicion that there might be something more than-what everybody else thinks."
"I still don't follow you."
"My mother."
"Yes."
"When she died. That's how I felt."
I waited. She swallowed two or three times, looked like she had decided not to say anything at all, then changed her mind again and started to talk.
"Walter, my mother had lung trouble. It was on account of that that we kept a little shack up at Lake Arrowhead. One week-end, in the middle of winter, my mother went up to that shack with her dearest friend. It was right in the middle of the winter sports, when everything was lively up there, and then she wired my father that she and this other woman had decided to stay on for a week. He didn't think anything of it, wired her a little money, and told her to stay as long as she wanted; he thought it would do her good. Wednesday of that week my mother caught pneumonia. Friday her condition became critical. Her friend walked twelve miles through snowdrifts, through the woods, to get a doctor-the shack isn't near the hotels. It's on the other side of the lake, a long way around. She got into the main hotel there so exhausted she had to be sent to a hospital. The doctor started out, and when he got there my mother was dying. She lived a half hour."
"Yes?"
"Do you know who that best friend was?" I knew. I knew by the same old prickle that was going up my back and into my hair. "No."
"Phyllis."
"…Well?"
"What were those two women doing in that shack, all that time, in the dead of winter? Why didn't they go to the hotel, like everybody else? Why didn't my mother telephone, instead of wiring?"
"You mean it wasn't she that wired?"
"I don't know what I mean, except that it looked mighty funny. Why did Phyllis tramp all that distance to get a doctor? Why didn't she stop some place, and telephone? Or why didn't she put on her skates, and go across the lake, which she could have done in a half hour? She's a fine skater. Why did she take that three-hour trip? Why didn't she go for a doctor sooner?"
"But wait a minute. What did your mother say to the doctor when he-"
"Nothing. She was in high delirium, and besides he had her in oxygen five minutes after he got there."
"But wait a minute, Lola. After all, a doctor is a doctor, and if she had pneumonia-"
"A doctor is a doctor, but you don't know Phyllis. There's some things I could tell. In the first place, she's a nurse. She's one of the best nurses in the city of Los Angeles-that's how she met my mother, when my mother was having such a terrible fight to live. She's a nurse, and she specialized in pulmonary diseases. She would know the time of crisis, almost to a minute, as well as any doctor would. And she would know how to bring on pneumonia, too."
"What do you mean by that?"
"You think Phyllis wouldn't be capable of putting my mother out in the night, in that cold, and keeping her locked out until she was half frozen to death-you think Phyllis wouldn't do that? You think she's just the dear, sweet, gentle thing that she looks like? That's what my father thought. He thought it was wonderful, the way she trudged all that distance to save a life, and less than a year after that he married her. But I don't think so. You see-I know her. That's what I thought, the minute I heard it. And now-this."
"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.