The clerk at the desk on the sixth floor turned out to be a middle-aged woman, with keen eyes and a shrewd mouth.
Long ago, I daresay, she had lost any illusions as to the men and women whose comings and goings it was her business to watch.
They came and went, intent on their own affairs, hardly aware of her at all.
But she saw them and studied them; their tragedies, their seriocomedies.
A thousand small dramas were played about her, and sometimes she was audience, and occasionally she was God.
I saw that Katherine had impressed her, even before she heard her name; her air of breeding, the heavy handsome black she wore.
But Katherine was intent on herself and her problem; her eyes were on that long corridor, with its mirrors and heavy jars, its chairs and its rows of doors.
“You were here, I believe, while my husband was ill last summer?”
“Yes, Mrs. Somers.
He was in six-ten, the corner suite down there.”
But Katherine did not look, although I did.
“And I suppose that you know we are in trouble.
Very great trouble.”
“I do indeed.
I am so sorry.”
But the interview, at the time at least, appeared to develop very little.
Miss Todd, the floor clerk, was on duty from four o’clock in the afternoon until midnight, when she turned in her keys to the main office and went home.
She knew of no visitors to Howard during those hours.
“His son came and went,” she said.
“At first, when Mr. Somers was critically ill he stayed all night, getting such sleep as he could, and there was a day nurse and a night nurse.
When Miss Gittings came she replaced the day nurse, and after he began to gain strength she took the case herself. The night nurse was dismissed.
She wanted it that way.”
“The evening he was taken sick, do you remember anything unusual about that?”
“Well, I do; in a way.
Mr. Walter Somers came out about ten minutes before the attack.
He had his hat, and I remember thinking he had eaten his dinner in a hurry.
He came along to about that third door there, then he turned right around and went back again.”
“And it was after that that he telephoned for help?”
“About ten minutes.
Yes.”
Katherine hesitated.
She was a proud woman, and only desperation could have forced the next question.
“You don’t know if there had been a quarrel?
Some excitement, to bring on the attack?”
It was Miss Todd’s turn to look embarrassed.
“Well, I hardly like to say.
The waiter, William, said there were some words while he served dinner, and that Mr. Walter looked upset.
But these waiters talk a good bit.”
“He had no idea what the trouble was?
Did he hear anything?
I am sorry,” Katherine interrupted herself, “but this may be more vital than you realize.
What was said? What did this William hear?”
“William’s gone now, but he said Mr. Somers had accused Mr. Walter of lying about something.
And he said:
‘You can’t put that over on me.
I know.
I’ve got the facts, and if you think you are going to hold that over me you can think again.’
Those are not the exact words, but after he took sick William came here and told me.”
Katherine sat very still, thinking that over.
It must have satisfied that furious jealousy of hers that Howard and Wallie had quarreled.