Graham carried the coffee into the little parlor, where Clayton sat
dropped on a low chair, his hands between his knees. He was a strange,
disheveled figure, gray of face and weary, and the hand he held out for
the cup was blistered and blackened. Graham did not touch his coffee. He
put it on the mantel, and stood waiting while Clayton finished his.
"Shall I tell you now, sir?"
Clayton drew a long breath.
"It was Herman Klein who did it?"
"Probably. I had a warning last night, but it was too late. I should
have known, of course, but somehow I didn't. He'd been with us a long
time. I'd have sworn he was loyal."
For the first time in his life Graham saw his father weaken, the
pitiful, ashamed weakness of a strong man. His voice broke, his face
twitched. The boy drew himself up; they couldn't both go to pieces. He
could not know that Clayton had worked all that night in that hell with
the conviction that in some way his own son was responsible; that he
knew already what Graham was about to tell him.
"If Herman Klein did it, father, it was because he was the tool of a
gang. And the reason he was a tool was because he thought I was--living
with Anna. I wasn't. I don't know why I wasn't. There was every chance.
I suppose I meant to some time. Anyhow, he thought I was."
If he had expected any outbreak from Clayton, he met none. Clayton sat
looking ahead, and listening. Inside of the broken windows the curtains
were stirring in the fresh breeze of early morning, and in the kitchen
the old woman was piling the fallen bricks noisily.
"I had been flirting with her a little--it wasn't much more than that,
and I gave her a watch at Christmas. He found it out, and he beat her.
Awfully. She ran away and sent for me, and I met her. She had to hide
for days. Her face was all bruised. Then she got sick from it. She was
sick for weeks."
"Did he know where she was?"
"I think not, or he'd have gone to get her. But Rudolph Klein knew
something. I took her out to dinner, to a roadhouse, a few days ago,
and she said she saw him there. I didn't. All that time, weeks, I'd
never--I'd never gone to her room. That night I did. I don't know why.
I--"
"Go on."
"Well, I went, but I didn't stay. I couldn't. I guess she thought I was
crazy. I went away, that's all. And the next day I felt that she might
be feeling as though I'd turned her down or something. And I felt
responsible. Maybe you won't understand. I don't quite myself. Anyhow, I
went back, to let her know I wasn't quite a brute, even if---But she was
gone. I'm not trying to excuse myself. It's a rotten story, for I was
engaged to Marion then."