Page:Fifty Candles (1926).djvu/72

 “Good lord, Winthrop!” he said. “What’s happened to you?”

There was no friendliness in his tone, and it came to me suddenly—a sickening premonition—that this was the last man it was good for me to meet just now. I resolved to make the best of my plight.

“Parker, a terrible thing has happened. Old man Drew has been murdered.”

“You don’t say? Who killed him?”

“I don’t know. How the devil should I?” His cool unconcerned tones maddened me. “I had reached the house, and was waiting for him in the library. Hearing a cry, I ran into the dining-room. He was there—dead—on the floor.”

“Really? And now you are wildly running the streets. Hunting for a policeman, perhaps?”

I was not unaware of the sneering implication in his words, but I strove to keep my temper. Rh