Page:Keeban (IA keeban00balm).pdf/105

 ured, naturally, that money was what Shirley was after. That's why we fixed his affairs so she could never get much, even if father had wanted to give it to her. He didn't have it to give; we had him on an allowance. The only big sum she could get in a lump was his life insurance, which he made over to her. He carried it from the old days, nearly half a million."

Here was some of the stuff I'd come for. All morning my mind had been reaching for a motive, you see,—why old Win Scofield had found a place on Keeban's board and why his number had come to the top just now. Fred talked on and made it perfectly plain to me.

While he talked, I put myself in Keeban's place for a while and tried to take things from his point of view. I went back a bit to do this—back a few months to the time when old Win, divorced once more and rejuvenated, had arrived again at the cabarets and resumed beauing about with the girls. I thought that when Shirley—or Christina—had met him, she talked him over with Keeban and they'd marked him down between them for easy meat. She married him to get away with the big money old Win was supposed to have but hadn't; for