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 to it and he would be foolish to endanger it by jumping in and out of character with each opening of his door.

"We can talk here?" I asked.

"What is it?"

It was so much, so many things, that I could lump them all only in the obvious, emotional statement, "I've come to see you."

"Why?"

Since he seemed to demand a practical reason, "Shirley Scofield is being paid the insurance money to-day."

He knew that. "Yes, she got a bunch of it this morning, some yesterday and some a couple of days ago. That's why you tried to look me up day before yesterday, was it?"

"Partly," I said.

"That's all right about her getting the money."

"You mean she wasn't in the scheme to get the money?"

He spoke to me now like Jerry of Astor Street days, I was always slower of wit than he and he was used to telling me obvious things as he did now. "Of course she was after the money, Steve." He stopped a moment and then said, "But not that way."