“You are already familiar, of course, with the particulars of my father’s—ah—death?”
“The papers are full of it, and have been for three days,” I said, “and I’ve read them; but I’ll have to have the whole story firsthand.”
“There isn’t very much to tell.”
This Frederick Grover was a short, slender man of something under thirty years, and dressed like a picture out of Vanity Fair . His almost girlish features and voice did nothing to make him more impressive, but I began to forget these things after a few minutes. He wasn’t a sap. I knew that downtown, where he was rapidly building up a large and lively business in stocks and bonds without calling for too much help from his father’s millions, he was considered a shrewd article; and I wasn’t surprised later when Benny Forman, who ought to know, told me that Frederick Grover was the best poker player west of Chicago. He was a cool, well-balanced, quick-thinking little man.
“Father has lived here alone with the servants since mother’s death, two years ago,” he went on. “I am married, you know, and live in town. Last Saturday evening he dismissed Barton—Barton was his butler-valet, and had been with father for quite a few years—at a little after nine, saying that he did not want to be disturbed during the evening.
“Father was here in the library at the time, looking through some papers. The servants’ rooms are in the rear, and none of the servants seem to have heard anything during the night.
“At seven-thirty the following morning—Sunday—Barton found father lying on the floor, just to the right of where you are sitting, dead, stabbed