He ordered me into a bedside chair with a two-inch jerk of his round head, chased the secretary away with another, and asked:
“What’s this about my son?”
His voice was harsh. His chest had too much and his mouth too little to do with his words for them to be very clear.
“I’m a Continental Detective Agency operative, San Francisco branch,” I told him. “A couple of days ago we got a check from your son and a letter asking that a man be sent here to do some work for him. I’m the man. He told me to come out to his house last night. I did, but he didn’t show up. When I got downtown I learned he had been killed.”
Elihu Willsson peered suspiciously at me and asked:
“Well, what of it?”
“While I was waiting your daughter-in-law got a phone message, went out, came back with what looked like blood on her shoe, and told me her husband wouldn’t be home. He was shot at ten-forty. She went out at ten-twenty, came back at eleven-five.”
The old man sat straight up in bed and called young Mrs. Willsson a flock of things. When he ran out of words of that sort he still had some breath left. He used it to shout at me:
“Is she in jail?”
I said I didn’t think so.
He didn’t like her not being in jail. He was nasty about it. He bawled a lot of things I didn’t like, winding up with:
“What the hell are you waiting for?”
He was too old and too sick to be smacked. I laughed and said: