“Donald Willsson didn’t confide in you?” I asked.
“No.” It was almost a whisper.
“Then you learned all this where?”
“I’m trying—trying to help you learn who murdered him,” she said earnestly. “You’ve no right to—”
“You’ll help me most just now by telling me where you learned all this,” I insisted.
She stared at the desk, chewing her lower lip. I waited. Presently she said:
“My father is Mr. Willsson’s secretary.”
“Thanks.”
“But you mustn’t think that we—”
“It’s nothing to me,” I assured her. “What was Willsson doing in Hurricane Street last night when he had a date with me at his house?”
She said she didn’t know. I asked her if she had heard him tell me, over the phone, to come to his house at ten o’clock. She said she had.
“What did he do after that? Try to remember every least thing that was said and done from then until you left at the end of the day.”
She leaned back in her chair, shut her eyes and wrinkled her forehead.