Mary Roberts Rinehart

“ But he looked up at Dick's silence, to see him looking at him with a faint air of amusement over his pipe.
“They're going to keep the money, Bassett.”
Bassett straightened and stared at him.
“Don't be a damned fool,” he protested. “It's your money. Don't tell me you're going to give it to suffering humanity. That sort of drivel makes me sick. ”

“ A man who is drunk is not guilty of what he does. I did not find it. I went back that night, when the people had gone, and found it beneath the carved woodbox, by the fireplace. I did not know that the sheriff had placed a man outside the window.”
“Get that, too,” Bassett said, putting down the paper. “The Frenchman was fond of you, and he was doing his blundering best. But the sheriff expected you back and had had the place watched, so they caught him. But that's not the point. A billiard room is a hard place to hide things in. I take it yours was like the average.”
Dick nodded. ”

“ He knew I'd started, for he sent David Livingstone the letter you got. By the way, that letter nearly got me jailed in Norada.”
“I'm not hiding behind her skirts,” Dick said shortly. “And there's nothing incriminating in what you say. She saw me as a fugitive, and she sent me a warning. That's all.”
“Easy, easy, old man. I'm not pinning anything on her. But I want, if you don't mind, to carry this through. I have every reason to believe that, some time before you got to Norada, the Thorwald woman was on my trail. ”

“ When they warned David they warned her.”
“I don't believe it.”
“If you had killed Lucas,” Bassett asserted positively, “the Thorwald woman would have let the sheriff get you, and be damned to you. She had no reason to love you. You'd kept her son out of what she felt was his birthright.”
He got up and opened a table drawer.
“I've got a copy of the coroner's inquest here. It will bear going over. And it may help you to remember, too. We needn't read it all. There's a lot that isn't pertinent.” ”

“ After a time Bassett put the papers away and essayed more general conversation, and there he found himself met half way and more. He began to get Dick as a man, for the first time, and as a strong man. ”

“ Q. “Where do you live?”
A. “At the Clark ranch.”
Q. “What is your business?”
A. “You know all about me. I'm foreman of the ranch.”
Q. “I want you to tell what you know, Jack, about last night. Begin with where you were when you heard the shot.”
A. “I was on the side porch. The billiard room opens on to it. I'd been told by the corral boss earlier in the evening that he'd seen a man skulking around the house. There'd been a report like that once or twice before, and I set a watch. I put Ben Haggerty at the kitchen wing with a gun, and I took up a stand on the porch. ”

“ Buy a newspaper and let me run it!”
He bent over the davenport and put the pillow in place. “All you'll have to do is to establish your identity. The institutions that got it had to give bond. I hope you're not too long for this bed.” ”