The Philadelphia Murder Story by Leslie Ford

sir.”
    “Laurel?”
    “I didn’t know about it, even, till a few minutes ago, sir.”
    He looked at me. I shook my head.
    Laurel spoke calmly. “What about Elsie? Has anyone asked her?”
    “Don’t be ridiculous,” Sam said sharply. “Of course I haven’t asked her.”
    “Why don’t you phone and do it now?”
    “She’s not at home; she’s at a meeting. I’m sure she would have told me—”
    Judge Whitney rose. “I am disappointed,” he said quietly. “I won’t believe one of you would have deliberately told me a falsehood, from whatever motive, until I’m forced to do so. … Have Elsie phone me as soon as she gets home, Sam.” He turned back at the door. “I beg you, as earnestly as I know how,” he said, “to believe me when I say that whoever has that letter of Myron Kane’s is doing a wantonly cruel and inhuman thing, I feel that very intensely and very personally. I want it returned to me tonight. I’ll wait up for it. Good night to all of you.”
    Nobody moved, even to help him on with his coat. He went slowly down the stairs, the door closed behind him.
    “You’ve got that letter, Monk,” Sam Phelps said abruptly.
    Monk Whitney grinned. “Why don’t you go, Sam?” he asked. “Why don’t you and Elsie take a trip to the Argentine? Why don’t you leave tonight, before we all disgrace you?”
    Sam flushed, started to say something, changed his mind, nodded curtly to us and went out.
    Laurel looked at Monk. Her face was quite pale. “You have got it, Monk. I don’t see how you can lie to him!”
    He was looking at her, one eyebrow raised sardonically, and turned at Travis Elliot’s triumphant exclamation, “Top-lady! That’s the fellow’s name! I knew I’d—”
    “Then forget it,” Monk said curtly. He strode over and picked up my coat. “Coming?”
    Laurel took a step forward. “Where are you going?”
    “That’s my business, Coppertop.”
    He was holding my coat out to me.
    She looked at him for an instant, turned quickly, picked up the telephone at the end of the library table and spun the dial around swiftly.
    “Who are you calling?”
    “That’s my business!” Laurel said hotly, “But if you want to know, I’m calling Myron Kane! There’s one way to settle this, and if I have to marry him to get that—”
    He was across the room in two swift strides, jerked the telephone out of her hand and slammed it down on the cradle.
    “No, you’re not,” he said quietly. “We don’t need a woman to save our necks.”
    They stood there facing each other, both of them furious, leaving Travis Elliot and myself practically stupefied. He turned suddenly and came back, stopping at the door.
    “If you want to marry Kane, Coppertop, that’s your business… and Trav’s. But don’t pull that martyr stuff on us… Are you ready, Mrs. Latham?”

6
    He slammed the front door shut and struggled into his overcoat.
    “Careful of the ice,” he said shortly.
    At the bottom of the steps, he stopped, looking at me oddly.
    “My God,” he said, with a kind of suppressed groan, “you’d think I gave a damn who she married, wouldn’t you? Well, I don’t. Just so she doesn’t do it thinking she’s Joan of Arc.”
    He took my arm and steered me along the slippery sidewalk.
    “Look,” he said. “Would you know what happens to manuscripts that go to the Post?”
    We crossed the narrow opening of Manning Street toward the square.
    “Well,” I said, “the Post —”
    “You don’t need to tell me about the Post. I know all about that. I used to go on a tour through the plant with a couple of hundred other kids every week. If you stacked one issue, it would be more than twenty-five times as high as the Empire State Building and the paper rolled out would reach more than ten times the distance from New York to Chicago. It takes over two hundred miles of wire to make staples to bind it and forty tons of ink a week and more than seventy presses running twenty-four hours a day