I
should have known, of course, but somehow I didn't. He'd been with
us a long time. I'd have sworn he was loyal."
For the first time in his life Graham saw his father weaken, the
pitiful, ashamed weakness of a strong man. His voice broke, his
face twitched. The boy drew himself up; they couldn't both go to
pieces. He could not know that Clayton had worked all that night
in that hell with the conviction that in some way his own son was
responsible; that he knew already what Graham was about to tell him.
"If Herman Klein did it, father, it was because he was the tool of
a gang. And the reason he was a tool was because he thought I was
- living with Anna. I wasn't. I don't know why I wasn't. There
was every chance. I suppose I meant to some time. Anyhow, he
thought I was."
If he had expected any outbreak from Clayton, he met none. Clayton
sat looking ahead, and listening. Inside of the broken windows the
curtains were stirring in the fresh breeze of early morning, and in
the kitchen the old woman was piling the fallen bricks noisily.
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