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Updated: May 14, 2025
"You may remember, Miss Murdaugh, that I knew Starr Wiley before I met him again in Limasito, and that knowledge alone would have impelled me to distrust at sight any claims which he might produce, no matter what their nature," he began.
Only tell me that you don't quite hate me, that I have a fighting chance!" Willa realized the truth of his sudden change of front; the granddaughter of Giles Murdaugh would be a more desirable asset as a wife than Ripley Halstead's daughter.
Winnie's tone was absent, his mind still grappling with the quandary into which the other's warning had plunged him. "What is it, Kearn?" "Do you remember our last meeting before I went away, when you picked me up in the Park?" Thode pushed his cup aside and leaned forward over the table. "You told me you knew where Miss Murdaugh went when she left the Halsteads.
"Why should you want to see me?" Willa demanded, frankly. "I don't mean to be ungracious, Winnie, we've grown to be awfully good friends in these two months, but I've been through so much just lately that the Willa Murdaugh episode seems far away, and all the people I knew then are like dream people. I I'm starting in all over again, you see, and I meant to do it with a clean, blank sheet."
I will see Miss Murdaugh about it later." When the housemaid had withdrawn, her mistress dropped rather than seated herself in the nearest chair. The mechanical smile had vanished and her eyes narrowed. She foresaw friction ahead.
A half-hour later the house-maid presented herself at Mrs. Halstead's door in a state bordering on hysteria. "If you please, Madame, the young lady, Miss Murdaugh, has taken her room all to pieces. The draperies' are down from the windows and piled in a corner with the cushions from the chaise longue, and the bed is moved over to the windows and stripped down to the blanket.
You're tight!" a strange voice intervened. "Ladies' names, you know it's not done here." "'Lady'?" Wiley hiccoughed derisively. "Who mentioned a lady? I'm speakin' of Willa Murdaugh. Gentleman Geoff's Billie they used to call her; pet of an old card-sharp, and mascot of a gambling-hell " He got no farther.
And you, would you have been there, too?" "I?" he laughed with a trace of bitterness. "I am a rolling stone, Miss Murdaugh. My work calls me to the ends of the earth, but I would probably have looked in on you every few years to say 'hello. However, you would scarcely have been with my sister as long as that. Some lucky fellow would have persuaded you to make him happy.
"I shall be glad to be your friend and serve you in any way that I can, Miss Murdaugh," he responded dryly. "I have something further to tell you which I think concerns you closely. Are you aware that Starr Wiley and his partner, Harrington Chase, have purchased from Tia Juana Reyes the property known as the Lost Souls lease and are already issuing stock and developing the well?"
"Not wholly because he had taken a liking to Willa Murdaugh, however. Why blink the facts, Mr. Halstead? It is plain on the face of it that he must have looked up the real Willa's parentage and connections, and realized that the storm had robbed him of a potential heiress in whose probable inheritance he would sometime have shared " "That is a lie."
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