The Golden Spiders (Crime Line)

“Because,” Horan went on, “you may feel that I owe you an apology, though I may not agree.” The tenor was down a couple of notches. “You may think I should have told you about a talk I had Friday evening with Mrs. Fromm.”

Cramer was giving him a hard eye. “You have told us about it.”

“Yes, but not all of it. I had to make an extremely difficult decision, and I thought I made it right, but now I’m not so sure. Mrs. Fromm had told me something that might prove damaging to the Association for the Aid of Displaced Persons if it were made public. She was the president of the Association, and I was its counsel, and therefore what she told me was a privileged communication. Ordinarily, of course, it is improper for an attorney to divulge such a communication, but I had to decide whether this was a case where the public interest prevails. I decided that the Association had a right to rely on my discretion.”

“I think the record will show that you gave no indication that you were withholding anything.”

“I suppose it will,” Horan conceded. “Possibly I even stated I had told you all that was said that evening, but you know how that is.” He thought he would smile and then thought he wouldn’t. “I had made a decision, that’s all, and now I think it was wrong. At least I now want to reverse it. After dinner that evening Mrs. Fromm took me aside and told me something that shocked me greatly. She said she had received information that someone connected with the Association was furnishing names of people illegally in this country to a blackmailer, or a blackmail ring, and that the people were being persecuted; that the blackmailer, or the head of the ring, had been a man named Matthew Birch, who had been murdered Tuesday night; that a man named Egan was involved in it; and that-”

“Aren’t you Egan’s attorney?” Cramer demanded.