ALM06 Who Killed the Husband? by Hulbert Footner Page A

Lee was relieved and also a little puzzled.
    "Quite!" he said. He got to his feet. "There's just one thing that bothers me. I'm not sure how Al is fixed for money. If I should find out that..."
    She didn't wait for him to finish. "Oh, you must come to me for anything that may be needed!" she said eagerly. "Shall I give it to you now?"
    "I wouldn't know how to reach him," said Lee. "But if he communicates with me again..."
    "If he does, you must find out how he is fixed for money. Make him tell you. And call on me for any amount. You needn't tell him it comes from me."
    "It would be dangerous for you to draw a check to me," suggested Lee.
    "I don't need to! I always keep a store of cash by me, quite a large sum. Always have done so. Checkbooks are apt to be dangerous."
    "Quite," said Lee.
    They laughed together agreeably--but not for the same reason.
    "If you hear from him again, beg him to communicate with me," she said longingly.
    It had the sound of a genuine plea.
    He went out thinking over all she had said. It did not hang together at all. She was acting alternately as if she adored Al Yohe and as if she hated him poisonously. Lee thought: Hell knoweth no fury like a woman scorned!

Chapter 9
    On Tuesday morning, as Lee got out of a taxicab in front of the little building on Madison Avenue which contained his offices, he was accosted by a breathless woman:
    "Mr. Mappin...if you please...I recognized you from your picture in the newspaper...may I speak to you?"
    Lee sized her up. While extremely agitated, her aspect was not at all dangerous; a stout woman of fifty-odd, with a plain, pale face; well dressed in a sober style; no make-up, no effort to appear younger than she was. She never had been beautiful, but she looked honest, well meaning, sensitive in her distress. Obviously, it had required a great effort for her to nerve herself up to speak to a strange man.
    "What can I do for you?" asked Lee.
    "I have some information about the Gartrey case."
    "Won't you come into my office?"
    "I intended to call at your office," she stammered, "but...but my courage failed me. There will be other people there...clerks, perhaps newspaper reporters. If I could see you alone!"
    "Well, there's a hotel on the next corner," said Lee. "Let us go in there and order a cup of coffee."
    She thanked him gratefully.
    They sat down in the coffee room of the hotel with a little table between them. Lee made conversation to put the nervous woman at her ease. Her faded eyes had a good, kind expression; he believed in her honesty.
    "My name is Bertha Cressy, Mrs. Cressy," she said. "I have been a widow for over twenty years. I was a friend of the late Mr. Gartrey's." She hesitated painfully.
    "How long have you known Mr. Gartrey?" asked Lee to help her out.
    "Mr. Mappin," she said distressfully, "will you give me your word that you will keep what I am about to tell you to yourself? I could not bear to have it printed in the newspapers. I have a horror of publicity. If the newspaper reporters found me out, I...I don't know what I'd do!"
    "I certainly will not relay your story to the newspapers," said Lee kindly, "but how can I give you the assurance that you require? If you have evidence to give in this case it must be brought into court."
    "I have no evidence to give," she said. "I don't know who killed Jules Gartrey. I only want to see justice done to my dead friend. The newspapers are making him out a perfect monster! He was kind to me. It seems so unfair!"
    "The newspapers do that sort of thing in order to heighten interest in the case," said Lee. "It sometimes makes me indignant, too. Unless there is something in your story that requires to be told in court, I promise you I will keep what you tell me to myself."
    She thanked him profusely. "I have known Mr. Gartrey from the time of his first marriage, but not intimately," she said. "That is thirty years ago. I was a girlhood friend of his first wife, Mona Hawley. We were schoolmates and we