Fellows shifted his position on the couch. “Miss Sherman, are you telling me the truth when you say you have no definite plan to see him again?”
She nodded earnestly. “Yes, that’s the truth.”
“What did you do with your suitcases?”
“What suitcases?”
“I presume you took something to New York with you.”
“Yes. Of course I did. One suitcase. I don’t know what you mean, what did I do with it? I brought it home with me.”
“What kind of a suitcase is it?”
“Brown—tan, I guess. It’s an old one I’ve had for years.”
“You don’t own any other suitcases?”
“No. What would I need one for? I don’t go anywhere, really.”
“How about a green trunk?”
“You mean do I have one? I don’t have any trunk.”
Fellows nodded. “I see,” he said and made some additional notations. “Now, Miss Sherman, I suppose while you were there you looked over the whole house?”
She hesitated. “Most of it.”
“Not all of it?”
“There was one back room he kept locked. He said he used it for his office and it contained valuable papers.”
“You didn’t question this?”
“No. I wasn’t interested in his valuable papers.”
Fellows said slowly, “Miss Sherman, I hope you realize you were extremely foolish to take up with a man you knew nothing about, but I’m glad you at least had the wisdom not to be curious about his locked room.”
She leaned forward, holding her hand to her breast. “What do you mean?”
“It wasn’t valuable papers he kept in that room. He was keeping the dead body of another woman.”
The girl came half out of the chair in horror. “No. You’re fooling!”
“That’s not something we fool about. And if you’d become too suspicious, Miss Sherman, I don’t doubt he wouldn’t have hesitated to kill you too.”
Jean Sherman shrieked. She covered her face and began to scream hysterically. Fellows got up in alarm. He pulled her to her feet and shook her, but he couldn’t stop her screaming. She tore at her hair until he seized her wrists and held them. The wild sounds that came from her throat reverberated through the house, jarring the walls and the crockery, paining his eardrums, making him wince. He struck her twice with his palm, striking her hard and then harder and the blows reddened her pale cheek, but otherwise had no effect. She was completely out of control. He tried to talk to her, to calm her with his voice, but nothing could be heard in the room but the peal upon peal of hysterical noise.
Finally he held her tight to control her writhing and clapped a hand over her wide mouth. It muffled her, but only until she could twist her head away and shriek again. He picked her up and carried her screaming into the nearest bedroom, laid her down, and hunted up the bathroom, cringing still at the violence of the sound. He came back with a glass of water and threw it in her face. She sputtered but only for a moment then tore at her hair and face again, emitting more piercing yells. He got a second glass and aimed it carefully. This time she choked and sat up coughing and gagging. He patted her on the back as she jerked convulsively with the effort and her face turned red.
She got her breath back and burst into tears, rolling over on the bed face down, sobbing bitterly. Fellows stood by, breathing heavily. He said, “I’m sorry, Miss Sherman. I didn’t mean to upset you like that.” She kept on sobbing, but the hysteria had been broken and Fellows turned to the bedroom window and looked out at the house next door, wondering how much the neighbors had heard. He expected faces at the opposite windows and the wail of police sirens, but the house next door looked empty and there were no faces. Perhaps no one had heard. He bit off a piece of chewing tobacco and munched it quietly, waiting for the sobs to stop.
It was fully fifteen minutes before Jean exhausted herself and struggled to an elbow on the bed. Fellows wet a washcloth in the basin and brought it in to mop her face. She held her head steady like an obedient child and then moaned, “I can’t stand it.”
He returned the washcloth and came back again. She said, “What am I going to do?”
“I guess forget it.”
“I wish I was dead.”
He stood over her shaking his head. “If I were you, Miss Sherman, I’d consider myself mighty lucky to be alive. I wouldn’t wish for anything like that.”
“But he—but a murderer! How could he?”
“It takes all kinds and he’s one of the rotten ones.”
“I meant nothing to him. He would have killed me, wouldn’t he?”
“If he’d had to. Look, I don’t think we ought to hang around the bedroom like this. Let’s go back and sit down quietly and talk about how you’re going to help us.”
“Help you?”
“That’s right.” He took her arm and gently urged her off the bed. They went back to the living room and she sat numbly again in her chair. “Why did I do it?” she said.
“That’s over and done with, Miss Sherman. Try to forget it. The main thing is, we need your help in catching him before he kills anybody else.”
“You don’t know where he is?”
“We know very little about him. He was gone when we found the body.”
“Was she—who was she?”
“We don’t know. We thought she was you. Will you help us?”
She nodded and said weakly, “But how?”
“Would you be willing to meet him again?”
She groaned at the thought. “I couldn’t stand to see him ever again.”
“The point is, he may call you. If he does, would you agree to meet him wherever he says and then call the police? You wouldn’t have to go yourself. Just let the police know where he’ll be, so they can go.”
She brushed her cheeks. “I don’t know,” she said hesitantly. “I can try. But I don’t think—I mean I couldn’t talk to him. Even on the phone. He’d
