“Why were you being blackmailed by Mrs. Garr?”
I have seldom seen a question produce a greater change in a person. First, the peace fled Miss Sands, and then she crumpled. She cowered back, her eyes fixed on Strom, helpless, at bay.
There was a long silence. She moved her lips to speak once. The lieutenant waited. She moved her lips again; this time we heard a whisper.
“How did you know?”
“So she was blackmailing you!” Triumph.
“No, oh no.”
“Oh, she wasn’t? Then why were you paying five dollars a week for your one little room when Mrs. Dacres is paying only four for these? When you could get a better room than you’ve got for three dollars a week anytime?”
“I—I felt sorry for her.”
“Sorry for her. Who?”
“Mrs. Garr.”
“I see. Charity, eh?”
“Yes. And then, she asked that much. She raised me.”
“Miss Sands, how much do you make a week? Remember, I can check on it.”
A hesitation. “We sign a slip we aren’t supposed to tell.”
“Don’t let that bother you.”
Another hesitation. “Well. Thirteen twenty-five.”
I winced at the brutal department-store wage.
“Thirteen dollars and twenty-five cents?”
She nodded helplessly, her eyes fixed on him.
“Five dollars from thirteen twenty-five leaves eight twenty-five a week. Eight twenty-five for twenty-one meals a week. For car fare. For doctor and dentist bills. For clothes. Have to dress pretty well in a store, too, don’t you? Weren’t you a bit overgenerous?”
Poor thing. She sat with her forlorn poverty naked before our eyes. Cringing.
“Miss Sands, perhaps you’d like a day or two of quiet to refresh your memory?”
“Don’t!” I cried, and Mr. Kistler made a defensive gesture, too. Lieutenant Strom gave us only black looks for our softness.
A new fright came into Miss Sands’ eyes. Quiet—what did that mean—jail? Her job lost. Her hands flew over her face, and she began sobbing into them, long, dry, accustomed sobs.
I’d had enough of it. Lieutenant Strom or no Lieutenant Strom, I stood up to walk over within touching distance.
“Whatever it is, it’s over now,” I said. “She’s dead. Mrs. Garr’s dead. And whatever it was, I don’t think you killed her.”
Miss Sands let her hands fall as quickly as she’d lifted them; the face they’d hidden was bitter with hate.
“She’s dead! She’s dead! I’m glad she’s dead!” Her words rang defiantly in the room. “She’s dead, but she goes right on living for me. Oh, I might have known it’d come out. I knew it’d come out, but I kept on fooling myself. Maybe, I told myself. Maybe. That’s how big a fool I was. She’s got me, living or dead. She’s got me until I kill myself. She’s got me, ever since she first got me into—that house.”
There wasn’t any mistaking the meaning of those last two words. Miss Sands didn’t mean this house. Not 593 Trent Street. I was aghast, and even the lieutenant looked startled. I tightened my grip on her shoulder, but she jerked away from me.
“Sure! Now you know. Now one of you can start blackmailing me. Now you can all blackmail me! Well, see if I care. I’m not so fond of working in that store. I’m not so fond of living anymore. Seventeen I was when I came to this town. Out of the country. I got a job in a store. And a man talked to me at a lunch counter one night and invited me to a party a friend of his was giving. Mrs. Garr’s house, that’s where he took me. It was two years before I could get out of there. Broke, she kept us. One night, a soldier boy going away to war slipped me twenty dollars. I got out. I hid. I did housework. I got a job in a store again. And then, one day, she came along. ‘I heard you was working here, dearie,’ she said, purring like a cat. ‘I wonder how the nice people running this store would feel if they knew what kind of a girl was working for ’em? I’ve got a new house,’ she said, ‘a nice respectable rooming house. Why don’t you come and see one of my rooms you might like to live in?’ What could I do? What could I do? The store’d let me go like a shot if they knew. Debutantes from our best families, that’s what they want working for ’em. So I went. I came here. She showed me the room upstairs and said I could live there for five dollars a week. What could I do? I couldn’t save up money enough to go away and keep me until I could get a new job, on six dollars a week—that’s what I used to get before N.R.A.—eleven dollars a week. Twelve years. What could I do?”
Abruptly her stormy sobbing began again.
Hodge Kistler was swearing, steady and low, his face almost dark blue. The two detectives sat stony, their eyes on the lieutenant. His voice was gentle when he spoke.
“Miss Sands.”
“Yes.”
“Did you kill Mrs. Garr?”
“No, I didn’t. I often wished I would have, though. Long ago.”
“Just the same, we’re glad you didn’t.”
There was silence in the room for a time, except for Miss Sands’ heavy, sobbing breaths. Lieutenant Strom appeared to be thinking deeply.
“Miss Sands, did you know a girl named Rose Liberry at Mrs. Garr’s house?”
“No, that was soon after I got out. I saw about it in the papers.”
The lieutenant seemed to shake his thought off, return to briskness.
“Now, Miss Sands, what you have just told us is over. You may be certain no one here will let a word of this escape him or her. If anyone ever tries to blackmail you again, and you let me know, I can promise you that you won’t be bothered long. Nor will it become public.”
She again
