The woman reared up her head and looked at O’Gar.
“May I speak to Austin alone?” she asked. “I don’t mean out of your sight.”
The detective sergeant scratched his head and looked at me. This letting your victims go into conference is always a ticklish business: they may decide to come clean, and then again, they may frame up a new out. On the other hand, if you don’t let them, the chances are they get stubborn on you, and you can’t get anything out of them. One way was as risky as another. I grinned at O’Gar and refused to make a suggestion. He could decide for himself, and, if he was wrong, I’d have him to dump the blame on. He scowled at me, and then nodded to the woman.
“You can over into that corner and whisper together for a couple of minutes,” he said, “but no foolishness.”
She gave Richter the hickory stick, took his other arm, helped him hobble to a far corner, pulled a chair over there for him. He sat with his back to us. She stood behind him, leaning over his shoulder, so that both their faces were hidden from us.
O’Gar came closer to me.
“What do you think?” he muttered.
“I think they’ll come through.”
“That shot of yours about being Molloy’s wife hit center. I missed that one. How’d you make it?”
“When she was telling us what Molloy had said about the Siamese she took pains both times she said ‘my husband’ to show that she meant Richter.”
“So? Well—”
The whispering in the far corner had been getting louder, so that the s’s had become sharp hisses. Now a clear emphatic sentence came from Rihter’s mouth.
“I’ll be damned if I will!”
Both of them looked furtively over their shoulders, and they lowered their voices again, but not for long. The woman was apparently trying to persuade him to do something. He kept shaking his head. He put a hand on her arm. She pushed it away, and kept on whispering.
He said aloud, deliberately:
“Go ahead, if you want to be a fool. It’s your neck. I didn’t put the knife in him.”
She jumped away from him, her eyes black blazes in a white face. O’Gar and I moved softly toward them.
“You rat!” she spat at Richter, and spun to face us.
“I killed him!” she cried. “This thing in the chair tried to and—”
Richter swung the hickory stick.
I jumped for it—missed—crashed into the back of his chair. Hickory stick, Richter, chair, and I sprawled together on the floor. The corporal helped me up. He and I picked Richter up and put him on the davenport again.
The woman’s story poured out of her angry mouth:
“His name wasn’t Molloy. It was Lange, Sam Lange. I married him in Providence in 1913 and went to China with him—to Canton, where he had a position with a steamship line. We didn’t stay there long, because he got into some trouble through being mixed up in the revolution that year. After that we drifted around, mostly around Asia.
“We met this thing”—she pointed at the now sullenly quiet Richter—“in Singapore, in 1919, I think—right after the World War was over. His name is Holley, and Scotland Yard can tell you something about him. He had a proposition. He knew of a gem-bed in upper Burma, one of many that were hidden from the British when they took the country. He knew the natives who were working it, knew where they were hiding their gems.
“My husband went in with him, with two other men that were killed. They looted the natives’ cache, and got away with a whole sackful of sapphires, topazes and even a few rubies. The two other men were killed by the natives and my husband was badly wounded.
“We didn’t think he could live. We were hiding in a hut near the Yunnan border. Holley persuaded me to take the gems and run away with them. It looked as if Sam was done for, and if we stayed there long we’d be caught. I can’t say that I was crazy about Sam anyway; he wasn’t the kind you would be, after living with him for a while.
“So Holley and I took it and lit out. We had to use a lot of the stones to buy our way through Yunnan and Kwangsi and Kwangtung, but we made it. We got to San Francisco with enough to buy this house and the movie theater, and we’ve been here since. We’ve been honest since we came here, but I don’t suppose that means anything. We had enough money to keep us comfortable.
“Today Sam showed up. We hadn’t heard of him since we left him on his back in Burma. He said he’d been caught and jailed for three years. Then he’d got away, and had spent the other three hunting for us. He was that kind. He didn’t want me back, but he did want money. He wanted everything we had. Holley lost his nerve. Instead of bargaining with Sam, he lost his head and tried to shoot him.
“Sam took his gun away from him and shot him in the leg. In the scuffle Sam had dropped a knife—a kris, I think. I picked it up, but he grabbed me just as I got it. I don’t know how it happened. All I saw was Sam staggering back, holding his chest with both hands—and the kris shining red in my hand.
“Sam had dropped his gun. Holley got it and was all for shooting Sam, but I wouldn’t let him. It happened in this room. I don’t remember whether I gave Sam the sarong we used for a cover on the table or not. Anyway, he tried to stop the blood with it. He went away then, while I kept Holley from
