He kept us waiting about fifteen minutes, and then told us that Mrs. Estep was up and dressed.
We went up to her room, taking the maid with us.
The maid rapped on the door.
“What is it?” an irritable voice demanded.
“The maid; I want to—”
The key turned on the inside, and an angry Mrs. Estep jerked the door open. O’Gar and I advanced, O’Gar flashing his “buzzer.”
“From headquarters,” he said. “We want to talk to you.”
O’Gar’s foot was where she couldn’t slam the door on us, and we were both walking ahead, so there was nothing for her to do but to retreat into the room, admitting us—which she did with no pretense of graciousness.
We closed the door, and then I threw our big load at her.
“Mrs. Estep, why did Jake Ledwich kill John Boyd?”
The expressions ran over her face like this: Alarm at Ledwich’s name, fear at the word “kill,” but the name John Boyd brought only bewilderment.
“Why did what?” she stammered meaninglessly, to gain time.
“Exactly,” I said. “Why did Jake kill him last night in his flat, and then take him in the park and leave him.”
Another set of expressions: Increased bewilderment until I had almost finished the sentence, and then the sudden understanding of something, followed by the inevitable groping for poise. These things weren’t as plain as billboards, you understand, but they were there to be read by anyone who had ever played poker—either with cards or people.
What I got out of them was that Boyd hadn’t been working with or for her, and that, though she knew Ledwich had killed somebody at some time, it wasn’t Boyd and it wasn’t last night. Who, then? And when? Dr. Estep? Hardly! There wasn’t a chance in the world that—if he had been murdered—anybody except his wife had done it—his second wife. No possible reading of the evidence could bring any other answer.
Who, then, had Ledwich killed before Boyd? Was he a wholesale murderer?
These things are flitting through my head in flashes and odd scraps while Mrs. Estep is saying:
“This is absurd! The idea of your coming up here and—”
She talked for five minutes straight, the words fairly sizzling from between her hard lips; but the words themselves didn’t mean anything. She was talking for time—talking while she tried to hit upon the safest attitude to assume.
And before we could head her off, she had hit upon it—silence!
We got not another word out of her; and that is the only way in the world to beat the grilling game. The average suspect tries to talk himself out of being arrested; and it doesn’t matter how shrewd a man is, or how good a liar, if he’ll talk to you, and you play your cards right, you can hook him—can make him help you convict him. But if he won’t talk you can’t do a thing with him.
And that’s how it was with this woman. She refused to pay any attention to our questions—she wouldn’t speak, nod, grunt, or wave an arm in reply. She gave us a fine assortment of facial expressions, true enough, but we wanted verbal information—and we got none.
We weren’t easily licked, however. Three beautiful hours of it we gave her without rest. We stormed, cajoled, threatened, and at times I think we danced; but it was no go. So in the end we took her away with us. We didn’t have anything on her, but we couldn’t afford to have her running around loose until we nailed Ledwich.
At the Hall of Justice we didn’t book her; but simply held her as a material witness, putting her in an office with a matron and one of O’Gar’s men, who were to see what they could do with her while we went after Ledwich. We had had her frisked as soon as she reached the Hall, of course; and, as we expected, she hadn’t a thing of importance on her.
O’Gar and I went back to the Montgomery and gave her room a thorough overhauling—and found nothing.
“Are you sure you know what you’re talking about?” the detective-sergeant asked as we left the hotel. “It’s going to be a pretty joke on somebody if you’re mistaken.”
I let that go by without an answer.
“I’ll meet you at 6:30,” I said, “and we’ll go up against Ledwich.”
He grunted an approval, and I set out for Vance Richmond’s office.
IX
The attorney sprang up from his desk as soon as his stenographer admitted me. His face was leaner and grayer than ever; its lines had deepened, and there was a hollowness around his eyes.
“You’ve got to do something!” he cried huskily. “I have just come from the hospital. Mrs. Estep is on the point of death! A day more of this—two days at the most—and she will—”
I interrupted him, and swiftly gave him an account of the day’s happenings, and what I expected, or hoped, to make out of them. But he received the news without brightening, and shook his head hopelessly.
“But don’t you see,” he exclaimed when I had finished, “that that won’t do? I know you can find proof of her innocence in time. I’m not complaining—you’ve done all that could be expected, and more! But all that’s no good! I’ve got to have—well—a miracle, perhaps.
“Suppose that you do finally get the truth out of Ledwich and the first Mrs. Estep or it comes out during their trials for Boyd’s murder? Or that you even get to the bottom of the matter in three or four days? That will be too late! If I can go to Mrs. Estep and tell her she’s free now, she may pull herself together, and come through. But another day of imprisonment—two days, or perhaps even two hours—and she won’t need anybody to clear her. Death will have done it! I tell you, she’s—”
I left Vance Richmond abruptly again. This lawyer was bound upon getting me
