The Winning Clue Part 8

Bristow gave him the benefit of another long pause and studied him more closely. He saw that this bereaved husband was of the high-strung, Southern-gentleman type, hot-tempered, impulsive, one of those apt to believe that "shooting" is the remedy for one's personal ills or injuries. The lines of his mouth betrayed selfishness and peevishness.

The interrogator broke the silence at last:

"Of course, Mr. Withers, there's some good explanation for your secret trip to Furmville?"

"Well--er--yes."

"What is it?"

Withers hesitated.

"I--I don't know that I care to say now--to discuss it yet."

Bristow shot Greenleaf a prompting glance.

"You see, it's this way," the chief acted on the silent suggestion; "I'm in charge of this matter, the capture of the murderer, and Mr. Bristow is helping me. In fact, he's the man in command. His abilities fit him for the work. If the man who killed your wife is caught, it will be through the work of Mr. Bristow. I'm confident of that. Moreover, every minute we lose now may be disastrous to us. Consequently, we want to hear your story. You appreciate our position, I know."

Withers licked his dry lips with the tip of his dry tongue.

"How about the newspapers?" he asked.

"You'll be talking only for our information," cut in Bristow crisply. "We won't give it to the papers. We want to use it for our own benefit."

"Ah, I see. Well, then----"

Withers got up and paced the length of the floor several times in silence while they watched him. He gave the impression of framing up in advance in his mind what he would say. He seemed to want to talk without talking too much--to tell a part of a story, not all.

"I tell you, gentlemen," he said, going back to his chair, his voice trembling, "this is a hard thing to get to. I mean I don't like to say what I must say. But I see there's no way out but this. The truth of the matter is, I came up here to satisfy myself as to what my wife was doing in regard to a certain matter."

"You mean you were suspicious of her--jealous of her?" Bristow interpolated.

"No, not that," returned the husband.

"He's lying!" was the thought of both Greenleaf and Bristow.

"No. Let me make that very clear. I never doubted her in that way."

"Well, how did you doubt her?"

Withers winced.

"I don't mean I doubted her at all. I mean I thought she was being imposed upon financially. In fact, I was sure of it. I'm sure of it now."

"You mean blackmail?" Bristow narrowed down the inquiry.

"Just that. And I'll tell you about it." He rasped his dry lips again.

"This sort of thing, this blackmail, had happened to her twice before this. Once it was when she was at Atlantic City for a month with her sister, Miss Maria Fulton.

"That was a year after our marriage. Then, two years later--just about a year ago now--when she was in Was.h.i.+ngton visiting her father and sister.

Both those times things happened as they had begun to happen here, in fact as they've been happening here for the past two months."

"Well," Bristow urged him on, "what happened?"

"She got away with too much money, more money than she could possibly have used for herself in any legitimate way. First, she got her father to give her all she could get out of him. Her second step would be to write to me for all I could spare, making flimsy excuses for her need of it.

"Her third resource was to p.a.w.n all her jewels. She p.a.w.ned them on these first two occasions I've described. I say she p.a.w.ned them, but I never had definite proof of it. However, I was sure of it. I don't know that she had come to this in Furmville. If she hadn't she would have."

"What were Mrs. Withers' jewels worth?"

"Originally, I should say, they cost about fifteen thousand dollars. She had no difficulty, I suppose, in raising six or seven thousand dollars on them--even more than that."

"They were worth so much as all that?"

"Yes. Her father had given her most of them before his business failure.

He failed last fall, I forgot to mention."

"Now," Bristow said persuasively, "about this blackmailing proposition.

What was--what is your idea about that?"

Withers produced and lit a cigarette, handling it with quivering fingers.

"Somebody, some man, had a hold of some sort on her. Whenever he needed money, had to have money, he got it from her. That is, he did this whenever he could find her away from home. So far as I know, he never tried to operate in Atlanta."

"What do you think this hold was?"

"Well," Withers began, and paused.

"Your theories are perfectly safe with us," Bristow rea.s.sured him.

"I thought, naturally, that it had something to do with her life previous to the time I met her."

"How?"

"I didn't know. That's what worried me." All of a sudden, his hearers got a clear idea of what the man had suffered. It was plainly to be detected in his voice. "It might have been a harmless love affair, a flirtation, with letters involved, letters which she thought would distress me if I ever saw them."

"Nothing more than that?"

"I never thought she had been guilty of anything--well, immoral, heinous."

"You say," Bristow changed the course of questioning, "she p.a.w.ned her jewels twice. How did she do that? Where did she get the money to redeem them after the first p.a.w.ning?"

"I don't know. I never could find out."

"You had no six or seven thousand dollars to give her for that purpose, as I understand it?"

"No."

"Where did she get it, then?" Bristow's questions, despite their directness, were free from offense.