"Do you mean," I asked incredulously, "that Mr. Fleming married a second time?"
"He married me three years ago, in Plattsburg. I came from there last night. I--couldn"t leave before."
"Does Miss Fleming know about this second marriage?"
"No. n.o.body knew about it. I have had to put up with a great deal, Mr.
Knox. It"s a hard thing for a woman to know that people are talking about her, and all the time she"s married as tight as ring and book can do it."
"I suppose," I hazarded, "if that is the case, you have come about the estate."
"Estate!" Her tone was scornful. "I guess I"ll take what"s coming to me, as far as that goes--and it won"t be much. No, I came to ask what they mean by saying Allan Fleming killed himself."
"Don"t you think he did?"
"I know he did not," she said tensely. "Not only that: I know who did it. It was Schwartz--Henry Schwartz."
"Schwartz! But what on earth--"
"You don"t know Schwartz," she said grimly. "I was married to him for fifteen years. I took him when he had a saloon in the Fifth Ward, at Plattsburg. The next year he was alderman: I didn"t expect in those days to see him riding around in an automobile--not but what he was making money--Henry Schwartz is a money-maker. That"s why he"s boss of the state now."
"And you divorced him?"
"He was a brute," she said vindictively. "He wanted me to go back to him, and I told him I would rather die. I took a big house, and kept bachelor suites for gentlemen. Mr. Fleming lived there, and--he married me three years ago. He and Schwartz had to stand together, but they hated each other."
"Schwartz?" I meditated. "Do you happen to know if Senator Schwartz was in Plattsburg at the time of the mur--of Mr. Fleming"s death?"
"He was here in Manchester."
"He had threatened Mr. Fleming"s life?"
"He had already tried to kill him, the day we were married. He stabbed him twice, but not deep enough."
I looked at her in wonder. For this woman, not extraordinarily handsome, two men had fought and one had died--according to her story.
"I can prove everything I say," she went on rapidly. "I have letters from Mr. Fleming telling me what to do in case he was shot down; I have papers--canceled notes--that would put Schwartz in the penitentiary--that is," she said cunningly, "I did have them. Mr.
Fleming took them away."
"Aren"t you afraid for yourself?" I asked.
"Yes, I"m afraid--afraid he"ll get me back yet. It would please him to see me crawl back on my knees."
"But--he can not force you to go back to him."
"Yes, he can," she shivered. From which I knew she had told me only a part of her story.
After all she had nothing more to tell. Fleming had been shot; Schwartz had been in the city about the Borough Bank; he had threatened Fleming before, but a political peace had been patched; Schwartz knew the White Cat. That was all.
Before she left she told me something I had not known.
"I know a lot about inside politics," she said, as she got up. "I have seen the state divided up with the roast at my table, and served around with the dessert, and I can tell you something you don"t know about your White Cat. A back staircase leads to one of the up-stairs rooms, and shuts off with a locked door. It opens below, out a side entrance, not supposed to be used. Only a few know of it. Henry Butler was found dead at the foot of that staircase."
"He shot himself, didn"t he?"
"The police said so," she replied, with her grim smile. "There is such a thing as murdering a man by driving him to suicide."
She wrote an address on a card and gave it to me.
"Just a minute," I said, as she was about to go. "Have you ever heard Mr. Fleming speak of the Misses Maitland?"
"They were--his first wife"s sisters. No, he never talked of them, but I believe, just before he left Plattsburg, he tried to borrow some money from them."
"And failed?"
"The oldest one telegraphed the refusal, collect," she said, smiling faintly.
"There is something else," I said. "Did you ever hear of the number eleven twenty-two?"
"No--or--why, yes--" she said. "It is the number of my house."
It seemed rather ridiculous, when she had gone, and I sat down to think it over. It was anticlimax, to say the least. If the mysterious number meant only the address of this very ordinary woman, then--it was probable her story of Schwartz was true enough. But I could not reconcile myself to it, nor could I imagine Schwartz, with his great bulk, skulking around pinning sc.r.a.ps of paper to pillows.
It would have been more like the fearlessness and pa.s.sion of the man to have shot Fleming down in the state house corridor, or on the street, and to have trusted to his influence to set him free. For the first time it occurred to me that there was something essentially feminine in the revenge of the figures that had haunted the dead man.
I wondered if Mrs. Fleming had told me all, or only half the truth.
That night, at the most peaceful spot I had ever known, Fred"s home, occurred another inexplicable affair, one that left us all with racked nerves and listening, fearful ears.
CHAPTER XVIII
EDITH"S COUSIN
That was to be Margery"s last evening at Fred"s. Edith had kept her as long as she could, but the girl felt that her place was with Miss Let.i.tia. Edith was desolate.
"I don"t know what I am going to do without you," she said that night when we were all together in the library, with a wood fire, for light and coziness more than heat. Margery was sitting before the fire, and while the others talked she sat mostly silent, looking into the blaze.
The May night was cold and rainy, and Fred had been reading us a poem he had just finished, receiving with indifference my comment on it, and basking in Edith"s rapture.
"Do you know yourself what it is about?" I inquired caustically.
"If it"s about anything, it isn"t poetry," he replied. "Poetry appeals to the ear: it is primarily sensuous. If it is more than that it ceases to be poetry and becomes verse."
Edith yawned.
"I"m afraid I"m getting old," she said, "I"m getting the nap habit after dinner. Fred, run up, will you, and see if Katie put blankets over the boys?"