MYSTERY & CRIME COLLECTION. Hay James
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 Washington 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 pawn all her jewels. She pawned them on these first two occasions I've described. I say she pawned 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 reassured 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 pawned her jewels twice. How did she do that? Where did she get the money to redeem them after the first pawning?"
"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.
"I—I thought," Withers began again and paused. "I thought that, perhaps, her father helped her out, got the jewels out of pawn both times for her."
"Did you ever ask him?"
"Yes; and he denied having done so. But, you see, my theory is borne out. Before, when she pawned them, her father was wealthy; and she was his favourite child. She knew he would help her. But now his money is gone. He's failed. Consequently, she has not pawned them this time. She knew there would be no chance to redeem them."
Bristow leaned forward in his chair.
"Mr. Withers," he asked, "as a matter of fact, did you ever know that your wife had pawned her jewels?"
"Well," he said, as if making an admission, "she would never confess it to me. I assumed it from the fact that on both occasions the jewels were missing for a good while. They were certainly not in her possession. She couldn't produce them when called upon to do so."
"I see. Now, Mr. Withers, what did you do yesterday, all day yesterday, after reaching here?"
"I went to the Brevord and registered under the name of Waring. After I had had breakfast, I went straight to Abrahamson's pawnshop. It's the only pawnshop in town. I told him I was looking for some stolen jewelry and I expected that an attempt might be made to pawn it with him. He agreed to let me wait there, well concealed by the heavy hangings at the back of his shop. I spent the day there except for a few minutes in the afternoon when I went out for a quick lunch."
"Yes? Did you find out anything?"
Once more Withers found it hard to speak.
"Yes"; he said finally. "A man came in and pawned one of my wife's rings. It had a setting of three diamonds. It was worth about seven hundred and fifty dollars, I should say. Abrahamson let him have only a hundred on it."
"Why only a hundred?"
"I had asked him to do that, so as to prove that the man was a thief—you know, willing to take anything offered to him."
"And he did take the hundred?"
"He did."
"What happened after that?"
"I followed him from the shop—for half a block. When he had gone that distance, I lost him. He stepped into a store, and I waited for him to come out. He never did. It was the old dodge. The store extended the width of a block. He made his escape through the other entrance."
Greenleaf was more excited even than Withers.
"This man," the chief put in; "what did he look like?"
"He was of average weight, medium height. He had a gold tooth, the upper left bicuspid gold. His nose was aquiline. He wore a long, dark gray raincoat, and he had a cap with its long visor pulled well over his face. Then, too, he wore a beard, chestnut-brown in colour. That's about the best description I can give you of him. You see, this happened late in the afternoon."
"All right," Bristow kept to the main thread of the story. "Now, about last night. What then?"