The Green Jacket (Mystery Classics Series). Jennette Lee
man stared.
"Stop thinking about yourself and your wrongs. . . . I don't know what they are—I'd rather not know. Whatever they are, they are past. . . . If it is best for your wife to leave you, then help her do it. Stop thinking about yourself."
The man's narrow eyes widened a little as they studied the quiet face before him.
She nodded. "Help her to get away from you if you think she will be better off."
The man's eyes continued to regard her with a puzzled look.
"But I'd be pretty sure first, if I were you, that it's best for her to leave you. . . . It would be a silly sort of body, if its heart went wrong, that went to work planning to get rid of it—divorce it for good and all. That's a homely way of saying it. I'm a homely woman, and when people are married they seem to me one, just as truly as the body is all one. I don't divorce part of me—unless it's too bad to be made right. If it is, I go to a good surgeon and tell him to make quick work of it." She paused with a thoughtful look, and smiled. "But the best surgeons now, they tell me, don't believe in amputating. They bring their cases to a serum specialist—don't they?" She nodded toward the card on the desk. "And you find out what's wrong and give them some more of the same kind—only different, and they get well."
The look in the man's face darted and broke in a little laugh.
"You think I'd better give Rose serum treatment! Spiritual serum!" He chuckled. His face had cleared.
"I wonder what kind?" he said thoughtfully. His voice had the keen note of the scientist attacking a difficult problem.
"Some brand of human kindness, I should say," responded Milly dryly.
The man laughed and got up. "I believe you've been giving me serum treatment!" He held out his hand. "If there is ever anything I can do for you—" He motioned to the card.
She glanced down at it and her face lighted. "Some day I should like to come to you—to study," she said. "I want to know about this serum business. I think perhaps it would help me to understand human nature a little better."
He laughed out. "More likely you would tell me enough about people so I would understand my own serums better. I've been staring at my cultures for years—never suspecting what they might mean!" . . . He looked at her curiously. "Do you know, this is the first time in six months that I have laughed——"
She returned the look quietly. "It's a pity your wife couldn't hear you." She said it in a matter-of-fact tone, and he laughed out again.
"I am going home," he said. "I came here with the idea that I was a desperate figure—a kind of modern Othello!—blighted life and so on, due to infidelity. . . . You've made me see I'm sick— a kind of spiritual invalid, that hasn't sense enough to take care of a common cold—just goes around suffering with it!" He paused a minute and looked at her thoughtfully.
"May I say that if divorce cases are difficult, they ought to be your specialty. You may not know enough to handle them, but you certainly have common sense!"
She shook her head. "Yes, I have common sense. But they require a higher kind of sense. Some day I hope to have a little of it. Only by that time"—she turned to him with a quick look—"marriage may be out of date!" She said it a little whimsically and motioned aside the check-book he had drawn from his pocket.
"No—I do not want your money. The advice may not be worth anything. Try it and see."
When he was gone she went to the window and threw it up, and stood looking off at the clouds. Her face had a tired look, and now and then she passed her hands quietly across her eyes and down her face, as if she were freeing herself from something.
When she resumed her knitting there was a little smile on her lips. . . . Her mind had run back to the days when she first began work—the mistakes she had made before she found herself and her work!
In those early days she had handled divorce cases. Yes—even after she set up business for herself, there had been one or two before she learned her lesson—that they were the most difficult work in the world for a detective who wanted what she wanted.
And all that she wanted grew with every day of work. . . . Her eyes followed the amber needles, and thoughts seemed to flow before them as if a pattern knitted itself in the green wool. . . . At first she had tried to take notes while clients talked, but she found they grew self-conscious and began to embroider facts, or they ran dry and stopped altogether. But the knitting seemed to relax tongues, and she had fallen into a way, when she wanted to remember a point or reconsider it, of purling a double stitch in her work. She even, as she grew more skilful, made what might be called a rough little pattern of the case in the stitches that slipped so smoothly through her fingers. Many of her plans were wrought in wool, and the knitting was always in her hands when she was talking with a new client or thinking out his case. But it was confined to the up-town office, where the most important business of the firm was transacted. Here, whenever possible, Milly received clients for the first time. Many of her clients did not even guess of the existence of the busier office with its rows of typewriters and swinging glass doors.
Chapter VI
A shadow fell on the ground-glass door, and paused. Milly looked up quickly. She half reached out to close the open drawer with its ball of wool. Then she withdrew her hand and went on knitting.
The shadow stirred a little and a timid knock came on the door.
"Come in," said Milly. She went on counting stitches.
When she looked up a tall, gaunt figure in black, heavily veiled, was standing hesitatingly by the closed door.
"Will you sit down?" she said. The woman moved forward, almost tremulously, and came to the chair by the desk.
"Are you a detective?" she asked doubtingly.
"I am Millicent Newberry—yes."
With a little gasp of relief the woman sank into the chair.
Milly went on with her knitting. Apparently she had forgotten the woman by the desk. Her eyes following the line of wool, gave no hint that they had taken in each detail of the gaunt figure—even to the hands folded in her lap.
The hands were large, and the knuckles seen through the wrinkled black gloves were slightly misshapen; the fingers seemed to clinch a little, as if to hold themselves steady. Behind the veil the dark eyes studied the woman who was knitting.
She came to the end of the row before she looked up. "Did you want to see me?" she asked as she drew out the needle and turned her work.
The woman's lips moistened themselves and she lifted a hand and threw back the veil as if it suffocated her. The face revealed was very pale. She gave a quick glance about the room. . . . The flowers on the desk, the sunshine filling the room, and the gray woman with her knitting seemed to release some hidden spring and she gave a quick, restful sigh. The pale face turned to Milly with a look of relief.
"I thought you would be different!" she said.
"No, this is the way I am. Can I do something for you?"
The gaunt hands fumbled at the bosom of her gown and drew out an envelope and held it a minute. Then they laid it on the desk. "I wanted—to ask you—about that." She said it quickly. But when Milly's hand reached to the letter, she half-darted to it as if to rescue it. Then she drew back and a wan smile crossed her face.
"You must not mind what I do," she said wistfully. "I have been afraid to come to you!" The voice was full of gentle apology, and the lines of the face seemed to soften as she looked at Milly. They gave to the face the subtle refinement that comes only through suffering and experience. "You must not mind me," she said again. "I am not afraid of you now. I want you to read it, please."
Milly