Agatha Seabury moved nervously in the deep easy chair beside Kennedy's desk, leaning forward, uncomfortably, the tense lines marring the beauty of her fine features.
Kennedy tilted his desk chair back in order to study her face.
"You say you have never written a line to the fellow nor he to you?" he asked.
"Not a line, not a scrap,—until I received that typewritten letter about which I just told you," she repeated vehemently, meeting his penetrating gaze without flinching. "Why, Professor Kennedy, as heaven is my witness, I have never done a wrong thing—except to meet him now and then at afternoon dances."
I felt that the nerve-racked society woman before us must be either telling the truth or else that she was one of the cleverest actresses I had ever seen.
"Have you the letter here?" asked Craig quickly.
Mrs. Seabury reached into her neat leather party case and pulled out a carefully folded sheet of note paper.
It was all typewritten, down to the very signature itself. Evidently the blackmailer had taken every precaution to protect himself, for even if the typewriting could be studied and identified, it would be next to impossible to get at the writer through it and locate the machine on which it was written among the thousands in the city.
Kennedy studied the letter carefully, then, with a low exclamation, handed it over to me, nodding to Mrs. Seabury that it was all right for me to see it.
"No ordinary fellow, I'm afraid," he commented musingly, adding, "this thief of reputations."