"Great Scott!" he groaned. "So you've joined the sobbing sisterhood at last! I wouldn't have believed it. 'S Iverson"—his voice changed, he brought his hand down on the desk with a force that made the ink-bottle rock—"that woman's as guilty as—as—"
I reminded him that the evidence against Mrs. Brandow was purely circumstantial.
"Circumstantial? 'Course it's circumstantial!" yelped Hurd. "She's too clever to let it be anything else. She has hidden every track. She's the slickest proposition we've had up for murder in this state, and she's young, pretty, of good family—so she'll probably get off. But she killed her husband as surely as you stand there, and the fact that he was a brute and deserved what he got doesn't make her any less guilty of his murder."
It was a long speech for Mr. Hurd. He seemed surprised by it himself, and stopped to glare at me as if I were to blame for the effort it had caused him.
"You know Davies, her lawyer, don't you?" he asked, more quietly.
I did.
"Think he'll give you a letter to her?"
I thought he would.
"'L right," snapped Mr. Hurd. "Go 'n' see her. If she'll talk, get an interview. If she won't, describe her and her cell. Tell how she looks and what she wears—from the amount of hair over her ears to the kind of polish on her shoes. Leave mawkish sympathy out of it. See her as she is—a murderess whose trial is going to make American justice look like a hole in a doughnut."
I went back to my desk thinking of his words. While I was pinning on my hat the door of Mr. Hurd's room opened and shut, and his assistant, Godfrey Morris, came and stood beside me.