“Yet you hid the mummy in this house, and afterwards placed it in your arbor to be found by the Professor, for some reason.”
“I know nothing about that either,” muttered Mrs. Jasher doggedly, and with very white lips. “That letter you have traced to me is all bluff.”
“Then you admit having written it?”
“Yes,” she said sullenly. “You know too much, and it is useless for me to deny the truth in the face of the evidence you bring against me. I would fight though,” she added, raising her head like a snake its crest, “if I was not sick and tired of fighting.”
“Fighting?”
“Yes, against trouble and worry and money difficulties and creditors. Oh,” she struck her breast, “what do you know of life, you rich, easy-going man? I have been in the depths, and not through my own fault. I had a bad mother, a bad husband. I was dragged in the mire by those who should have helped me to rise. I have starved for days; I have wept for years; in all God's earth there is no more miserable a creature than I am.”
“Kindly talk without so much melodrama,” said Random cruelly.
“Ah,” Mrs. Jasher sat down and locked her hands together, “you don't believe me. I daresay you don't understand, for life, real life, is a sealed book to you. It is useless for me to appeal to your sympathy, for you are so very ignorant. Let us stick to facts. What do you wish to know?”
“Who killed Sidney Bolton: who has the emeralds.”
“I can't tell you. Listen! With my past life you have nothing to do. I will commence from the time I came down here. I had just lost my husband, and I managed to scrape together a few hundred pounds—oh, quite in a respectable way, I assure you,” she added scoffingly, on seeing her listener wince. “I came here to try and live quietly, and, if possible, to secure a rich husband. I knew that the Fort was here and thought that I might marry an officer. However, the Professor's position attracted me, and I decided to marry him. I am engaged, and but for your cleverness in tracing that letter I should be Mrs. Braddock within a very short time. I have exhausted all my money. I am deeply, in debt. I cannot hold out longer.”