The Hollow of Her Hand

by George Barr McCutcheon

"She made me promise to give it to you with my own hands, Mrs. Wrandall," said Smith, in the library, putting as much emotion into his voice and manner as he thought the occasion and the audience demanded. Miss Castleton and Mr. Booth were also present. "She was a queer girl. I never saw one just like her, believe me. Just after she signed that paper, I had a chance to be alone with her for a minute or two. She asked me to stoop over so's I could hear what she had to say, and she made me promise not to say a word about it until after she was gone. Well, it will surprise you just as much as it did me, what she had to say with her dying breath, so to speak." He paused for the effect.

"What did she say to you?" demanded Sara.

"Well, sir, do you know that that girl knew all along who it was that went up to Burton's Inn that evening with your husband? What do you think of that?"

There was not a sound in the room. Even the coals in the fireplace seemed to take that instant to hush their blithe crackling. Smith's listeners might have been absolutely breathless, they were so rigid. Each had the grotesque fear that he was about to point his finger at Hetty Glynn and call upon her to answer to an accusation from the grave.

The next moment they drew a deep, quivering breath of relief. The detective went on, almost apologetically. "I tried to bluff her into telling me who she was, Mrs. Wrandall, but she wouldn't fall for it. After a little while, I saw it was no use questioning her. She was as firm as a rock about it. And she was pretty near gone, I can tell you. As a matter of fact, her heart went back on her suddenly not ten minutes later, sort of surprising all of us. But she did manage to whisper a few things to me while the others were conversing in the hall. She said that she saw another girl with Mr. Wrandall about a week before the murder, a stranger and a very pretty one. He knew how to pick out the pretty—I—I beg your pardon, ma'am. That sort of slipped out. You see—"

"Never mind. I understand. Go on."

"Right after that he told her he was through with her. Chucked her, that's the sum and substance of it, for the new one, whoever she was. She raised a row with him about it, and he laughed at her. For nearly a week she spied on him, and she saw him out in the car with the stranger at least half a dozen times. Now comes the queer part of it, and the thing that made her keep her lips closed at first, right after the killing—the murder, I mean. She laid for him in front of his home on the very day of the murder and swore she'd do something desperate if he didn't give the other one up. He took her to a cheap restaurant on the West Side, and she was sure that several waiters saw that they were quarrelling. To get her out of the place, he induced her to get in his car and they went for a ride out as far as Van Courtlandt Park. The police never got onto all this. But she lived in terror for a few days, believing that the waiters might remember them, although neither of them had ever been in the place before. When she was taken up for examination, she still wondered if they would be called on to identify her. Nothing doing. It was right then, Mrs. Wrandall, that you stepped in and said that her alibi was sufficient, and staked her for life out there in the West. She says she saw the other girl after the murder, but she wouldn't say where it was or when. Of course, she couldn't swear that this girl did the job up there at Burton's, but she was pretty nearly dead certain she was the one who went up there with him. She was just on the point of telling the police about this girl, to save herself, when you helped her out of the fix, and then she got to thinking strange things, she said. This is what she said to me, there on her death-bed, and I want to tell you it gave me an idea of character that I had never come across before in all my experience. She said that if Mrs. Wrandall here could be fine enough to befriend her, knowing all you did, ma'am, about her and your husband, it oughtn't to be hard for her to help another erring girl by keeping her mouth shut. And that's just what she did. She kept still. That sort of reasoning was new to me. But, when you stop to think it over, maybe she was right. A word from her might have sent a fellow creature to the chair. She had had her lesson in charity from you, Mrs. Wrandall, and, while you didn't mean it to have that effect, you undoubtedly spoiled the best chance we'll ever have to get the real woman in the case."

There was a moment of tense silence. Booth was the first to risk the effort at speech.

"And she wouldn't say a word more? She gave you no—no clue?"

"Not the faintest idea, sir. She took that girl's name to the grave with her."