"Dearest:
"All right. This evening at seven by the pine. We'll go in my racer to Bloomington and be married there by Fiske, the man I told you about. It'll be a long ride but at the end we'll find happiness waiting for us. Don't disappoint me—don't do what you did the other time. Believe in my love and trust yourself to me—Jack."
In the silence that followed you could hear the fire falling together with a little soft rustle. All the eyes turned as if they were on pivots and looked at Jack Reddy—all but mine. I kept them on Mrs. Fowler and never moved them till she was led, bent and sobbing, out of the room.
Nora Magee was the next, and I heard them say afterward made a good witness. The coroner asked her—and Anne when her turn came—very particular about the jewelry, what was gone, how many pieces and such questions. And then it came out that nobody—not even Mrs. Fowler—knew exactly what Sylvia had. She was all the time buying new ornaments or having her old ones reset and the only person who kept track of her possessions was Virginie Dupont. All any of them could be sure of was that the jewel box was empty, and the toilet articles, fitted bag, and gold mesh purse were gone.
Hines was called after that. He was all slicked up in his store clothes and looked very different to what he had that day in the summer. Though anyone could see he was scared blue, the perspiration on his forehead and his big, knotty hands twiddling at his tie and his watch chain; he told his story very clear and straightforward. I think everyone was impressed by it and by Mrs. Hines, who followed him. She was a miserable looking little rat of a woman, with inflamed eyes and a long drooping nose, but she corroborated all he said, and—anyway, to me—it sounded true.
Tecla Rabine, the Bohemian servant, followed, and when she walked over to sit in the chair, keyed up as I was, I came near laughing. She was a large, fat woman with a good-humored red face and little twinkling eyes, and she sure was a sight, bulging out of a black cloth suit that was the fashion when Columbus landed. On her head was a fancy straw hat with one mangy feather sticking straight up at the back, and the last touch was her face, one side still swollen out from her toothache, and looking for all the world as if she had a quid in her cheek.
Though she spoke in a queer, foreign dialect, she gave her testimony very well and she told something that no one—I don't think even the police—had heard before.
While Hines was locking up she went to her room but couldn't sleep because of the pain of her toothache.
"Ach," she said, spreading her hand out near her cheek, "it was out so far—swole out, and, oh, my God—pain!"
"Never mind your toothache," said the Coroner—"keep to the subject."
"How do I hear noises if my toothache doesn't make me to wake?" she asked, giving him a sort of indignant look.