“She said that?” demanded McCarty.
“Not in those words, maybe; I’ve put it shorter and better than she does,” Dennis admitted modestly. “It looks as if she goes out sick-nursing or something, but she’s a married woman, all right.”
“‘Married?’” McCarty dropped the letter he had just taken up. “‘Truda’ might stand for ‘Gertrude,’ and ‘Gertie’ is short for the same name. I wonder now could she be ‘Gertie’?”
“And who in the world is Gertie?” Dennis stared. “Have you been holding out on me, Mac?”
“I have not. Snape told the inspector this morning that Hughes was crazy over some married woman named Gertie, but that’s all he knew about her. Read the letters, Denny.”
“There’s only two of them.” Dennis spread out the thin, double sheet of folded note-paper. “Listen, then: this is the first, for ’tis dated August twenty-second.—‘Dear friend Alfred. I was surprised and very pleased with the so pretty flowers you send to me, but please, you should not do it any more. I no longer am a girl, that I could accept such things and also he would be so angry to know. He is still there but you have not seen him for some days because the old gentleman of whom he takes care has been much worser. To me he has not come, even, but soon he will and my lady always talks to him when she is well enough, she takes interest for him to learn English more quicker. I got fear she speaks to him of the pretty flowers, for I tell her they come from him, and so it makes troubles for you and me, the both. Because of that, though I thank you for the so kind thought, I ask that you send no more. Your very true friend, Truda.’”
“Humph! Truda ain’t so strong on the English herself, is she?” McCarty remarked. “Sounds like a Dutch girl to me, or one of those squareheads. I wonder where her husband could be working that Hughes expected to see him? Anyway, it’s him and not her does the sick-nursing, Denny.”
“The both of them do!” Dennis declared. “Wait’ll you hear the second letter.—‘Dear friend. I could not meet you as you wish for my lady is not so well and I do not leave her bed, but also I would not. It is much silliness that you write me and you should not do it again once. You are making yourself amused with me and I got anger you should keep sending the letters I do not want and that could harm us both yet. He is not stupid and mild like you think. Nothing he says but much he thinks, and then it comes out and terrible is it. So you will not write again, nor try that I should see you. Your friend, Truda.’”
“She’s Dutch, all right, and level-headed. Hughes must have had the fine opinion of himself as a lady-killer, to be chasing after a respectable married woman that wanted nothing to do with the likes of him!” McCarty snorted. “I’ll bet Snape knows who she is and the husband, too, only he’s scared to speak now.”
“Mac, do you mind what Orbit told us about that Calabar bean being used as a medicine? Besides a doctor, who’d know more about medicines and poisons and such than a trained nurse?” Dennis’ leathery countenance was flushed with sudden excitement. “Hughes thought Truda’s husband was a dull-witted lout, with no more spirit than a sick cat, but she says he’s terrible when he gets going, and she’d ought to know! What if he got on to them letters and being a foreigner with little or no English—!”