“Oh, you know her! ‘Gertie,’ Hughes may have called her to you, but Truda is the name she signs to her letters and she mentions you in them.”
“Me?” Snape smiled incredulously. “There’s a mistake somewhere. I don’t know any one by either name.”
“You spoke of her first to the inspector this morning.”
“I said Hughes had mentioned a girl named Gertie that he was taken with, in a manner of speaking, but I didn’t know anything more about her except just the name, though from what he said I had a notion that she was a married party.” Snape coughed discreetly. “I told the inspector Hughes and I had a bit of diversion together now and then, but nothing to do with women. He was always running after one or another of them and I never paid much attention to what he told me about them, but in the case of this ‘Gertie’ he did say there was somebody in the way, and I supposed he meant a husband.”
“You know well there was a husband and you’d not need the strength of a child to throw a stone right now and hit him!” McCarty retorted. “She’s respectable, with no use for Hughes and his nonsense, and it was to save her trouble, since he’s dead and out of it, that I came to you for her address instead of going across the street and giving her away to the man she’s married to. Of course, if you can’t recall Hughes mentioning it to you I’ve no choice.”
He made as if to rise and Snape wet his thin lips nervously.
“I have my place to consider.” There was a slight whine in his tone. “How do I know that the ‘Truda’ you speak of is the same—!”
“Come across if you’re going to!” McCarty interrupted with the harsh, commanding bark of the old days. “You know damn’ well that if I go over to the Sloanes’ and tell her husband ’twas you first wised us up that Hughes and his wife—”
“I never said Otto Lindholm’s wife was the woman Hughes was taken with!” A sullen note had replaced the whine. “I said it was somebody named ‘Gertie’ and there could be a million Gerties! The one he knew might be companion to an invalid up on the Drive; a Mrs. Cochrane, who has a private house in the neighborhood of Eightieth Street, somewhere, but it’s not for me to say. Hughes talked about so many—”
He paused with a shrug and McCarty asked quickly: