“Only that there was bad blood between her husband, that nurses at the Sloanes’, and Hughes.” McCarty repeated the tale of the encounter and his companion’s face expressed satisfaction.
“’Twill be him, all right!” he predicted sagely. “Them silent, slow-thinking fellows are the worst! Where’d he get hold of that Calabar bean stuff and how’d he slip it to Hughes?”
“And why didn’t I go and pinch him right off the bat instead of taking this little trip?” McCarty supplemented sarcastically, as they boarded an uptown car. “There’s more than him and that wall-eyed Chink that had it in for Hughes, but we’ll see what his wife has to say.”
A telephone book, in a drugstore on Eightieth Street, vouchsafed them the house number of the only Cochranes on Riverside Drive. They found the place to be a small, solidly built residence of gray stone with potted evergreens flanking the turn of the steps to the entrance door.
A trim little maid with a coquettishly frilled apron admitted them to a foyer, arranged informally as a library or den, with seats built in at either side of the empty hearth and books ranged along the opposite wall behind a long table. There she left them and presently slow, soft footsteps sounded on the stairs and another woman appeared.
She was thirty or thereabout, with thick braids of coarse, pale-gold hair wound around a small, shapely head, and a face whose perfect features would have rendered it beautiful had it been lighted with intelligence; but the great blue eyes were dull and bovine, and, although the rich color came and went in her cheeks, there was no hint of expression beyond vaguely bewildered inquiry as she bowed.
“I am Mrs. Lindholm. The maid say that you wish to see me.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Dennis was gaping in flagrant admiration at the vision, but McCarty stepped forward. “We’ve come to return something that belongs to you.”
He handed her the first two letters which she had written to the dead man and watched her face as she recognized them. A shadow of dismay darkened her eyes and a little frown gathered above them.
“Oh, for why did he keep them?” Her tone was distressed but without agitation. “Such a nuisance as he was, poor man! Where did you get these?”