Under the spell of his voice she heaved an enormous sigh of relief and lowered herself into a very wide arm-chair.
"You said that on the night of the seventh of October, Miss Manning went away from here?" McKelvie began.
"Yes, she left somewhere around eleven o'clock."
"On foot or in a taxi?"
"She went on foot and I watched her cross Gramercy Park and go toward the Subway," said Mrs. Harmon.
"Didn't you think it peculiar that she should leave suddenly at that time of night without leaving her address behind?" he continued.
The woman rocked back and forth several times before she answered. "Well, no. You see I didn't tell that other young man so, because he didn't ask me, and besides I didn't like his looks. But I guess you're all right. You have an honest face. I know pretty well why she wanted to go away. I would have gone, too, in her place, poor girl.
"It all comes of taking up with these idle rich young men who have more money than brains, say I," she went on with a self-righteous toss of her head. I smiled. I couldn't imagine any young man, rich or poor, taking a fancy to Mrs. Harmon. I wondered what kind of man Mr. Harmon had been, but then she may have been slimmer when he first met and married her. "I told Miss Manning she was doing a foolish thing, but she wouldn't listen and engaged herself to a young chap named Lee Darwin," the good lady continued. "I hadn't anything against the young man, he seemed a nice boy, but after a while another man took to coming around. He was older and wore a beard and eyeglasses. I didn't like him and told her there would be trouble, but she thought she knew best, and so there was trouble." Mrs. Harmon closed her lips on the words complacently.
"The morning of the seventh, Lee Darwin came here looking like a madman, and they had some kind of a quarrel in this very room. I don't know what it was about, but I heard him telling her that he was through with the likes of her, and then he bounced out again. Well, she acted kind of dazed for a while and then she made an appointment on the phone. When she came back from her lessons he just mooned around, and at ten-thirty that night she packed her bag and said she was going on a long journey, and if anyone inquired where she was, to say I didn't know. But she wouldn't tell me where she was going, and I figured she had decided to hide away till she got over her hurt."
"Yes, I guess you're right," said McKelvie. "And now one more request. I should like to see her room."