The Case of Jennie Brice

by Mary Roberts Rinehart

"If you knew this, why did you not come forward sooner?"

"I have been out of the city."

"But you knew the prisoner had been arrested, and that this testimony of yours would be invaluable to him."

"Yes. But I thought it necessary to produce Jennie Brice herself. My unsupported word—"

"You have been searching for Jennie Brice?"

"Yes. Since March the eighth."

"How was she dressed when you saw her last?"

"She wore a red and black hat and a black coat. She carried a small brown valise."

"Thank you."

The cross-examination did not shake his testimony. But it brought out some curious things. Mr. Howell refused to say how he happened to be at the end of the Sixth Street bridge at that hour, or why he had thought it necessary, on meeting a woman he claimed to have known only twenty-four hours, to go with her to the railway station and put her on a train.