Part 11 (2/2)

But Mr. Holcombe was wrong, not about kicking Peter,--although I don't believe Mr. Ladley ever did that again,--but in thinking we had him.

I washed that next morning, Monday, but all the time I was rubbing and starching and hanging out, my mind was with Jennie Brice. The sight of Molly Maguire, next door, at the window, rubbing and brus.h.i.+ng at the fur coat, only made things worse.

At noon when the Maguire youngsters came home from school, I bribed Tommy, the youngest, into the kitchen, with the promise of a doughnut.

”I see your mother has a new fur coat,” I said, with the plate of doughnuts just beyond his reach.

”Yes'm.”

”She didn't buy it?”

”She didn't buy it. Say, Mrs. Pitman, gimme that doughnut.”

”Oh, so the coat washed in!”

”No'm. Pap found it, down by the Point, on a cake of ice. He thought it was a dog, and rowed out for it.”

Well, I hadn't wanted the coat, as far as that goes; I'd managed well enough without furs for twenty years or more. But it was a satisfaction to know that it had not floated into Mrs. Maguire's kitchen and spread itself at her feet, as one may say. However, that was not the question, after all. The real issue was that if it was Jennie Brice's coat, and was found across the river on a cake of ice, then one of two things was certain: either Jennie Brice's body wrapped in the coat had been thrown into the water, out in the current, or she herself, hoping to incriminate her husband, had flung her coat into the river.

I told Mr. Holcombe, and he interviewed Joe Maguire that afternoon.

The upshot of it was that Tommy had been correctly informed. Joe had witnesses who had lined up to see him rescue a dog, and had beheld his return in triumph with a wet and soggy fur coat. At three o'clock Mrs. Maguire, instructed by Mr. Graves, brought the coat to me for identification, turning it about for my inspection, but refusing to take her hands off it.

”If her husband says to me that he wants it back, well and good,” she said, ”but I don't give it up to n.o.body but him. Some folks I know of would be glad enough to have it.”

I was certain it was Jennie Brice's coat, but the maker's name had been ripped out. With Molly holding one arm and I the other, we took it to Mr. Ladley's door and knocked. He opened it, grumbling.

”I have asked you not to interrupt me,” he said, with his pen in his hand. His eyes fell on the coat. ”What's that?” he asked, changing color.

”I think it's Mrs. Ladley's fur coat,” I said.

He stood there looking at it and thinking. Then: ”It can't be hers,”

he said. ”She wore hers when she went away.”

”Perhaps she dropped it in the water.”

He looked at me and smiled. ”And why would she do that?” he asked mockingly. ”Was it out of fas.h.i.+on?”

”That's Mrs. Ladley's coat,” I persisted, but Molly Maguire jerked it from me and started away. He stood there looking at me and smiling in his nasty way.

”This excitement is telling on you, Mrs. Pitman,” he said coolly.

”You're too emotional for detective work.” Then he went in and shut the door.

When I went down-stairs, Molly Maguire was waiting in the kitchen, and had the audacity to ask me if I thought the coat needed a new lining!

It was on Monday evening that the strangest event in years happened to me. I went to my sister's house! And the fact that I was admitted at a side entrance made it even stranger. It happened in this way:

Supper was over, and I was cleaning up, when an automobile came to the door. It was Alma's car. The chauffeur gave me a note:

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