Landow was out of his chair again, leaning down to the detective, his fingers digging into the ugly man’s loose muscular shoulders.
“This is horrible!” he was crying. “We’ve got to—”
The door at which the detective had looked a moment ago opened. A beautiful tall girl came through — Sara Landow. Her hair rumpled, was an auburn cloud around her white face. Her eyes were dead things. She walked slowly toward the men, her body inclined a little forward, as if against a strong wind.
“It’s no use, Hubert.” Her voice was dead as her eyes. “We may as well face it. It’s Madeline Boudin. She has found out that I killed my uncle.”
“Hush, darling, hush!” Landow caught his wife in his arms and tried to soothe her with a caressing hand on her shoulder. “You don’t know what you’re saying.”
“Oh, but I do.” She shrugged herself listlessly out of his arms and sat in the chair Alec Rush had just vacated. “It’s Madeline Boudin, you know it is. She knows I killed Uncle Jerome.”
Landow whirled to the detective, both hands going out to grip the ugly man’s arm.
“You won’t listen to what she’s saying, Rush?” he pleaded. “She hasn’t been well. She doesn’t know what she’s saying.”
Sara Landow laughed with weary bitterness.
“Haven’t been well?” she said. “No, I haven’t been well, not since I killed him. How could I be well after that? You are a detective.” Her eyes lifted their emptiness to Alec Rush. “Arrest me. I killed Jerome Falsoner.”
Alec Rush, standing arms akimbo, legs apart, scowled at her, saying nothing.
“You can’t, Rush!” Landow was tugging at the detective’s arm again. “You can’t, man. It’s ridiculous! You—”
“Where does this Madeline Boudin fit in?” Alec Rush’s harsh voice demanded. “I know she was chummy with Jerome, but why should she want your wife killed?”
Landow hesitated, shifting his feet, and when he replied it was reluctantly.
“She was Jerome’s mistress, had a child by him. My wife, when she learned of it, insisted on making her a settlement out of the estate. It was in connection with that that I went to see her yesterday.”
“Yeah. Now to get back to Jerome: you and your wife were supposed to be in her apartment at the time he was killed, if I remember right?”
Sara Landow sighed with spiritless impatience.
“Must there be all this discussion?” she asked in a small, tired voice. “I killed him. No one else killed him. No one else was there when I killed him. I stabbed him with the paper-knife when he attacked me, and he said, ‘Don’t! Don’t!’ and began to cry, down on his knees, and I ran out.”
Alec Rush looked from the girl to the man. Landow’s face was wet with perspiration, his hands were white fists, and something quivered in his chest. When he spoke his voice was as hoarse as the detective’s, if not so loud.
“Sara, will you wait here until I come back? I’m going out for a little while, possibly an hour. You’ll wait here and not do anything until I return?”
“Yes,” the girl said, neither curiosity nor interest in her voice. “But it’s no use, Hubert. I should have told you in the beginning. It’s no use.”
“Just wait for me, Sara,” he pleaded, and then bent his head to the detective’s deformed ear. “Stay with her, Rush, for God’s sake!” he whispered, and went swiftly out of the room.
The front door banged shut. An automobile purred away from the house. Alec Rush spoke to the girl.
“Where’s the phone?”
“In the next room,” she said, without looking up from the handkerchief her ringers were measuring.
The detective crossed to the door through which she had entered the room, found that it opened into a library, where a telephone stood in a corner. On the other side of the room a clock indicated three-thirty-five. The detec-
tive went to the telephone and called Ralph Millar’s office, asked for Millar, and told him:
“This is Rush. I’m at the Landows’. Come up right away.”
“But I can’t, Rush. Can’t you understand my -” “Can’t hell!” croaked Alec Rush. “Get here quick!” The young woman with dead eyes, still playing with the hem of her handkerchief, did not look up when the ugly man returned to the room. Neither of them spoke. Alec Rush, standing with his back to a window, twice took out his watch to glare savagely at it.