"No; the last time I saw you, I didn't contemplate
it, but a good deal has happened since then. Would you care to hear?
Are you strong enough to talk?"
Oh, how I relished tantalizing him!
"I should like very exceedingly to hear," he assured me, and shifted
his position a little, so that his face was in the shadow. "The beams
of light through the shutter make my eyes to hurt," he added.
So he mistrusted himself; so he was not finding the part an easy one,
either! The thought gave me new courage, new audacity.
"You may remember," I began, "that I told you once that if I ever went
to work on the Holladay case, I'd try first to find the murderess. I
succeeded in doing it the very first day."
"Ah!" he breathed. "And after the police had failed! That was, indeed,
remarkable. How did you accomplish it?"
"By the merest chance--by great good fortune. I was making a search of
the French quarter, house by house, when, on Houston Street, I came to
a restaurant, the Cafe Jourdain. A bottle of superieur set Jourdain's
tongue to wagging; I pretended I wanted a room; he dropped a word, the
merest hint; and, in the end, I got the whole story. It seems there
was not only one woman, there were two."
"Yes?"
"Yes--and a man whose name was Betuny or Bethune, or something like
that.
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