end for it?"

The chief thought a moment.

"I'll come after it myself," he said. "I'll be up there as soon as I see
Withers. I want to talk to you about the inquest. It will be held at
eleven o'clock tomorrow morning."

"Come ahead," Bristow invited. "You'll have to be up here in this
neighbourhood anyway if you want to see Withers. He came up to Number
Five just a few minutes ago. You can catch him there."

After supper he went back to the front porch in time to see in the dusk
the white uniform and cap of a trained nurse as she came down the hill.
He surmised that she was one of the six nurses who lived in No. 7, the
house between his and that of the murdered woman. These nurses were
employed throughout the day at the big sanitarium located just over the
brow of the hill at the end of Manniston Road.

Perhaps, she could tell him what he wanted to know.

"I beg your pardon," he called to her persuasively, "but may I trouble
you to come up here for a moment?"

She obeyed the summons with slow, hesitant steps.

He pushed forward a chair for her and bowed.

"Unfortunately," he apologized, "I don't know your name."

She enlightened him: "Rutgers; Miss Emily Rutgers." In his turn, he told
her briefly of his connection with the murder.

"I was wondering," he began, "whether you had ever heard anything unusual
from Number Five."

Miss Rutgers, who was blond and too fat, had a heavy, peculiarly hoarse
voice. She wanted to be certain that he had authority to "question
people" about the case. He made that clear to her.

"Well, yes," she finally said. "Mrs. Withers and Miss Fulton quarreled a
good deal. We girls had remarked on it. And yesterday they had an awful
row. I heard some of it because it was in the middle of the day, and I
had run down here from the sanitarium to fix up the laundry we'd
forgotten early in the morning."

"What did you hear?"

"It was something about money. I didn't really try to listen, but I
couldn't help hearing some of it, they talked so loud."

"Yes?"

"I got the idea that Miss Fulton wanted to borrow some money from Mrs.
Withers for a purpose that Mrs. Withers didn't approve of. 'Well,' I
heard Mrs. Withers say after Miss Fulton had almost screamed about it,
'you can't have any more. I haven't got it. That's all there is to that.
I can't let you have it when I haven't got it!'

"Miss Fulton said something--I think it was about Mr. Withers or about
asking him for the money.