"'You'd better not do that,' Mrs. Withers warned her. 'I tried that once,
and he flew into a perfect rage. He was so worked up that he looked like
a crazy man, like a man who would do anything. He looked as if he might
kill me, choke me to death, anything!'"

"Did Miss Fulton answer that?"

"If she did, I didn't hear it. I just got the impression that they were
both angry and mixed up in a terrific quarrel."

"Have you ever heard anything else like that at any other time?"

"Oh, we often heard them fussing. Miss Fulton did the fussing. Mrs.
Withers was almost always gentle and calm. One other time I did hear Mrs.
Withers say she'd lent Miss Fulton all she could afford."

"When was that?"

"Some time ago--a month or six weeks ago; maybe two months."

"Money, always money," the lame man said.

He was silent, thoughtful, for several minutes.

"I'm ever so much obliged, Miss Rutgers," he said at last. "Every bit of
evidence we can get will help us--perhaps."

Miss Rutgers had risen.

"There's one other thing, Mr. Bristow," she volunteered. "There was a
man hanging around Number Five last night; rather, it was early this
morning."

"How do you know that?" His voice was at once urgent.

"Bessie--Miss Hardesty and I have our beds on the sleeping porch. Hers is
the one nearest to Number Five. She told me about it this morning. At
about one o'clock--or between one and two--she thought she heard a sloppy
footstep near the sleeping porch. At that time it was raining, but
not hard--just a fine drizzle.

"She went to the wiring that walls the sleeping porch on the end toward
Number Five, and she made out the figure of a man coming from the front
of Number Five and going toward the back fence. He had just passed the
sleeping porch. She turned on the little flashlight we keep out there and
saw him."

"Who was it? Could she make him out at all?"

"She said it was a negro."

"Did she see his face?"

"Not enough to recognize him, but enough to make her sure he was a black
man."

"She didn't try to identify him?"

"Well, she thought it was the darky Perry who does so much work in this
neighbourhood. She said she thought so because the figure of the man she
saw in the rain reminded her of Perry's general appearance."

"Did she call out to him?"

"No; and he didn't run. He just walked fast and was out of sight in a
moment. When I heard of the murder early this afternoon, I was up at the
sanitarium, and I went to