How Many Cards?/Chapter 22

E'RE in for it now, but I don't mind telling you, Jack, that I think this is damned bad business!" Nicholas Cutter eyed his guest moodily across the dinner table. "It is infamous of the authorities to attempt to interfere with a man's amusement in his own home among friends! I tell you things are coming to a rotten state in this country! How do you know that this outrageous demand of the McCarty fellow isn't just a trick to catch us in the act?"

"Because I know him," John Cavanaugh O'Rourke declared stoutly. "He's a friend of mine from my boyhood days and he wouldn't do anything to hurt me or my wife, you can rely on that."

"A gambling scandal wouldn't affect you so much, my boy; you'd be merely one of the players, but you forget that these games have been taking place in my house and I've been the banker. It would mean ostracism, ruin to me to be hauled up in court like the keeper of a common gambling house!"

"Timmie knows that, and he is protecting you because you are a friend of mine," O'Rourke replied.

"But how about Doug Waverly? Why was that detective chap so anxious to have him here? I tell you it doesn't look good to me!"

"I don't know." A little thoughtful frown gathered on O'Rourke's forehead, but he added loyally: "Whatever his motive is, Nick, you can be sure it is only to avoid trouble for us. I wish I could be as sure of all my friends as I am of Timmie!"

"Oh, you Irish!" Cutter smiled, then he asked quickly: "But what did you mean by that?"

"Oh, nothing; forget it." O'Rourke shrugged. "I was just thinking of 'Gene Creveling, that's all. He was pretty sure of his friends, wasn't he, and yet some man broke bread with him and then shot him down in cold blood."

Cutter shuddered fastidiously and pushed back his chair.

"By Jove, you're in a cheerful mood!" he exclaimed. "I've been trying to get poor old 'Gene out of my mind all day. If he didn't kill himself, it is my opinion that we'll never know who did and there's no use being morbid about it. He has cashed in, but the game is still going on and we've got to play.—Come into the music room; I've had the piano restrung and I want you to hear the tone."

They passed from the dim, cloistered beauty of the high-ceilinged Jacobean dining-room into a larger, more lofty apartment, its walls a tracery of rich carvings that had been brought panel by panel from a Florentine palace, its chandeliers a glory of glittering crystals which were reflected in the sheen of the mosaic floor. Upon a raised platform at the farther end of the room were grouped a score or more of musical instruments of all ages, from an ancient lyre to the most modern masterpiece of the piano maker's' art, and nearly all possessed, histories which had made them coveted by museums the world over.

With an impatient gesture Cutter switched off all the lights save that which glowed from a single low lantern behind the piano and advanced to the platform, while O'Rourke dropped into a chair at its foot and gave himself up in a dreamy ecstasy to the wondrous tones which welled out beneath the master touch of his extraordinarily gifted host.

He came to himself with a start when Cutter stopped abruptly and whirled around upon the stool, exclaiming while still the notes of the final chord pulsed upon the air:

"Damn it, this McCarty has something up his sleeve! Why should he practically blackmail me into receiving him and his confounded friends to-night? If he is going to use his influence to keep us out of my mess on your account, as you are so confident he will, why doesn't he do it and not force himself on us? I don't like it, and no more does Doug. Have you seen him?"

O'Rourke nodded.

"He's like a bear with a sore head. Somebody has been poking a nose into his private affairs and I've never seen him in such a rage. I had my work cut out for me to make him realize that it was to the interest of all of us to be diplomatic to-night and extend a glad hand to our friends of the police department. He promised finally that he would come."

"Who are the other two McCarty is bringing beside Inspector Druet?" asked Cutter. "It wouldn't surprise me to see the District Attorney and the head of the Vice Committee—"

"Oh, nothing like that!" O'Rourke laughed. "He didn't say, but I think we can safely leave the personnel of the party to his discretion.—There they are now, or Waverly!"

The muffled thud of the knocker had come faintly to their ears through the opened door and Cutter rose without a word and led the way toward the back of the house, to the glass-enclosed extension which jutted out into the yard.

No flowers bloomed here, but the rarest and most beautiful of all the objects of art with which Cutter had surrounded himself were grouped in this exquisite room like a collection of perfect jewels in a fitting casket. The rich, somber hall through which they passed served but as a background for the fairy-like brilliance which greeted them on the threshold. Myriads of soft lights shone upon world-famed paintings and were reflected in the long mirrors, gleaming back in a thousand flashing facets from the crystal and gold of the superb supper service spread out upon the long sideboard; fauteuils and cabinets of marvelous workmanship lined the walls, in strange contrast to the plain mahogany table covered with green baize and the equally severe chairs that surrounded it which occupied the center of the room and which seemed by their mere incongruity to focus the attention.

The apartment was a familiar one to O'Rourke and he stood a little to one side conversing with his host in a low tone as the old man-servant threw open the doors and admitted the visitors.

"This is a pleasure, Mr. McCarty, I assure you." Cutter advanced to the foremost of the arrivals and held out his hand. "If you had told me when you called the other day that you were a devotee of our national indoor game I would have gladly extended an invitation to you to join us any time. We play quite frequently, you know."

McCarty's eyes twinkled with amusement at the audacity of his host, but he turned with grave dignity to present his companions.

"This is Inspector Druet, Mr. Cutter, and an old friend of mine, Dennis Riordan, who is not connected with the Force. Mr. Terhune I'm thinking you know."

"We have met," Mr. Cutter acknowledged somewhat wryly as he shook hands. "I am glad to welcome you, gentlemen; you know Mr. O'Rourke, I think."

McCarty drew the latter gentleman aside under cover of the general conversation which immediately followed and asked:

"Where is Mr. Waverly?"

"He promised to be here, and I expect him any minute." O'Rourke looked at the other quizzically. "Say, do you know anything about what made him so angry to-day?"

"Was he upset like?" McCarty grinned.

"I thought he'd have a fit! You warned me over the 'phone that he would be in a bad humor, you know, and I thought you must be at the bottom of it. I don't mind telling you, Timmie, that Cutter doesn't half like the idea of this little party to-night; he is afraid you are up to some trick, but I assured him that you wouldn't try anything of that sort on a friend of mine."

There was a rising inflection in his tone as though he were asking a question and McCarty responded to it gravely.

"It is a trick, in a way, sir, and I'm bound to admit it, but it has nothing to do with the games that's been going on here. 'Tis a more serious matter, entirely, and this was the only way to come at the truth."

"'A more serious matter'?" O'Rourke repeated. "Good God, you don't mean anything to do with Creveling's death?"

McCarty nodded slowly.

"I'm telling you this in strict confidence, sir, not only because it's your due since you helped us arrange this little party, but because I want you to sit tight and say or do nothing no matter what is said or done that you might take exception to. You'll realize that we've a purpose behind it all and wait till we can explain more fully." He paused and added in a still lower but most impressive tone: "You see, we know who killed Mr. Creveling, but we don't know why. Waverly does, and it's the last link we need in the chain against the guilty person. We've got to get the truth out of him even if it takes a hell of a scare to make him come across. You understand?"

"Yes, I think I do, Timmie, but was it necessary to drag us all in?" There was infinite reproach and chagrin in O'Rourke's tones.

"'Tis to keep you all out of anything further that I've asked you all to be here to-night," McCarty responded. "Waverly'll get the scare here, but he'll do his explaining afterwards, in private, and it'll let the rest out that's here. I'm keeping my promise to you and doing whatever's in my power to prevent trouble from coming to all of you."

"'Evening, everybody. Have I kept the game waiting?"

They all turned with one accord to the door, to find Douglas Waverly standing on the threshold. He appeared composed and tried to smile, but a faint, mottled flush was visible upon his flabby countenance and the veins on his forehead stood out like whipcords. Nodding with cool assurance to McCarty he acknowledged the introduction to the others civilly enough and turned to the baize-covered table where Cutter had already seated himself and was busily engaged in stacking up the ivory chips.

The latter looked up with a smile of welcome which quickly changed tb a look of concern.

"Hello, Doug! Anything the matter? You look a little seedy. You're not ill, are you?"

Waverly shook his head but one pudgy hand went to the left breast of his shirt front.

"Just a touch of the old trouble, but it's been giving me some rotten twinges to-day," he admitted. "I'll be all right, of course; I've been running the old engine too long on high, I expect.—What's the limit to-night? We'll have to pike, I suppose."

"Sit beside me, sir, on my left," McCarty said in a hurried undertone to O'Rourke as they all moved toward the table.

The latter glanced at him in surprise, but obeyed without comment, his eyes wandering to the others as they took their places. Dennis Riordan marched to the chair at his other side, next to that of Cutter, while Terhune in turn seated himself on Cutter's left and Inspector Druet on McCarty's right, leaving the only vacant chair between himself and the criminologist. Waverly looked about him, shrugged and, pulling out the chair, dropped into it. As he did so his face twitched for an instant and his hand went again to his heart.

"Ten-dollar limit, gentlemen." Cutter raised his eyes. "Is that agreeable?"

Dennis shot an agonized glance at McCarty, but met with an answering one which made him quail and add a hurried assent to those of the rest. The game began. It went slowly at first, O'Rourke taking the first jack-pot on three queens, with two of which he had opened. McCarty eyed Waverly curiously as the latter fumbled clumsily with the cards in dealing; the fat man was breathing heavily and his voice had seemed thicker than on their first meeting. Had he fortified himself for the evening by an over-indulgent incursion into his private stock, or was he laboring still under the agitation of which O'Rourke had spoken?

As he laid down the pack to take up his hand the door behind them opened once more and a high-pitched ripple of laughter came to their ears with a little hysterical note running through it.

"That stupid Gregory tried to keep me out, Nickie—Oh!" Mrs. Baillie Kip, in an evening gown which displayed her full-blown form to perfection, paused in seeming confusion on the threshold.

"Mrs. Kip!" Cutter left his place as the others rose and advanced quickly toward her. "This is an unexpected pleasure! I—we—you see—!"

"Tell him to let her stay!" McCarty whispered in a hasty aside to O'Rourke, and passing Cutter bowed before her.

"Good evening, Mrs. Kip. You've not forgotten me?"

"Mr. McCarty." She laid an icy hand in his for a moment. "I had no idea that you were a friend of Mr. Cutter's, nor that I was intruding upon a stag affair. I understood that Mrs. Waverly would be here this evening and I fancied that some of the other ladies were coming."

"Won't you stay, anyway?" Cutter drew away from O'Rourke and flashed a strange glance at McCarty, who returned it with an almost imperceptible nod. "This is quite an impromptu affair or we should have telephoned to you and Mrs. O'Rourke and the rest, but it really doesn't matter. Choose one of us to chaperone you, and join us, do."

"We-ell." Mrs. Kip flushed and dropped her eyes. "I wouldn't think of intruding in the game, but if you are quite sure I shall not be in the way, I might be persuaded to look on for a little while. I know it is horribly unconventional but I was bored to tears at home."

She came slowly forward and Cutter presented Terhune, the inspector and Dennis Riordan in turn. McCarty observed that after greeting the criminologist her eyes passed swiftly to those of the inspector as though seeming not to see the man who stood between and she turned with unmistakable relief to bow to Dennis, who was gaping at her in fatuous admiration.

O'Rourke, at a gesture from McCarty, had drawn a chair up behind his own and to the right of that of the fireman, and he patted it invitingly.

"Come and give me luck, Mrs. Kip," he begged. "I won the first pot but that was because you were already almost here, I am convinced of it!"

Mrs. Kip smiled in acquiescence and made a laughing rejoinder, but she seated herself with obvious reluctance, for she was directly across the table from Waverly and could no longer attempt to avoid the gaze he bent upon her. It was a curious mingling of warning and questioning and before it her color ebbed but she held her head high.

The rest seated themselves and the game was resumed. All passed until Dennis was reached when that individual suddenly became galvanized into life and opened for three dollars. Cutter stayed, and Inspector Druet and O'Rourke, but the rest dropped and McCarty sat back in his chair, studying the faces about the table.

O'Rourke seemed intent upon his cards, Mrs. Kip was looking down at her tightly locked fingers, Dennis was preoccupied and Cutter inscrutable; Terhune, too, leaned back with a detached, slightly bored air, Waverly chewed sullenly upon his unlighted cigar and Inspector Druet moved restlessly in his chair while over all of them a nameless suspense brooded, a tensity as of relentless bands tightening about them.

It was slightly leavened when Dennis with naïve glee raked in the pot on a bluff and proudly displayed his opening pair of aces.

"Gad, I'm thirsty!" Waverly ran a fat finger around his collar as though it were choking him. "Tell Gregory to get some water, will you, old man?"

The man-servant was at his elbow in an instant with a slender crystal carafe and glass upon a mirror-lined tray, and the inspector made room for it between them as he picked up the cards to deal. Waverly drank deep and cleared his throat, but his voice seemed thicker than ever as he addressed a remark to their host.

McCarty looked down at the cards in Inspector Druet's hands.

"Odd design, aren't they?" Cutter had followed his gaze from across the table. "They were made especially for me in Austria some years ago, and I laid in a good supply. I must have a hundred or more fresh packs identical to them lying around the house."

"I've never seen any just like them." McCarty studied the grotesque pattern picked out in green and purple and gold upon the backs of those he held in his hand, and then raised his eyes to Cutter's. "They must have cost a lot of money?"

"I've forgotten. I believe I paid around twenty-five dollars a pack for them," the other responded absently. "You couldn't get them now at any price, of course."

"Think of that now!" marveled McCarty. "I lost a hundred and sixty-five dollars one night on a trip from Kansas City to Milwaukee and the deck I played with only cost fifty cents."

"If you're opening, Mac, say the word!" Dennis admonished, emboldened by his recent coup. "You're holding up the game."

Waverly's chair creaked, Mrs. Kip dropped her gloves and retrieved them quickly before O'Rourke could stoop for them and even Cutter stirred in his seat. The tensity which for a moment had lightened descended again with almost tangible force and the hand was played out in a strained silence broken only by the monosyllabic utterances of the bettors.

Waverly won with a full house but his only comment was a grunt. The mottled flush had deepened on his face and a pulse throbbed perceptibly in his temple.

It was McCarty's deal and as he picked up the cards Dennis drew a deep, convulsive breath as one about to plunge into cold water and started a lengthy post mortem about his last hand which strangely enough seemed suddenly to interest Terhune and the inspector, also. They promptly took issue with him and as the discussion waxed one of McCarty's hands stole in a lightning movement to his pocket and back to the deck of cards which he held just at the edge of the table.

He proffered them to Inspector Druet, who cut gravely, and as he started to deal the argument died down as swiftly as it had arisen. Mrs. Kip stiffened suddenly and Terhune, glancing across at her, followed her gaze to the man at his side. Waverly's head had fallen forward on his thick neck and his chin lay in folds over his collar.

"Your cards, Mr. Waverly." Terhune touched his arm.

"Pardon," Waverly mumbled, jerking his head back. "Confoundedly hot in here! Cutter, old man, you needn't be afraid of a ray of light or a breath of air now; we have the majesty of the law on our side!"

He grinned lopsidedly up at Inspector Druet as McCarty picked up his hand and scrutinized it. He held the seven, eight, nine and ten of clubs and the eight of hearts.

"Who opens?"

"I'm by." O'Rourke regarded his hand critically and Dennis reluctantly threw down his cards.

"I'll open it." Cutter pushed three chips into the center of the table. "Anybody with me?"

"I will—er—trail." Terhune followed suit.

"Same here." Waverly drew a stertorous breath.

"Nothing stirring." Inspector Druet relinquished his hand and sat back.

"Raise you five, Mr. Cutter," McCarty remarked.

"I know when I've had enough." O'Rourke dropped his cards upon the table.

"Little action at last, eh?" Cutter smiled and shoved ten chips forward. "Right back at you, Mr. McCarty!"

"I will drop," said Terhune. "The psychology of success in cards as in all things—"

"I'm staying right with—you—both," Waverly breathed rapidly. "Only we—three—in it?"

McCarty nodded.

"How many cards?" he asked.

Before Cutter could reply Waverly's head fell forward again and his great body seemed to slump in his chair. He had thrown one card aside and the pudgy hand holding the remaining four dropped inertly on the table.

"Not any, thanks; I'll play these." Cutter spoke with cold annoyance and his eyes turned once more to Waverly, who, he was now convinced, had been indulging too copiously in stimulants, just as the latter crumpled forward in his chair and his head with the flabby, twisted face turned sidewise toward the Inspector and McCarty, and rested upon the table.

For an instant they all sat spellbound and McCarty darted a swift, keen glance at the strangely relaxed form and the unclouded surface of the mirror-lined tray which those gross, half-parted lips all but touched.

No breath issued from them! McCarty held his own as the startling fact surged through his consciousness, and watched the surface of the tray with straining eyes. It remained undimmed, and there was no slightest stir of that bulky mound of inert flesh!

Great God in Heaven! A reverential awe went up with that silent cry from McCarty's heart and a pæan of thankfulness and swift-rising exultation. That which but a moment before had been a man was now but a thing an inanimate substance incapable forever more of betrayal, for out of his body with the passing of life had gone the secret which would always have imperiled McCarty's plan! It had not been accident, not the normal result of his own evil passions and dissipation which had stilled the heart in that gross body, but the hand of God Himself that had been laid upon it, and miraculously the way lay clear before McCarty to a solution of which he had not even dreamed.

Alive, Waverly had been a menace but dead he was priceless! The others did not yet realize the situation and McCarty gathered his forces for the greatest coup of his career.

"One card, Mr. Waverly!" he cried and at the ringing quality of his tone an electrified start ran around the table. "There is your card, your lucky card, but you lose with it now! It is stained with the blood of the man you killed! I arrest you, in the name of the law, for the murder of Eugene Creveling!"

As he thundered the accusation to dead ears, to clay, he had slipped quickly from the bottom of the deck the nine of diamonds which, torn and blood-stained, he had found beneath the strip of tapestry on the table beside the body of Creveling and now he flung it down before that which had been Douglas Waverly.

A moment of silence followed his denunciation and then a stifled shriek from Mrs. Kip broke the hideous tension and O'Rourke leaped to his feet.

"Waverly!" he cried. "For God's sake, Waverly!"

"So that was the game, the real game!" Cutter kicked his chair aside. "Doug, do you hear this maniac? Sit up and answer him, or by Heaven—!"

"Wait!" Terhune had bent forward even as Inspector Druet placed his hands upon the shoulders of that inert figure, and together they raised it once more to an erect position. The head fell back, revealing a face suffused with purplish blue, the close-set eyes half-open and glazing in a fixed stare, the chin dropped hideously. Mrs. Kip shrieked again and covered her own eyes, and Terhune exclaimed:

"The man is dead!"

The others crowded about and Inspector Druet pressed his ear for a moment against the wide expanse of shirt bosom. When he raised his head they read confirmation in his eyes even before he spoke.

"Mr. Terhune is right," he said solemnly. "We were just a little too late!"

Mrs. Kip dropped her hands and her eyes, dark and wide, gazed straight into those of McCarty. The next moment she fell back limply in her chair.

"I've just one thing to say to you gentlemen, and a decision I'm going, with the permission of the inspector, to leave to you." McCarty stood on the hearth-rug in the sumptuous library where he had been received on his first visit to the house and surveyed Cutter and O'Rourke, who, with Terhune, Inspector Druet and the still dazed Dennis, were grouped before him.

It was an hour later. Mrs. Kip, hysterical and fainting, had been sent to her home in the capable care of Cutter's buxom housekeeper, and back in that dark, silent room where the last game had been played to a tragic finish an immovable figure lay stretched upon a fauteuil beneath a pagan prayer rug.

"A decision?" Cutter raised his eyebrows. "It looks very much as though you had taken things into your own hands. Waverly was my friend. He's gone and he cannot answer your charges, but in his place I should like to know what grounds you have for them. That, at least, you owe me since you chose to stage your farce in my house!"

"It was hardly straight cricket, you know, Timmie!" O'Rourke spoke in a shocked, strained tone. "I don't believe, though, that you're the sort of man to make an accusation like that unless you thought you could substantiate it."

"Thank you, sir." McCarty shot a grateful glance at him and then squared his broad shoulders. "We can prove that Douglas Waverly had a quarrel with Eugene Creveling in that gentleman's own house at a late little supper about a fortnight ago, and we have a witness who listened to it. The two of them are dead now, but you both know them of old; do I need to say what that quarrel was about in a general way, though no names were mentioned? Waverly threatened Creveling then and they've not spoken to each other since. If you'll look back, you'll both recall what happened in this very house a week ago to-night; how Creveling threw down his cards and left the game when Waverly came. Can either of you remember one occasion when they have talked friendly together in the last fortnight?"

There was silence while Cutter and O'Rourke looked at each other and then McCarty resumed:

"I can go back further than that if it's necessary; I can show you the root of that quarrel months ago, and the jealousy and all that branched out of it, but 'tis best buried with the two of them. Last Thursday something happened between them that brought things to a crisis. We'll never know what it was, perhaps, but we can guess. Creveling invited Waverly to come to his house that night and have it out and Waverly accepted."

"But look here!" O'Rourke interrupted. "Creveling went down to Broadmead, to Waverly's country place over the week-end ten days ago; he wouldn't have done that unless they were on speaking terms, at least."

"But Waverly himself wasn't there," McCarty replied. "Ask Mrs. Waverly if you like; I did, over the telephone this afternoon, and she said business had kept her husband in town. Waverly must have thought for some reason that Creveling had given him the slip, early on Thursday evening, for he tore into the Cosmopolitan Club like a mad bull looking for him, but Creveling 'phoned to him not to be late, that he was expecting him at half-past twelve. Waverly must have had it all planned out what he meant to do, but he sent for his car then and drove all around town, waiting for the time to come. Have either of you noticed in the last few days the fresh-scarred curbstone in front of the Creveling house? Waverly bent his mud-guard and twisted his axle scraping against it when he finally drew up at the place.

"There's no use going into what happened between them then, for we'll never know that either, but they made a farce of eating supper together and then the quarrel was renewed in the library. For some reason Waverly flaunted that card in front of Creveling—the nine of diamonds that I handed him back an hour ago—and then the end came.

"Waverly must have left the house as if the fiends were after him then and driven around like mad until nearly morning. We've a witness who can testify to his distraught condition when he brought his car back to the garage and that there was blood on him. When I questioned him later at the Belterre Hotel—where he tried at first to say he'd been all night, though I'd seen him go in myself not half an hour before—he gave me another alibi and the name of a man who could prove it, and it was only late last night I found out from a third party that the man had lied and he admitted it. I needn't go any further, gentlemen; that's our case and we can prove every step of the way."

For a moment after he had finished there was silence and then O'Rourke passed a shaking hand across his brow.

"Great God!" he groaned. "It seems incredible! I can't believe it of Waverly, and yet—! What do you say, Nick?"

"I don't know what to say!" the other responded. "I never thought it would come to that between them, but we all know Waverly's violent, uncontrollable temper; how he beat that hunting mare of his to death with an iron trace chain! It would be like him, granted sufficient real or fancied justification, to go about revenge in a bull-headed rage without counting the cost. God, it's horrible!—But you said a decision rested with us? What decision?"

"Just this, sir. I told Mr. O'Rourke over the 'phone to-day that we'd got wind of certain things down at headquarters; we had, but not what he thought. I told him to-night that I wanted to scare Mr. Waverly into telling me what he knew of the motive for the murder of Mr. Creveling." McCarty smiled to himself as he added: "I didn't tell, though, that I intended to let Waverly see that we knew the truth and make him confess! I said that I was here to do whatever was in my power to keep trouble from coming to all of you and I'm still, here for that purpose, but we've others to consider now—two women."

"Mrs. Kip—?" O'Rourke asked in a low voice.

"No, she'll never speak. I meant Mrs. Creveling and Mrs. Waverly. We've a great opportunity straight from Providence! Mr. Waverly died of heart disease or a stroke at the card table; we'll let the doctor have his way about that when we call him in. Was Creveling murdered or did he kill himself? That is the question that we in this room have got to answer to the world."

"Gad, I never thought of that!" O'Rourke sprang from his chair. "You wanted Waverly to speak, Timmie, but you'd have a hell of a time finding anything out from him now! We've got a chance to hush everything up and no one need ever know! Poor little Stella Waverly will be spared this crowning disgrace, after all the indignities he has heaped on her for years—!"

"And Mrs. Creveling?" McCarty interrupted. "There's one that'll have to be told, Mr. O'Rourke. Aside from it being her right to know, she'll never rest until she finds out the truth and in her search for it she might drag in innocent people and dig up things that are far better left buried."

"If you tell her you might as well tell the world!" Cutter shrugged again. "Her sense of justice won't be satisfied till she cries Waverly's name from the house-tops when she knows why they quarreled!"

"She'll go after the—the cause of that quarrel, too, tooth and nail, and though you couldn't blame her, I must say my sympathies are with Mrs. Waverly, for she's the weaker of the two. It would be one thing to live down the fact that your husband had committed suicide and another to have his memory branded as a murderer!"

"What if we were to tell Mrs. Creveling the truth and persuade her to keep it a secret forever, for the sake of the other woman who would suffer needlessly?" McCarty urged. "We could tell her the truth about the manner of her husband's death, but the cause—! Gentlemen, they quarreled over a game of cards!"