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 necessary that you answer to the best of your knowledge and belief.”

As is often the case with those unfamiliar with police procedure, any phrase of the law carries a certain amount of awe-inspiring command and impressed also by Hutchins' air of authority, Mrs. Gardner came down a little from her heights of inaccessibility.

“The questions regard a certain side of Mrs. Barham’s nature, which, I have reason to believe was more familiar to you than to her husband,” Hutchins began, and it pleased him to be a bit intimate, a bit confidential in his manner.

His quick intuition had told him this was a better way to get at this woman than by mere insistence. And the result proved he was right.

“Yes,” and her lips curved into a cruel smile, “we women friends of Mrs. Barham know a lot about her that her husband does not dream of.”

“Regarding her Bridge games,” suggested Hutchins.

“Yes—that is, the extent of them. Mr. Barham knew, of course, that she played—lots—but he didn’t know, I’m sure, to what lengths she went to get the money to pay her debts.”

Hutchins hated his task. He had many ungrateful duties to perform in his detective work, but the one that always most thoroughly revolted him was when he found it necessary to get damaging information against a woman from another woman. There was no escape, however, so he merely said:

“How did she get it?”

And the story that Mrs. Gardner told him was so incredible, so different from what he had expected, so much worse than the worst he had feared, that Detective Hutchins listened, heartsick and overwhelmed with sorrow