Page:More lives than one.djvu/192



“But you’d like to forget it! You’d like to sever it! You wish I’d go away and live by myself.”

“I don’t admit that—but let’s not discuss it now. Mr. Hutchins is here on business, I think. Perhaps you will leave us alone for a little”

“That I won’t! And have you cook up some scheme by which the crime will be glossed over and forgotten, and the mystery of Maddy’s death will never be solved.”

Hutchins broke in then with a definite determination.

“Mrs. Selden,” he said, “if you will let me, I will give you an idea of what the police have done and are doing.”

“Are there any new developments?” Barham asked.

“There are,” Hutchins replied. And then, seeing no reason Mrs. Selden shouldn’t know the details as well as Barham himself, Hutchins told the whole story of the scarab.

He told of the mysterious note Charley had received, asking him to find the “lucky piece.” He told of Charley’s futile search, and subsequent call on the detective for help. He told of Charley’s description of seeing Pearl Jane bending over Mrs. Barham and taking something from her hand.

Andrew Barham listened with an inscrutable face and immovable countenance. He sat with folded arms, his eyes intently fixed on Hutchins’s face.

Mrs. Selden, on the contrary, was nervous and excited. She said little, for, when she interrupted, Hutchins peremptorily bade her be silent.

Also, she, too, was deeply interested. She twisted her handkerchief until it was a mere wisp, she picked at her gown, and she now and then broke into weeping.

But Barham didn’t look at her. He sat listening to Hutchins, saying no word, but seeming like a man in a trance.