"He was a brute," she said vindictively. "He wanted me to go back to him, and I told him I would rather die. I took a big house, and kept bachelor suites for gentlemen. Mr. Fleming lived there, and--he married me three years ago. He and Schwartz had to stand together, but they hated each other."
"Schwartz?" I meditated. "Do you happen to know if Senator Schwartz was in Plattsburg at the time of the mur--of Mr. Fleming's death?"
"He had already tried to kill him, the day we were married. He stabbed him twice, but not deep enough."
I looked at her in wonder. For this woman, not extraordinarily handsome, two men had fought and one had died--according to her story.
"I can prove everything I say," she went on rapidly. "I have letters from Mr. Fleming telling me what to do in case he was shot down; I have papers--canceled notes--that would put Schwartz in the penitentiary--that is," she said cunningly, "I did have them. Mr. Fleming took them away."
"Aren't you afraid for yourself?" I asked.
"Yes, I'm afraid--afraid he'll get me back yet. It would please him to see me crawl back on my knees."
"But--he can not force you to go back to him."
"Yes, he can," she shivered. From which I knew she had told me only a part of her story.
After all she had nothing more to tell. Fleming had been shot; Schwartz had been in the city about the Borough Bank; he had threatened Fleming before, but a political peace had been patched; Schwartz knew the White Cat. That was all.
Before she left she told me something I had not known.
"I know a lot about inside politics," she said, as she got up. "I have seen the state divided up with the roast at my table, and served around with the dessert, and I can tell you something you don't know about your White Cat. A back staircase leads to one of the up-stairs rooms, and shuts off with a locked door. It opens below, out a side entrance, not supposed to be used. Only a few know of it. Henry Butler was found dead at the foot of that staircase."
"The police said so," she replied, with her grim smile. "There is such a thing as murdering a man by driving him to suicide."
She wrote an address on a card and gave it to me.
"Just a minute," I said, as she was about to go. "Have you ever heard Mr. Fleming speak of the Misses Maitland?"