“Mrs. Welles, as she is known to us,” the doctor answered; “but she used to tell us that that was her maiden name, and she married a man named Mahr.  We didn’t pay much attention to what she said, of course, but she was forever begging old newspapers and pointing out any paragraphs about Mr. Victor Mahr, saying she was his wife.”

Field gazed at the ghastly pallor of the woman’s face, the maze of wrinkles and the twinkling brightness of her shifting eyes, as she stood staring about her unconcernedly.  Her glance happened upon Brencherly.  Her lips began to twitch and her hands to make signals, as if anxious to attract his attention.  She writhed toward him.

“Young man,” she whispered audibly, “they’ve got me—­I knew they would.  Even you could not keep me so hidden they couldn’t find me.”  She jerked an accusing thumb over her shoulder at the corpulent bulk of her erstwhile jailer.  “They’ve been trying to make me tell how I got out; but I won’t tell.  I may want to do it again, you see, and you won’t tell.”

“But,” said Brencherly soothingly, “you don’t want to get out now, you know.  You’ve no reason to want to get out.”

She nodded, as if considering his statement seriously.

“Of course, since I’ve got Victor out of the way, I don’t much care.  And I had awful trouble to steal enough money to get about with.  Why, I had to pick ever so many pockets, and I do hate touching people; you never can tell what germs they may have.”  She shook out her rusty black skirt as if to detach any possible contagion.

“But, why,” the incisive voice of the attorney inquired, “did you want to kill Victor Mahr?”

“Why?” she screamed, her body suddenly stiffening.  “Suppose you were his wife, and he locked you up in places, and made people call you Mrs. Welles, while he went swelling around everywhere, and making millions!  What’d you do?  And besides, it wasn’t only that, you see. I knew, being his wife, that he was a devil—­oh, yes, he was; you needn’t look as if you didn’t believe it.  But I soon learned that when I said I was ‘Mrs. Victor Mahr’ in the places he put me into, they laughed at me, the way they do at my roommate, who says she’s a sideboard and wants to hold a tea-set.”

“Tell these gentlemen how cleverly you traced him,” suggested Brencherly.

“Oh, I knew where he lived and what he was doing well enough.”  She bridled with conscious conceit; “I read the papers and I had it all written down.  So when I got out and stole the money, I knew just where to go.  But he’s foxy, too.  I knew I’d have to make him see me.  So I stole some of the doctor’s letterhead paper, and I wrote on it, ’Important news from the Institution’—­that’s what he likes to call his boarding house—­an institution.”  She laughed.  “It worked!” she went on as she regained her breath.  “I just sent that message, and they let me go right in.  ‘Well, what is it—­what is it?’ Victor said, just like that.”  Her tones of mimicry were ghastly.  She paused a moment, then broke out: