“She didn’t hear anything the doctor said to the woman, but through the closed door she heard the woman’s voice now and then—a high and anguished voice, apparently pleading. Most of the words were lost upon the nurse, but she heard one coherent sentence. ‘Please! Please!’ she heard the woman cry, ‘Don’t turn me away!’ The woman was with Dr. Estep for about fifteen minutes, and left sobbing into a handkerchief. Dr. Estep said nothing about the caller either to his nurse or to his wife, who didn’t learn of it until after his death.
“The next day, toward evening, while the nurse was putting on her hat and coat preparatory to leaving for home, Dr. Estep came out of his office, with his hat on and a letter in his hand. The nurse saw that his face was pale—‘white as my uniform,’ she says—and he walked with the care of one who takes pains to keep from staggering.
“She asked him if he was ill. ‘Oh, it’s nothing!’ he told her. ‘I’ll be all right in a very few minutes.’ Then he went on out. The nurse left the house just behind him, and saw him drop the letter he had carried into the mailbox on the corner, after which he returned to the house.
“ Mrs. Estep, coming downstairs ten minutes later—it couldn’t have been any later than that—heard, just as she reached the first floor, the sound of a shot from her husband’s office. She rushed into it, meeting nobody. Her husband stood by his desk, swaying, with a hole in his right temple and a smoking revolver in his hand. Just as she reached him and put her arms around him, he fell across the desk—dead.”
“Anybody else—any of the servants, for instance—able to say that Mrs. Estep didn’t go to the office until after the shot?” I asked.
The attorney shook his head sharply.
“No, damn it! That’s where the rub comes in!”