“When she was telling us what Molloy had said about the Siamese she took pains both times she said ‘my husband’ to show that she meant Richter.”
“So? Well—”
The whispering in the far corner had been getting louder, so that the s ’s had become sharp hisses. Now a clear emphatic sentence came from Rihter’s mouth.
“I’ll be damned if I will!”
Both of them looked furtively over their shoulders, and they lowered their voices again, but not for long. The woman was apparently trying to persuade him to do something. He kept shaking his head. He put a hand on her arm. She pushed it away, and kept on whispering.
He said aloud, deliberately:
“Go ahead, if you want to be a fool. It’s your neck. I didn’t put the knife in him.”
She jumped away from him, her eyes black blazes in a white face. O’Gar and I moved softly toward them.
“You rat!” she spat at Richter, and spun to face us.
“I killed him!” she cried. “This thing in the chair tried to and—”
Richter swung the hickory stick.
I jumped for it—missed—crashed into the back of his chair. Hickory stick, Richter, chair, and I sprawled together on the floor. The corporal helped me up. He and I picked Richter up and put him on the davenport again.
The woman’s story poured out of her angry mouth: