"Oh, Mr. Hammer," she says, "I do not kill my husband."
"Why," Ambrose says, "certainly not. By no means and not at all. But," Ambrose says, "it is most injudicious of you to permit him to rumba at his age."
"It is his own desire," Mrs. News says. "It is his method of punishing me for being late for dinner a few times. He is the most frightful rumba dancer that ever lives and he knows it is torture to me to dance with a bad rumba dancer, so he takes me out and rumbas me into a state approaching nervous exhaustion before he keels over himself. Mr. Hammer, I do not like to speak ill of the dead but my late husband really has a mean disposition. But," she says, "I do not kill him."
"Nobody says you do," Ambrose says.
"Yes," Mrs. News says, "somebody does. Do you remember me telling you about drawing the cards at Mrs. Bidkar's apartment to see who is to dispose of her husband first?"
"Oh," Ambrose says, "you mean the little joke they play on you? Yes," he says, "I remember."
"Well," Mrs. News says, "Mrs. Bidkar now says it is never a joke at all. She says it is all in earnest and claims I know it is all the time. She is around to see me last night and says I undoubtedly give my husband poison and that I must turn his insurance money into the pool when I collect it. There is quite a lot of it. Over two hundred thousand dollars, Mr. Hammer."
"Look," Ambrose says, "this is just another of Mrs. Bidkar's little jokes. She seems to have quite a sense of humor."
"No," Mrs. News says, "it is no joke. She is very serious. She says unless I turn in the money she will expose me to the world and there will be a horrible scandal and I will go to jail and not be able to collect a cent of the insurance money. She just laughs when I tell her I spill the cyanide she gives me and says if I do, I probably get more poison somewhere else and use it and that she and the others are entitled to their share of the money just the same because she furnishes the idea. Mr. Hammer, you must remember seeing me spill the cyanide."
"Mrs. N.," Ambrose says, "does anyone tell you yet that you make a lovely widow? But no matter," he says. "Yes I remember hearing you say you spill something but I do not look to see. Are you positive you do not do as Mrs. Bidkar suggests and get some other destructive substance and slip it to your husband by accident?"
Well, at this Mrs. News begins crying very loudly indeed, and Ambrose has to spend some time soothing her and I wish to state that when it comes to soothing a beautiful there are few better soothers than Ambrose Hammer on the island of Manhattan. Then when he gets her quieted down he says to her like this:
"Now," Ambrose says, "just leave everything to me. I am commencing to sniff something here. But," he says, "in the meantime remain friendly with Mrs. Bidkar. Let her think you are commencing to see things her own way. Maybe she will hold another drawing."
"Oh," Mrs. News says, "she has. She tells me the one whose name I cannot remember draws the nine of diamonds only the day before my husband departs this life. It is a long name with a kind of a foreign sound. Mrs. Bidkar says she has a lot of confidence in this one just on her looks although she does not know her intimately. I only wish I can think of the name. I have a dreadful time thinking of names. I remember yours when I happen to see it over an article in the paper the other day about Brogan Wilmington's play and then I remember, too, that you mention that he is the good-looking gentleman in the Canary Club the night we meet. Mr. Hammer," she says, "you say some very mean things about his play."
"Well," Ambrose says, "I do not know about the propriety of a beautiful in widow's weeds attending the theater, but I happen to have a couple of skulls to Wilmington's play right here in my desk and I will give them to you and you can go and see for yourself that it really is most distressing. Probably you will see Wilmington himself standing in the lobby taking bows for no reason whatever, and I hope and trust you take another close glaum at him and you will see that he is not good looking. And," Ambrose says, "I tell you once more he is a total bust at the rumba."
"Why," Mrs. News says, "I will be delighted to see his play. It may help break the monotony of being a widow, which is quite monotonous to be sure, even after a very short time. I almost miss poor Brummy in spite of his narrow views on punctuality for dinner, but please do something about Mrs. Bidkar."
Then she leaves us, and Ambrose and I gaze at the new play which seems to me to be all right but which Ambrose says is a great insult to the theater because Ambrose is very hard to please about plays, and it is some days before I see him again. Naturally, I ask him if he does anything about Mrs. News's case and Ambrose says:
"Yes," he says, "I prod around in it to some extent and I find it is an attempt at blackmail, just as I suspect. It is a most ingenious setup, at that. I look up Mrs. Smythe and Mrs. Brown and one is a chorus gorgeous by the name of Beerbaum and the other is a clerk in a Broadway lingerie shop by the name of Cooney. Neither of them is ever married as far as anybody knows. Mrs. Bidkar is originally out of Chicago and has a husband, but," Ambrose says, "nobody seems to know who he is or where he is."
"But Ambrose," I say, "how can Mrs. Smythe and Mrs. Brown enter into a deal to dispose of their husbands as Mrs. News states when they have no husbands? Is this entirely honest?"
"Why," Ambrose says, "they are stooges. You see," he says, "Mrs. Bidkar has a little moo and she rents this apartment and uses these two as trimming. Her idea is to pick up dumb beautifuls such as Mrs. News who are not too happy with their husbands and get them wedged in on such a situation as develops here, and the other two help out."
"Ambrose," I say, "do you mean to tell me this Mrs. Bidkar is so heartless as to plan to have these beautifuls she picks up chill their husbands?"
"No," Ambrose says. "This is not her plan at all. She has no idea they will actually do such a thing. But she does figure to maneuver them into entering into the spirit of what she calls a joke just as she does Mrs. News, the cocktails helping out no little. It all sounds very harmless to the married beautiful until Mrs. Bidkar comes around afterward and threatens to tell the husband that his wife is a party to a scheme of this nature. Naturally," Ambrose says, "such a wife is very eager to settle with Mrs. Bidkar for whatever she can dig up."
"Why, Ambrose," I say, "it is nothing but a shakedown, which is very old-fashioned stuff."
"Yes," Ambrose says, "it is a shake, all right. And," he says, "it makes me very sad to learn from Mrs. Smythe and Mrs. Brown, who work with Mrs. Bidkar in other cities, that many husbands must be willing to believe anything of their ever-lovings, even murder, and that the wives know it, because they always settle promptly with Mrs. Bidkar. She is a smart old broad. It is a pity she is so nefarious. Mrs. Smythe and Mrs. Brown are very grateful when they find I am not going to put them in jail," Ambrose says. "I have their phone numbers."
"Well," I say, "now there is nothing left to be done but to clap this Mrs. Bidkar in the pokey and inform Mrs. News that she can quit worrying. Why, goodness gracious, Ambrose," I say, "Mrs. Bidkar is really a great menace to be at large in a community. She ought to be filed away for life."
"Yes," Ambrose says, "what you say is quite true, but if we put her in jail it will all come out in the blats and Mrs. News cannot afford such notoriety. It may bother her in collecting her insurance. Let us go and see Mrs. Bidkar and explain to her that the best thing she can do is to hit the grit out of town."
So we get in a taxicab and go to an address in East Fifty-seventh Street that turns out to be a high-toned apartment house, and Ambrose stakes the elevator guy to a deuce and the guy takes us up to the sixth floor without going to the trouble of announcing us on the house phone first and points to a door. Then Ambrose pushes the buzzer and presently a female character appears and gazes at us in a most hospitable manner.