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Updated: June 6, 2025
The light of the summer evening had begun to fall and the faces of the people made soft little ovals of light as they stood grouped under the dark porches or by the fences in Wilmott Street. The voices of the children had become subdued and they also stood in groups. They became silent as Mary passed and stood with upturned faces and staring eyes. "The lady doesn't live very far.
Wilmott could remember where the notes were spent. After an intellectual effort Addison remembered that he had changed one into French money at Henry's and had paid two or three to a shirt maker on the Rue de la Paix, and the rest he reflected again, and then said positively: "Why, yes, I gave five or six of them, I think there were six, I'm sure there were, because " He stopped with a new idea.
Wilmott, had wagered five or ten louis on Martinez and had shown a decided admiration for his remarkable skill with the cue. "He used to talk about this lady," said one of the markers; "he called her his 'belle Américaine, but I am sure he did not know her real name."
And now she was no longer quite one of the young people of the village, and, besides, was receiving attentions from Sawed-Off Wilmott, a little widower, who ran the cheese factory, and who could not have sung even bass if he had had all his teeth. Nevertheless, as Miss Long went about her duties she was watching eagerly for Mr. Wilmott's buggy.
"None of these people knew you really?" "No." "Not Dubois?" "Ah, Dubois knew me, of course, but Dubois is an automaton to carry out orders; he never knows what they mean. Anything else?" Coquenil thought a moment. "Oh! Did you know that private room Number Seven would not be occupied that night by Wilmott and the dancing girl?" "No." "Then how did you dare go in there?"
It was the needed word, the spark to fire the train. Paul Coquenil! Never in modern times had a Paris courtroom witnessed a scene like that which followed. Pussy Wilmott, who spent her life looking for new sensations, had one now. And Kittredge manacled in the dock, yet wildly happy! And Alice outside, almost fainting between hope and fear!
Before marrying Wilmott she had divorced two husbands, had traveled all over the world, had hunted tigers in India and canoed the breakers, native style, in Hawaii; she had lived like a cowboy on the Texas plains, where, it was said, she had worn men's clothes; she could swim and shoot and swear and love; she was altogether selfish, altogether delightful, altogether impossible; in short, she was a law unto herself, and her brilliant personality so far overshadowed Addison that, although he had the money and most of the right in their frequent quarrels, no one ever spoke of him except as "Pussy Wilmott's husband."
She had kept so much to herself that she was in fact but little known. "It is because I am the daughter of my mother," she told herself and did not walk often in the part of town where other girls of her class lived. Mary had been so often in Wilmott Street that many of the people had begun to feel acquainted with her.
"You remember whom you paid them to?" questioned the detective. "I didn't pay them to anyone," replied Wilmott, "I gave them to my wife." "Ah!" said Coquenil, and presently he took his departure with polite assurances, whereupon the unsuspecting Addison tooted away complacently for Fontainebleau.
Mary walked along the road and down the hill toward Wilmott Street. Broken bits of the story concerning her mother that had for years circulated in town had reached her ears. Her mother, it was said, had disappeared on a summer night long ago and a young town rough, who had been in the habit of loitering before Barney Smithfield's Livery Barn, had gone away with her.
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