Detective Fiction Weekly. Vol. 36, No. 4, October 20, 1928

“Had you been a criminal accomplice, and he had no means of knowing that you were not, he would have played havoc. You see, I know what you did and how you did it. But I do not know why you have done this. That is what I must ask you. What is your connection with James Rindawn and with this crime? What hold over you has John Duke’s butler?”

The young woman averted her face and answered in a low voice:

“He... he is my — uncle.”

“Uncle?” This in a gasp from Grady, who had been anticipating a clandestine love complex.

“Tell your story in your own way, please,” murmured MacCray, his tone betraying neither surprise nor curiosity.

At first she spoke haltingly and with difficulty. Then, as her passionate nature asserted itself, her speech became rapid, her words became living, vital things. Her listeners were spellbound, their imaginations filling in the details about her graphic phrases.

“James Rindawn is my uncle,” she repeated. “He is not — related to Aunt Edwina here. She is my father’s half sister — he is — my mother’s own brother. Both sides of my family are New Englanders.

“My father — was supposed to have married beneath himself. He didn’t know then that Uncle Jim — my mother’s brother — was a butler. If he had — I don’t suppose it would have made any difference. Both my parents died when I was a small child, my father losing all his own and Aunt Edwina’s inheritance in bad business management. Aunt Edwina took me.

“But we would have starved if Uncle Jim had not come forward with assistance. I was too young to care, and for my sake Aunt Edwina humbled the pride of the Gilchrist and Boatwright families to accept an annuity from — from a butler.

“But this wasn’t so bad. Uncle Jim was my own relative, and he meant well. I have never been ashamed of the relationship nor of his profession,” she declared defiantly, her head lifting proudly. “It was Aunt Edwina who made a pact with him that he was never to claim relationship and never presume on the blood tie or the financial obligation. And you must not think harshly of her for that; she did it for my sake and the sake of my future.

“Thus, I went to the best schools, mingled in the society to which Aunt Edwina was accustomed, and held up my head as a Boatwright in respectable circumstances. I must say that Uncle Jim held strictly to his bargain during those early years. I have even been a guest in a home where he was in service, and he never presumed once. Oh, I felt so sorry for him and so ashamed of myself at that time. I never went back to that home.

“Then things changed. Uncle Jim showed us that steel could lie under the velvet glove. He came to us one day and informed us that he was changing masters. He was coming to Chicago with Mr. John Duke. He told us bluntly that we must come with him or he would stop his allowance. There was nothing else to do.

“But that wasn’t all. As soon as he got us here he informed me that I was nothing but a parasite and now that I was away from my silk stocking friends I was going to work and help bear the burden of our expenses. Not only that, but I was to obey his orders implicitly or he would starve us to death as well as disgrace us back in Boston.

“I didn’t mind. I was glad to be doing something. Perhaps the way he had been excluded all the years before — maybe the social gulf between him and father’s family had embittered him. At least, there has never been any great affection between us in spite of all he has done for me. Maybe it is my fault!

“Well, to go on. Uncle Jim got me my position with Judge Lethrop as an office girl. I rose to the position of private secretary through my own efforts. None of you know how hard I worked, how I struggled to succeed. And I had to fight — fight to subdue my impulsive nature and be nothing but an efficient underling.

“And now that I have made good on my own accord, that obligation of the past which I could not ignore — which is responsible for my present state of being — has reached forth and dragged me down into the mire of crime.

“My benefactor, without my knowledge, has made a criminal accomplice of me. He has forced me to betray the finest gentleman I have ever known — Judge Lethrop. Fool that I was, I paid back my obligation to him in the way that he demanded! Yes, I did all that you accuse me of!

“I did more! It was through me that James Rindawn knew all about the Crawley case though I still do not understand what that had to do with the Keene murder. I am a guilty, criminal, deceitful woman! And here at the last I turn and betray James Rindawn.

“I am a faithless, worthless Tildas who has turned against everybody in turn. Oh, God, what a useless life mine has been!”