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taken a considerable beating already, is that it? Shall we forget that angle for a moment? Your husband has made a will which seems to be aimed at clearing his name of the taint of murder, posthumously. That proves he still loves you.”
    “It—it does?” Natalie looked doubtful.
    “Of course. He wants to have you remember him as an innocent man, as he may well be. But the time to do something about it is now, not after the execution. This is an unusual situation and requires unusual measures, of which I have a complete set or so the Inspector often tells me. To come right down to cases, steps have to be taken—and you have to help. You can’t just sit here and wash your hands of the man you married.”
    “Why, I—”
    “And I have an idea that, even while you refused to stand by your husband at the trial, you still must have cared enough about him to pay his lawyers—or else he wouldn’t have $3500 left in his bank account after the costs of the trial and appeal. Wasn’t that because you still had a sneaking fondness for him?”
    The woman dropped into a chair, soft and helpless as an opened oyster. She nodded slowly. “Yes,” she whispered, “I arranged for his defense. It was a firm who used to represent my first husband, Emil Fogel.” Her eyes flickered toward the portrait on the wall. “He manufactured cotter pins, you know. I still think the lawyers did their best for Andy, but he was a very noncooperative client. Anyway, I did all I could for him, just as any woman would have.”
    “But you didn’t show up to sit beside him at the trial, even though the lawyers must have told you that it might help him considerably. You kept aloof from him all through his ordeal—”
    Natalie cried, in a tortured voice, “But he had told me that girl meant nothing to him, that she was only a client, and all the time—” She gulped. “All the time they were having secret trysts right here in our—in my house, where we’d been so happy!”
    “My dear woman,” said Miss Withers, “a man may be a liar and a philanderer, but still be innocent of murder.”
    There was a silence so complete that the schoolteacher could hear Talley’s soft snoring beside her foot, and the ticking of a little ormolu clock across the room. Then Natalie Rowan drew a deep shuddering breath, like someone about to dive off the high board into cold water. “I know he’s innocent,” she whispered. “ Now .”
    “So that’s why you went up to the prison to see him? How splendid!” cried Miss Withers cheerily. “Now at long last we have something to go on. If you’ve run across anything in the line of proof—”
    Natalie hesitated, looking across the room. “I’m afraid it isn’t anything the police, or even you, would take any stock in.”
    “Don’t be too sure,” said Miss Withers, still confident. “In my time I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.” Then she added, as the other woman stared at her blankly, “That’s from Alice .”
    “Miss Withers, do you believe in the Hereafter?” Natalie asked suddenly.
    “Why—as a member in good standing of the Parkway Unitarian Church, I suppose I must, though I couldn’t offer scientific proof of the fact.”
    “I mean, do you believe in the supernormal, the supernatural as some call it?”
    “Oh, come come! In this day and age, with extrasensory perception and flying saucers and H-bombs, where is one to draw the line? Please come to the point.”
    “Well,” said Natalie, “since all this happened I’ve been dreadfully lonely and miserable. I tried all the isms and numerology and sedatives, but nothing seemed to help. Then a few months ago I remembered that a friend had told me about this wonderful little woman down on Ninety-sixth Street, called Marika. You must understand that she isn’t a medium or anything, no fakery about her. She just goes into trances and talks. And she doesn’t ever charge anything, though some people leave a