Geraldine Bonner

“ Whitney turned to me and said in that bland society way:
"Perhaps you'll be so good, Miss Morganthau, as to tell Mr. Cokesbury of your efforts during the past week to get him on the phone."
I told him the whole thing and ended up with the story of how I fooled him about the key. And, honest to God, though I thought I was talking to a murderer, I was sorry for him.
All the life seemed to leave him and he got as haggard as an old man, with his lips shaking and the perspiration in beads on his forehead. ”

“ Only for that, Cokesbury would probably have been landed in jail weeks before, the State saved money and two innocent men saved shame and suffering.
"That's the way it is with the Devil's own," I said. "I guess he takes care of them for a while; jollies them along the downward path."
"It looks like that was the case," said Mrs. Cresset, her kind, rosy face very solemn. "But the power of evil gets broke in the end. 'Murder will out'—that's true if anything is. Think of that man feeling so safe and every hour the cords tightening round him." ”

“ If we couldn't talk to anyone else we could to each other and I guess we did more gabbing going down in the taxi and across in the boat than Mrs. Cresset had done for years. She told me about the night when Cokesbury had come to her house. It was wonderful to see how luck was with him—the way it sometimes is with sinners. Usually at that hour she was round in the kitchen and when he knocked would have opened the door and seen his face in the lamplight. ”