They
ran into the house and found Wick Cutter lying on a sofa in his upstairs
bedroom, with his throat torn open, bleeding on a roll of sheets he had
placed beside his head.
"Walk in, gentlemen," he said weakly. "I am alive, you see, and competent.
You are witnesses that I have survived my wife. You will find her in her
own room. Please make your examination at once, so that there will be no
mistake."
One of the neighbors telephoned for a doctor, while the others went into
Mrs. Cutter's room. She was lying on her bed, in her nightgown and
wrapper, shot through the heart. Her husband must have come in while she
was taking her afternoon nap and shot her, holding the revolver near her
breast. Her nightgown was burned from the powder.
The horrified neighbors rushed back to Cutter. He opened his eyes and said
distinctly, "Mrs. Cutter is quite dead, gentlemen, and I am conscious. My
affairs are in order." Then, Rudolph said, "he let go and died."
On his desk the coroner found a letter, dated at five o'clock that
afternoon. It stated that he had just shot his wife; that any will she
might secretly have made would be invalid, as he survived her. He meant to
shoot himself at six o'clock and would, if he had strength, fire a shot
through the window in the hope that passers-by might come in and see him
"before life was extinct," as he wrote.
"Now, would you have thought that man had such a cruel heart?" Antonia
turned to me after the story was told.
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