New Britain herald., 1927-04-21

0 1HAl specIer Ai'ni '"e psA's ~. NV truded at that last terrible mid
 W night meeting between Evelyn Hustler, convicted burglars wife, and George Hinkins, her dreamy, artist lover?
 In the drowsy village of Moss Side, which is a suburb of Manchester, they keep asking each other that, AS if they really expected an answer, although everybody knows the only two human beings who could answer died that night.
 Until the double tragedy, Eve Hustler was known to the kina and unquestion- ing villagers as pretty young widow of good repute.
 Hinkins was known as one of those artist chaps. Tradesmen and artisans considered him temperamental and fan ciful, if not little bit balmy. But they would have said the same thing of Gel lini or Whistler.
 Everybody knew the artist was court ing the widow" and everybody ex- pected them to marry some day.
 Several weeks ago Hinkins made late call upon his sweetheart, and they sent her little brother Eric to bed, and sat talking in the parlor for hours. In the morning, Eric tried the door and found it locked. After beating upon it and crying out ill vain, he rushed across the road to the home of the Wilson's and told them some thing was wrong.
 Wilson and his wife fnal,.' battered down the parlor door, and when they entered they found we and her lover dead on the floor, revolver, with two empty chambers, lying fev' inches from his hand There was no possibility of mistaking what had happened. He had killed the woman and then himself. Mrs Wilson remembered having heard two dull reports some time during the night.
 Mourning the demure and popular lit tic widow, her neighbors were preparing for the burial when detectives from London revealed that she was not a widow at all, but the Illegally welded wife" of Edward Hustler, former burglar and sneak thief, who is serving a long term in prison.
 At one time she helped her husband in his "profession," and narrowly escaped conviction herself when he was caught by the police.
 After his incarceration, when she was left alone and destitute, she supported herself by selling her beauty in disreput- able resorts of London and Manchester.
 Hinkins, when he "took up" with the widow of Moss Side, knew nothing of her past, or of the source of her income, those intimate with the two declare. And during the months of their association she did not enlighten him.
 But the tableau disclosed when the Wilson's battered down the parlor door of Eve Hustler's little house indicates that at the end she told him something of her story. How much and how frankly, nobody, of course, will ever know. Any more than they will know which of the tragedies that studded her
  life disgusted and discouraged Hinkins and drove him to the conclusion that life for either of them was not worth while.
 The neighbors, however, keep on speculating, for it is the problem that can never be solved that challenges the curiosity and the imagination of the true mystery lover.
 Did Hinkins rebel when he learned that the woman he loved, and hoped to marry, sold her beauty regularly in the market place?
 Did he lose hope when he found she was another mans wife?
 Did she tell him everything of her own accord, or did some false friend of hers betray her?
 Or did she, after talking it over with him, agree it would be better for both to die?