“I am entitled,” he said, “to my wife’s letters. They are surely not your property, but mine.”
“I have no dispute, sir, about the property in the letter; but its contents, I suspect, belong to an unfortunate young woman now lying in prison on a charge of which I take her to be as guiltless as you are.”
“I don’t know how you propose to make that out,” said the wife.
“Nor do I, in frankness I may admit,” was my rejoinder, “yet know; but I think this letter will help me to the solution of the whole mystery of the case.”
Again it appeared to me that I must extricate the merchant and his wife from momentary difficulty by some action on my part.
“I shall,” I said, “keep this letter until next Monday, when, if you insist upon it, it shall be handed over to the magistrate; but, in strictness, I must say I think I ought to read it at once, and, if I afterwards see fit, hand it over to the prisoner’s attorney.”
“I don’t,” said Mr. Green. “You must give it up to me.”
His wife also vehemently claimed it.
“With all respect to you, sir, and to you, madam, I shall take the responsibility of detaining it.”
The husband, who all this while had been a prey to intensely painful emotion, then desired his wife to leave us alone, saying that he would manage me; and, after considerable hesitation, she did so. As she left the room I thought I could distinctly trace, in the lines of that pretty countenance, the external signs of a mind racked with the agony of crime.