He shrugged. "That's more than I have any right to expect from you, Sophie."
His enunciation was no longer thick; it was extremely clear. His wife's lower lip trembled slightly.
"There—there isn't any way——"
He shook his head.
"I've been drinking like a fish, and thought there was. I—I'm not a murderer, Sophie. I almost was—a few minutes ago. But Beiner—just a rat who interfered with me. I—I—you deserved something decent, Sophie. You got me. I deserved something rotten, and—I got you. And didn't appreciate— Oh, well, you aren't interested. And it's too late, anyway."
He smiled debonairly. His lips, Clancy noticed, did not tremble in the least. Though she only vaguely comprehended what was going on, less she realized that, in some incomprehensible fashion, Don Carey was coming into his own, that whatever indecencies, wickednesses, had been in the man, they were leaving him now. Later on, when she analyzed the scene, she would understand that Carey had spiritually groveled before his wife, and that, though she could not love him, could not respect him, despite all the shame he had inflicted upon her, she had forgiven him. But of this there was no verbal hint. Carey turned to her.
"Insanity covers many things, Miss Deane. It would be kind of you, if you are able, to think of me as insane."
He stepped toward his wife. She shrank away from him.
"I'm not going to be banal, Sophie," he told her. "Just let me have this." From her unresisting fingers he took the revolver. He put it in his coat pocket. He shrugged his shoulders. "I've had lucid moments, even in the past week," he said, "and in one of them I knew what lay ahead. It's all written down—in the steel box up-stairs, Sophie. It—it will save any one else—from being suspected." He turned and his hand was on the door-knob.
"Don!" Sophie's voice rose in a scream. The aplomb that had been hers deserted her. Strangely, Carey seemed the dominating figure of the two, and this despite the fact that he was beaten—beaten by his wife's own sheer stark courage.