"And why are you showing me all this?" demanded Frank.
He looked at her out of his pale-green furtive eyes, and locked the door with a vindictive snap of the bolts.
"I'll tell you why, my gay young welcher, for we may as well understand one another, from the start. Now that Penfield's shut up his Newport place and is coolin' his heels up in Montreal for a few months, I'm runnin' this nickel-plated ranch myself. And I've got a few old scores to wipe out—some old scores between that enterprisin' husband o' yours an' myself!"
"What has he ever done to you? Why, should you want to punish him?" argued Frank, helplessly.
"I'm not goin' to punish him!" declared MacNutt, with a little laugh. "That's just where the damned fine poetic justice of the thing comes in. He's goin' to punish himself!"
CHAPTER XXI
THE PIT OF DESPAIR
Frances Durkin looked at the jeering man before her, studiously, belligerently.
"What do you mean by saying he'll punish himself?" she demanded.