Evered came on; and Darrin in a voice that was like a scream warned him: “I’ll shoot!”
Evered did not stop. There was a certain dignity about the man, a certain strength. Against it Darrin seemed to rebound helplessly. Their rôles were reversed. Where Darrin had been dominant he was now weak; where Evered had been weak he was strong. The older man came on; he was within two paces. Darrin’s finger pressed the trigger—indecisively. Then Evered’s great fist whipped round like light and struck Darrin’s hand, and the pistol flew from his grip, end over end, and struck against a bowlder with a flash of sparks in the darkness. Darrin’s hand and wrist and arm were numbed by the blow; he hugged them against his body. Evered watched him, still as still. And Darrin screamed at him in a hoarse unsteady voice his black accusation.
“You killed her!” he cried. “In that black temper of yours you let the bull have her. You’re a devil on earth. Evered! You’re a devil among men!”
Evered lifted his hand, silencing the man. Darrin wished to speak and dared not. There was something terrible in the other’s demeanor, something terrible in his calm strength and purpose.
He said at last in set tones: “It was my right. She was guilty as hell!”
Darrin found courage to laugh. “You lie,” he said. “And that’s what I’m here to tell you, man. I ought to take you and give you to other men, to hang by the thick neck that holds up your evil head. But this is better, Evered. This is better. I tell you your wife, whom you killed, was as clean as snow.”
When he had spoken he was afraid, for the light in Evered’s eyes was the father of fear. He began to fumble in his coat in a desperate haste, not daring to look away, not daring to take his eyes from Evered’s. He fumbled there, and found the letter he had read beside his fire so carefully; found it and drew it, crumpled, forth. He held it toward Evered.
“Read,” he cried. “Read that, and see.”
Evered took the letter quietly; and before Darrin’s eyes the fury died in the other man. Over his face there crept a mask of sorrow irrevocable and profound. He said no word, but took the letter and opened it. The light was dim; he could not read till Darrin flashed his electric torch upon the page. A strange picture, in that moment, these two—Evered, the old and breaking man; Darrin, young and vigorous; Evered dominant, Darrin tremulously exultant; Evered, his great head bent, his unaccustomed eyes scanning the written lines; Darrin holding the light beside him.
Evered was slow in reading the letter, for in the first place it was written in his wife’s hand, and he had loved her; so that his eyes were dimmed. He was not conscious of the words he read, though they were not important. It was the message of the lines that came home to him; the unmistakable truth that lay behind them. The letter of an unhappy woman to a man whom she had found friendly and kind. She told Semler that she loved Evered; told him this so simply there could be no questioning. Would always love Evered. Bade Semler forget her, be gone, never return. Nothing but friendliness for him. Bade him not make her unhappy. And at the end, again, she wrote that she loved Evered.