Thatcher started, blushed like a girl, and hurriedly reached for the paper.
“Nonsense. That's a mistake. A dispatch I mislaid in the envelope.”
“I see,” said the lawyer dryly.
“I thought I had torn it up,” continued Thatcher, after an awkward pause. I regret to say that here that usually truthful man elaborated a fiction. He had consulted it a dozen times a day on the journey, and it was quite worn in its enfoldings. Harlowe's quick eye had noticed this, but he speedily became interested and absorbed in the other papers. Thatcher lapsed into contemplation of the fire.
“Well,” said Harlowe, finally turning to his client, “here's enough to unseat Gashwiler, or close his mouth. As to the rest, it's good reading—but I needn't tell you—no LEGAL evidence. But it's proof enough to stop them from ever trying it again,—when the existence of this record is made known. Bribery is a hard thing to fix on a man; the only witness is naturally particeps criminis;—but it would not be easy for them to explain away this rascal's record. One or two things I don't understand: What's this opposite the Hon. X's name, 'Took the medicine nicely, and feels better?' and here, just in the margin, after Y's, 'Must be labored with?'”
“I suppose our California slang borrows largely from the medical and spiritual profession,” returned Thatcher. “But isn't it odd that a man should keep a conscientious record of his own villainy?”
Harlowe, a little abashed at his want of knowledge of American metaphor, now felt himself at home. “Well, no. It's not unusual. In one of those books yonder there is the record of a case where a man, who had committed a series of nameless atrocities, extending over a period of years, absolutely kept a memorandum of them in his pocket diary. It was produced in Court. Why, my dear fellow, one half our business arises from the fact that men and women are in the habit of keeping letters and documents that they might—I don't say, you know, that they OUGHT, that's a question of sentiment or ethics—but that they MIGHT destroy.”
Thatcher half-mechanically took the telegram of poor Carmen and threw it in the fire. Harlowe noticed the act and smiled.
“I'll venture to say, however, that there's nothing in the bag that YOU lost that need give you a moment's uneasiness. It's only your rascal or fool who carries with him that which makes him his own detective.”
“I had a friend,” continued Harlowe, “a clever fellow enough, but who was so foolish as to seriously complicate himself with a woman. He was himself the soul of honor, and at the beginning of their correspondence he proposed that they should each return the other's letters with their answer. They did so for years, but it cost him ten thousand dollars and no end of trouble after all.”