"Don't do that!" he said in a dead tone. "God knows, it's hard enough to keep my hands off you as it is; but what is between you and me is not measured, or in any way altered by a brawl—and besides I cannot brawl here in this house where Mr. Marlin lies dead, and where there is already distress enough."
For a moment Captain Francis Newcombe did not speak; then abruptly he began to laugh, and, stepping over to a chair at the end of the table, flung himself nonchalantly into it.
"Upon my soul, Locke," he said coolly, "what I said at first in jest, I believe now must be true. I believe you've gone completely off your head. I'd like to hear why you think I am morally responsible for Mr. Marlin's death; and, particularly, I'd like to know what—"
"I want to get this over," said Locke, with a set face. "You are clever. If it appeals to a certain sense of morbid vanity in you, that they say all criminals possess, I grant at once that you are as clever a scoundrel, and as miserable and inhuman and unscrupulous a one, as ever blasphemed the image in which God made him."
Captain Francis Newcombe strained upward from the chair, his lips working—but Locke stood over him now and pushed him back.
"Don't get up!" he said with savage curtness. "You are going to hear more than that before I am through. I said you were clever—but your cleverness will do you no good here. This is the end, Newcombe. You took a child out of the slums of London—bought her in some unholy fashion, I imagine, from a woman named Mrs. Wickes; you sent the child out of England to America, and educated her in a school, especially selected I also imagine, where she would be brought into intimate contact with, and form her friendships amongst, the daughters of wealthy Americans of high social position. Why? In the light of what has happened, the answer is plain enough: That you might use her introduction into these homes as an entrée for yourself to further your own criminal purposes."
Locke paused.
A cold sneer had gathered on Captain Francis Newcombe's lips.
"You employed the word 'imagine' on both counts," he said. "I congratulate you."
"Quite so!" said Locke icily. "I may even employ it again. I am not imagining, however, when I say that you received a letter from Polly telling you that Mr. Marlin had half a million dollars in cash here on this island, and—"