“I’ll hear it now.” To the typewriter: “You can go. Don’t return until I ring, and tell Tom to stand in front of the door and admit no one.—Well, what is it?”
“Have you made up your mind to publish that Westchester County scandal?”
“How do you know anything about that?”
“They sent for me yesterday and besought me to use my influence with you. I am engaged to the woman’s sister.”
“The devil you are! This is bad—bad. But I can’t do anything. I paid fifteen hundred dollars for that story.”
“I know you did. If I could give you a better, would you let that go?”
“Wouldn’t I? It’s a white elephant. I thought you didn’t know me so little as to come here with sentiment. Fire away.”
“Of course you remember the Gardiner Peeles, although you never go anywhere. You went to one or two children’s parties there when you were a kid. Well, Beverly Peele died suddenly night before last, supposedly of an overdose of morphine administered by himself. Now, old Lewis, the family physician, is a great friend of mine, and likely to be communicative in his cups. Last night he dined with me, and after he was pretty well loaded told me a remarkable yarn. It seems that Mrs. Beverly had not been on good terms with her husband since the early days of their marriage, and had threatened to leave him from time to time. He treated her well, and was desperately in love with her. She, as far as is known, had nothing against him but personal dislike. She is said to have frequently expressed hatred of him in violent terms. Well, winter before last she left him, came to New York, and went to work on the ‘Day.’ The Peeles did everything to induce her to return, but she only consented to go back temporarily this summer to nurse her husband, who had been attacked with a chronic but not immediately fatal complaint. Meanwhile it seems she had fallen in love with some one, and she met him every Thursday in a wood. Jim, a stable boy, who had been brought up on the place and was devoted to Beverly Peele, watched her, but said nothing to his master, as he was cautiously waiting for some proof of criminality. On the afternoon of Peele’s death there was a tremendous scene between the lovers: young Mrs. Peele telling a furious story of her husband’s refusal to give her divorce, of his threat to have her watched, to expose her if she took a lover, and to live until ninety if he had to go abroad and live at a foreign spa. She reiterated that she hated him, and had frequently had the impulse to murder him. The lover invited her to go to Texas, and she demurred, as she disliked scandal. Jim told this story to Lewis when driving him home from the death-bed,—his own horse had cast a shoe,—and the doctor advised him to keep quiet.
“The night after the interview between the lovers—or rather the following morning—Peele died of an overdose of morphine. She says he took it himself; but it is a remarkable fact that never before—not in a single instance—had he dropped the morphine himself. He had had a nurse from the first, and when the pain was on he shook like a leaf. And yet she asserts that she did not drop it that particular night, and adds—by way of explanation—that they had had a violent quarrel and he had refused to let her wait on him. While he was dying and the others were working over him, she behaved in the most heartless manner,—deliberately went to bed in the next room and went to sleep. When Lewis awakened her, however, and told her that Peele was dead, she displayed symptoms of abject terror, and tore across the hall and locked herself in another room. Now, what do you think of it?”
Sturges’ eyes were glittering like smoked diamonds. “My God!” he cried. “That’s a grand story! a corker! I’ll have Bart Tripp, the best detective reporter in New York, up there inside of two hours. Between whiskey and gold he’ll get every fact out of the servants they’ve got. It’s worth two of the other. A young, beautiful, swagger woman accused of murdering her husband, and that husband a Peele of Peele Manor! The ‘Eye’ will be read in the very bowels of the earth.”