“You’ve taught me to be,” she retorted, blazing. “Now listen! You asked me if I’d rather have Bobbie die than write the letter, didn’t you?”
He nodded.
“Then I say ‘yes’.” She caught her breath. “We’ll both die.”
“Well, by God, you’re a cool one! Theodore’s more 313 lucky than I thought. So that’s the way you love him?”
She grew more inexplicable with each passing day.
“Poor Theodore!” murmured Morse, to break the tense silence.
“I thought it all out this morning,” explained Jinnie. “Bobbie’s awfully ill, terribly. He can’t live long anyway, and I––” A terrific sob shook her as a raging gale rends a slender flower.
Jinnie controlled her weeping that the blind child in the other room might not hear. Never had Jordan been so sorely tempted to do a good deed. Good deeds were not habitual to him, but at that moment a desire possessed him to take her in his arms, to soothe her, to restore her to Peggy and give her back to Theodore. But the murder scene in the cobbler’s shop came back with strong renewed vigor. He had gone too far, and he must have money. Molly held him in her power, and as he thought of her tightly set lips, the danger signal she had tossed at him more times than once, he crushed dead his better feeling.
“Your plan won’t work,” he said slowly. “Write the letter—I am in a hurry.”
“I will not,” she refused him once more.