It is late. I must go to bed. Alicia's fiancé has not yet come in.
To-day arrived a letter which overshadows all else, which momentarily put even my last night's talk with Alicia in the background and aroused strange sleeping instincts of alarm, of combat, of savage alertness. The last thing I could now have expected or thought of was this letter from Pendleton. The brilliant April sun turned darker as I opened it and the warmth went out of the vernal air, turning spring back into winter. This is what I read:
DEAR RANDOLPH:
I am writing you from St. Vincent's Hospital in San Francisco. A business trip that brought me here laid me flat with typhoid, and all my money, what remained for the return trip to Kobe, is gone.
I ask you to do me the great favor of advancing me three hundred dollars. I shall be out of hospital in a week or ten days at most and I want to return at once. Immediately I get back to Kobe I shall send you a draft in repayment. You must do this for me, Randolph, as I have no one else to turn to. Unless I can get back I am stranded and my only alternative will be to beat my way back to New York, which is the last thing I want to do. Please let me hear from you by wire that you'll do this.
Faithfully,
JIM PENDLETON.
The impudent blackmailing scoundrel! His only alternative will be New York. That is his threat, and as a threat he means it. Yet I would send him the money willingly if only I were sure that he would really use it for passage to Kobe or to the devil—so long as it is far enough away. But what security have I?
Nevertheless it comes to me sadly that I shall have to take the risk and send him the money. To have Pendleton in New York again—at any cost I must take any chance to prevent that. And arrant blackmailer that he is, he understands that!
What could he do if he were here? The children? Though all minors, the two eldest are old enough to choose and I believe I am secure in my feelings as to their choice. He will not, moreover, be charging himself with the responsibility of the children, if only I seem indifferent enough as to whether he takes them or not. Alicia he is powerless to touch. Oh, I have learned something of the weapons needed to fight such a beast. But it is his hateful presence that I cannot stomach the thought of. And that he knows also. I must send him the money and take the chance that he will really return to his accustomed lairs. It will be an uneasy time for a while, nevertheless. But too much ease would now sit queerly upon my shoulders.