When Mackenzie came home that evening she again brought up the subject of the letter. She thought that if she dwelt upon it, showed no anxiety that it should be forgotten, her husband’s mind would be cleared of any shadow of suspicion that, unknown to himself, might be lingering in some dark corner there. Mackenzie laughed as he listened to her extravagantly expressed wonder that anyone should be base enough to lie against another person anonymously.
“I remember,” he said, “about eight years ago, when I was workin’ at the Jamaica railway, somebody write a letter about me to de manager. He didn’t sign his name, but I knew all the time who it was, an’ the manager knew it too. The man wanted me job, an’ he accuse me of robbin’ the railway’s goods an’ sellin’ them outside. But I was more than a match for him. I could account for every screw that pass through me hand. All that man ever get for his lie was to lose his job, an’ that teach him not to write letters against other people in future.”
Mackenzie had never forgotten that incident. It had much to do with his disbelief in anonymous letters.
“So it is not me alone that them try to injure,” said Susan, glad that her husband had also been attacked by an anonymous scribe. “However, I not going back to Colon.”
“That’s stupidness,” said Mackenzie. “You goin’ to make a lie trouble y’u? You must go an’ see you’ people sometimes.”
This remark was just what she wanted to hear; her husband himself had now advised her to go to Colon when she wanted! But she would not avail herself of this advice to rush off to Colon. Although her inclination was to do so, she fought against it, forcing herself to wait. Her patience and prudence were rewarded when, five days after, her sister Catherine appeared at Culebra.
CHAPTER VI
SAMUEL’S DETERMINATION
Catherine had come by one of the afternoon trains; as she had calculated, she found Susan alone.
“I bet you you don’t tell me why I come here to-day?” she said to her sister, dropping her voice as though she had an important secret to impart.
Susan expressed her inability to guess, but, with the anonymous letter always in her mind, became feverishly curious to know what had brought Catherine up to Culebra. Was some scandal about her being circulated in Colon?