The great reception arranged outside was a fiasco; the evening banquet was indefinitely postponed. Wimp had won; Grodman felt like a whipped cur.
CHAPTER XI.
"So you were right," Denzil could not help saying as he greeted Grodman a week afterward. "I shall not live to tell the story of how you discovered the Bow murderer."
"Sit down," growled Grodman; "perhaps you will after all." There was a dangerous gleam in his eyes. Denzil was sorry he had spoken.
"I sent for you," Grodman said, "to tell you that on the night Wimp arrested Mortlake I had made preparations for your arrest."
Denzil gasped, "What for?"
"My dear Denzil, there is a little law in this country invented for the confusion of the poetic. The greatest exponent of the Beautiful is only allowed the same number of wives as the greengrocer. I do not blame you for not being satisfied with Jane—she is a good servant but a bad mistress—but it was cruel to Kitty not to inform her that Jane had a prior right in you, and unjust to Jane not to let her know of the contract with Kitty."
"They both know it now well enough, curse 'em," said the poet.
"Yes; your secrets are like your situations—you can't keep them long. My poor poet, I pity you—betwixt the devil and the deep sea."