Briggs laughed contemptuously. “Put any construction on my words that you please,” and he jammed his hand over the bell on the table beside him. “But let me tell you this, once for all: Not to protect my wife or myself will I be cajoled into paying one cent. Publish your article. Do all the mischief you can!”
Miss Wing rose indignantly. “I’ll queer your election for you!” she cried, as Michael entered.
“Show this lady out, Michael,” said Briggs, quietly.
XIX
For the next ten minutes Douglas Briggs paced his study. He kept repeating to himself that what that woman had said was impossible; she had come simply to blackmail him; she had supposed him to be an easy mark. But it was strange that Helen’s discovery of his relations with West should have followed so closely the night of the ball in Washington. Could West have been so cowardly as to expose him to her? It flashed upon Briggs that on the very morning after the ball he had found Helen reading his scrapbooks. Why had she done that? What had been a merely commonplace incident now seemed significant. Was she searching those files for support of West’s charges? The idea seemed too hideous, too monstrous. For a moment Briggs had a sensation of having been accused of a crime of which he was innocent. Then he called himself a fool. West had very little respect for women, but he was altogether too experienced, too much a man of the world, to insult a woman like Helen.
The only sensible course to pursue was to ignore Miss Wing altogether. If she started the story about him it would merely add one more to the scandals already in circulation. Thus far they did not appear to hurt him very much. The chances were, however, that the woman would not dare to carry out her threat. Besides, Briggs thought with satisfaction, the increased severity of the libel laws was making newspapers more careful of what they said, even about men running for office. He was himself used to hearing similar stories about his colleagues in Washington, and he paid little attention to them. As for Helen, he decided that he would not degrade his wife even by mentioning the matter to her. He returned to his work, however, with bitterness in his mind, and when, an hour later, Helen entered the room, he looked up quickly and said:
“Oh, there’s something I want to ask you.”
He dropped his pen and scanned her face, letting his chin rest on his hands. “Why is it that you were so dead set against having Franklin West come here the other day?”
She waited, as if carefully preparing an answer. “I would rather not speak of that again, Douglas,” she said.