“Far more awkward for you.”
“Not a bit of it. I’ve lived with my neck in the loop for eighteen years. I’m getting used to it. But you, William, with your Senatorship and high record in Wall Street—really the downfall would be terrible!”
“What can we do with her? Murder her, as you—”
“The devil take you and your parrotlike repetition of one word!” roared brother Ralph, bringing his clenched fist down on the table with a bang. “I never laid violent hands on a woman yet, whatever I may have done to men. Who has reaped the reward of my misdeeds, I’d like to know—I, an outcast and a wanderer, or you, living here like Lord Tomnoddy? None of your preaching to me, you smug Pharisee! We’re six of one and half a dozen of the other.”
When this self-proclaimed adventurer was really aroused he dropped the rough argot of the plains. His diction showed even some measure of culture.
Meiklejohn walked unsteadily to the door. He opened it. There was no one in the passage without.
“I’m sorry,” he said in a strangely subdued voice. “What do you want? What do you suggest?”
“This,” came the instant reply. “It was a piece of folly on Rachel’s part to educate the girl the way she did. You stopped the process too late. In a year or two Miss Winifred will begin to think and ask questions, if she hasn’t done so already. She must leave the East—better quit America altogether.”
“Very well. When this affair of Tower’s blows over I’ll arrange it.”
The other man seemed to be somewhat mollified. He lighted a cigarette. “That rope play was sure a mad trick,” he conceded sullenly, “but I thought you were putting the cops on my trail.”