“I’ll beat you—tie you—if I have to. But I mean to search that desk.”
He pulled the desk open and, disregarding the piles of documents in the pigeon-holes, rummaged through the drawers, pulling them out one by one to see if their bottoms were real. Under one of them was the usual, ridiculous, obvious “secret” drawer. It was locked; he forced it open with a paper-knife and as he did so she sprang again to prevent him. This time he hurled her away with all gentleness forgotten. And within the drawer with three or four other letters was the one he sought.
He put it in an inner pocket with hands that trembled and then turned to her.
“I’ll have you arrested,” she cried, but it was a cry of fear, not of rage.
“You’ve seen your last of me,” he returned. “And you’d better get out of town as fast as you can. I don’t know what this letter says but it’s something you’d like to keep dark. If you leave town I’ll drop the matter, unless it is something which must be seen through. If you don’t——” he paused at the door, “but why didn’t you destroy that letter?”
But the long-standing mystery of why it is hard to destroy letters remained unsolved by Mrs. Hubbell.
“I meant to,” she answered.
Without another word he left her, the letter in his hand. He went to his room and sat for a while before he opened it, terribly shaken by that familiar handwriting. It had been addressed to his rooms, and the flap of the envelope had been steamed loose, untorn. At last he read the incoherent last message of his best friend.
“Dear Jim—
“How in the name of mercy I can write what I must I don’t know. I am in hell. I thought I was in hell before when I found what Rose was. But it’s worse now. To find that I’ve put it on you publicly—to have branded you in my crazy anger as her associate is worse. And I can’t bear any more. My head is going to pieces. It’s suicide, degradation—madness. Suicide is best. But first you’ve got to have the facts and my shamed apology and my attempt at reparation. Some things I’ll have to tell you—ugly as they are. But there are women who don’t deserve the decent chivalry of men’s silence. Rose is bad. She never gave me much peace—coldness, hatred, passion—I never knew. But I loved her—a lot of me still loves her—that’s the degrading thing. I got unmistakable proofs of her infidelity. I had been away and while I was gone someone had spent the night in the house—some man. She stupidly left evidences for me to find. I found them. I suspect it wasn’t the first time but it was the first time she had been stupid. I demanded the name of the man—she wouldn’t admit anything. I fell pretty low and opened letters. There was that one from you—you spoke of the ‘good time you’d had that night.’ I was crazy, you know. Rose was vicious but she did not show especial outrage at my accusing you. She denied everything so I believed everything.