He turned on the lights and began pulling out the drawers of his desk, turning over their contents with a feverish haste that increased their disorder. Presently he found what he sought: a large envelope marked “Private, W. C.” in his own hand. He slapped it on the desk to free it of dust, then tore it open and drew out a number of letters, addressed in a woman’s hand to himself, and a photograph, which he held up and scrutinized with eyes that were disagreeably hard and bright. It was not the same photograph that his father had shown at the dinner table, but it represented another view of the same head—there was no doubt of that. He studied it carefully; it seemed, indeed, to exercise a spell upon him. He recalled what Mrs. Blair had said about the eyes; but in this picture they seemed to conspire with a smile on the girl’s lips to tease and tantalize.
A number of letters that had been placed on his desk after he left the office caught his eye. One or two invitations to large social affairs he tossed into the waste-paper basket; he was only bidden now to the most general functions. He caught up an envelope bearing the legend of a New York hotel and a typewritten superscription. He tore this open, still muttering his wrath at the discarded invitations, and then sat down and read eagerly a letter in a woman’s irregular hand dated two days earlier:
“My dear Wayne:
“You wouldn’t believe I could do it, and I am not sure of it yet myself; but I wanted to prepare you before he breaks the news. There’s a whole lot to tell that I won’t bore you with—for you do hate to be bored, you crazy boy. Wayne, I’m going to marry your father! Don’t be angry—please! I know everything that you will think when you read this—but mama has driven me to it. She never forgave me for letting you go, and life with her has become intolerable. And please believe this, Wayne. I really respect and admire your father more than any man I have met, and can’t you see what it will mean to me to get away from this hideous life I have been leading? Why, Wayne, I’d rather die than go on as we have lived all these years, knocking around the world and mama raising money to keep us going in ways I can’t speak of. You know the whole story of that. I let mama think I am doing this to please her, but I am not. I am doing it to get away from her. I have made her promise to let me alone, and I will do all I can for her. She’s going abroad right after my marriage and I hate to say it of my own mother, but I hope never to see her again.
“Of course you could probably stop the marriage by telling your father how near we came to hitting it off. I have always felt that you were unjust to me in that—I really cared more for you than I knew—but that’s all over now. That was another of mama’s mistakes. She let her greed get the better of her and I suffered. But let us be good friends—shan’t we? You know more about me than anybody, Wayne—how ignorant I am, and all that. Why, I had to study hard—mama suggested it, that’s the kind of thing she can do—to learn to talk to your father about politics and philanthropy and those things. If anything should happen—if you should spoil it all, I don’t know what mama would do; but it would be something unpleasant, be sure of that. She sold everything we had to follow your father about to those small, select places he loves so well.
“I am going to try to live up to your father’s good name. I don’t believe I’m bad. I’m just a kind of featherweight; and you will be nice to me, won’t you, when I come? Your father has told me everything—about the old house and how it belongs to you. Of course you won’t run away and leave me and you will help me to hit it off with your sister, too. He says she’s a little difficult, but I know she must be interesting. As you see, I’ve taken mama’s name by her second marriage since our little affair. Explanations had grown tiresome and mama enjoys playing to the refined sensibilities of those nice people who think three marriages are not quite respectable for one woman....”
He read on to the end, through more in the same strain. He flinched at the reference to the home and to his sister, but at the close he lighted a cigarette and re-read the whole calmly.
“It was your dear mother that caught the Colonel, Addie; you are pretty and you like clothes and you know how to wear them, but you haven’t your dear mother’s strategic mind. Oh, you were a sucker, Colonel, and they took you in! You are so satisfied with your own virtue, and you are so pained by my degradation! Let’s see where you come out.”
He continued to mutter to himself as he re-folded the letter. He grinned his appreciation of the care which had caused its author to avoid the placing of any tell-tale handwriting on the envelope. “I’m a bad, bad lot, Colonel, but there are traps my poor wandering feet have not stumbled into.”
He glanced hurriedly at the packet of letters that he had found with the photograph and then thrust this latest letter in with the others and locked them all in a tin box he found in one of the drawers. When this had been disposed of he pulled the desk out from the wall and drew from a hidden cupboard in the back of it a quart bottle of whiskey and a glass. The sight of the liquor caused the craving of an hour before to seize upon him with renewed fury. He felt himself suddenly detached, alone, with nothing else in the world but himself and this bright fluid. It flashed and sparkled alluringly, causing all his senses to leap. At a gulp his blood would run with fire, and the little devils would begin to dance in his brain, and he could plan a thousand evil deeds that he was resolved to do. He was the Blotter, and a blotter was a worthless thing to be used and tossed aside by everyone as worthless. He would accept the world’s low appraisement without question, but he would take vengeance in his own fashion. He grasped the bottle, filled the glass to the brim and was about to carry it to his lips when the clerk whom he had passed in the outer office knocked sharply, and, without waiting, flung open the door.