Eddy had taken a small pocket-book out of his breast pocket, and held it in his hand. He stopped suddenly, and looked at it, then at Mrs. Rowland. He was excited and pale, but yet his usual humorous look broke over his face. “No answer?” he said.
“Did I tell you my husband was from home? he ought to have returned to-day; but perhaps he has not done so. I ought also to have returned to-day. It means nothing but that he has not got home.”
“There is no answer,” Eddy said, as if explaining matters to himself, “and I will be giving myself away and no security acquired. Well, in for a penny, in for a pound,” he said. “I have got it all here, Mrs. Rowland; but you ought to give me your word that I shall not be the worse for it.”
She sat gazing at him with such uncomprehension, that he laughed aloud.
“She doesn’t understand me,” he said, “not a bit: it is not in her to understand; she has not an idea how serious it is.”
Eddy’s hands were unsteady, his little grey eyes were sparkling with a feverish fire. From his foot, which he kept shaking in nervous commotion, as he sat on the table with one leg suspended, to the mobile eyebrows, which quivered and twisted over his forehead, there was nothing still about him. He took a piece of paper on which something was written out of his pocket-book, and looked at it, holding it in his hand.
“Here it is,” he said, and his voice shook a little, though its tone was light enough. “The guilty witness. When you put this into your husband’s hands, Mrs. Rowland, he will know who forged his name. Have you a safe place to put it in, a purse or something? For, remember, I am placing my life in your hands.”
“Eddy, Eddy, you frighten me! I can’t imagine what you mean.”
“No, I know you can’t; perhaps not even when you see it will you know. But give him that, Mrs. Rowland, and he will understand.”
He held the paper a moment more, and then gave it to her. There was not a particle of colour in his sallow, small face. He sat on the corner of the table, swinging one leg, at first not looking at her, a smile on his face, which grew every moment more grey.