“I felt something strike.” Peter put his hand to his side. He unbuttoned his coat and felt again. Then he pulled out a little sachet from his breast-pocket, and as e did so, a flattened bullet dropped to the floor. Peter looked into the sachet anxiously. The bullet had only gone through the lower corner of the four photographs and the glove! Peter laughed happily. “I had a gold coin in my pocket, and the bullet struck that. Who says that a luck-piece is nothing but a superstition?”
“But, Peter, shan’t we call the police?” demanded Ogden, still looking stunned.
Curlew moved towards the door.
“One moment,” said Peter, and Curlew stopped.
“Ray,” Peter continued, “I am faced with a terrible question. I want your advice?”
“What, Peter?”
“A man is trying to force me to stand aside and permit a political wrong. To do this, he threatens to publish lying affidavits of worthless scoundrels, to prove a shameful intimacy between a married woman and me.”
“Bosh,” laughed Ray. “He can publish a thousand and no one would believe them of you.”
“He knows that. But he knows, too, that no matter how untrue, it would connect her name with a subject shameful to the purest woman that ever lived. He knows that the scavengers of gossip will repeat it, and gloat over it. That the filthy society papers will harp on it for years. That in the heat of a political contest, the partisans will be only too glad to believe it and repeat it. That no criminal prosecution, no court vindication, will ever quite kill the story as regards her. And so he hopes that, rather than entail this on a woman whom I love, and on her husband and family, I will refuse a nomination. I know of such a case in Massachusetts, where, rather than expose a woman to such a danger, the man withdrew. What should I do?”
“Do? Fight him. Tell him to do his worst.”