"You—you spied!"
"I did not spy—then. I learned these things, nor does it matter how. I determined to crush this man I believed to be your lover. I determined to be rid of him once and for all. My love for you was so great that what I believed to be your guilt left me quite untouched. It was men I understood; men with whom I was accustomed to deal. I meant to deal with this man. So I set to work. I need not tell you how I tracked him down and kept him watched. It is sufficient that I knew of his visit to Deep Willows on the night in question. My plans were carefully laid. I left very little to chance. You were in the library with him, and Angus summoned you, to give you some important news he had received from me. I had arranged that. At the time the telephone bell rang I was beyond the window with the sheriff of Everton. The moment you left the room I entered it. I found this man with a bunch of money in his hand, and the safe open behind him. I had not hoped for such luck. I charged him then and there with the theft. Oh, I knew he had not stolen it. You had given it him, and it made me the more furious. I could have shot him where he stood. But it could not have been sufficient punishment. I meant to crush him.
"Then I did the crudest thing I could think of. I told him that I knew he had not stolen the money. I told him that he could clear himself of the charge by calling you into the witness box. In that way I knew that what I believed to be your shame would reach the whole world. But soon I was to see the stuff he was made of. He would not drag your name into the matter. He submitted to the charge with a simple declaration of his innocence, and I was well enough satisfied. The rest was sheriff's work. Within certain limits I knew I could buy the law, and I bought it. The case was kept out of the papers, and you were sent well away from any possibility of hearing of it. The name he was tried under, and which he clung to, helped further to disguise his identity. That night when you returned to the library, as I knew you would, you found the place in order, and the boy gone. You had no possible suspicion of what had occurred. You could have none. You remember I drove up later, as from Everton, in my automobile."
Hendrie ceased speaking. Monica remained silent. She stood quite still looking into his face as though she were striving to read all that lay behind it, trying to fathom to the very limits the primitive motives which had driven this man to the dreadful cruelty he had so readily inflicted. He had sent Frank, her boy, to a felon's prison. Sent him without one single scruple, without mercy. He had committed, besides, every base action he could have been guilty of to achieve his purpose, and all—for love of her.
She tried to think it all out clearly. She tried to see it through his eyes, but she could not. The hideousness of it all was too terrible. It was unforgivable.
At last she spoke. Her voice was hard and cold. In it Hendrie detected, he believed, the sentence her woman's heart had passed upon him.
"He must be released at once," she said, in a tone that warned him of all he had lost. "If you do not contrive this at once the world shall know the whole story—yours as well as mine."
The man made a slight movement. It was as though he had flinched before a blow in the face.
"He shall be released," he said.
"He must be released—at once." Monica's icy tone was final.