“You called her what?”
“I said, ‘Mrs. Glendenning, your husband is looking for you.’ I had come right up behind them, and they hadn’t heard me, and of course both were very much startled. Glendenning turned round and shouted, ‘What do you mean by that, you scoundrel?’ and caught me by the throat. She instantly sprang between us, pushing him toward the stern of the boat, and me against the wheelhouse. “‘Hush, hush,’ she whispered; ‘you mean, Mr. Howard, that my husband is there, do you not?’
“‘Yes,’ I answered, ‘and he will be here in a moment unless you come with me.’ With that she said ‘Good night, Mr. Glendenning,’ and took my arm, and he, like a thief, slunk away round the other side of the wheelhouse. I was very much agitated. I suppose I acted like a fool when we met the captain, didn’t I?”
“You did,” I answered; “go on.”
“Well, Mrs. Tremain saw that, and she laughed at me, although I could see she was rather disturbed herself.”
Some time that night we touched at Queenstown, and next evening we were in Liverpool. When the inevitable explosion came, I have no means of knowing, and this, as I have said before, is a story without a conclusion.
Mrs. Tremain the next day was as bright and jolly as ever, and the last time I saw her, she was smiling over her shoulder at Glendenning, and not paying the slightest attention to either her husband on whose arm she hung, or to young Howard, who was hovering near.
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“The quick must haste to vengeance taste,
For time is on his head;
But he can wait at the door of fate,
Though the stay be long and the hour be late—
The dead.”
Melville Hardlock stood in the centre of the room with his feet wide apart and his hands in his trousers pockets, a characteristic attitude of his. He gave a quick glance at the door, and saw with relief that the key was in the lock, and that the bolt prevented anybody coming in unexpectedly. Then he gazed once more at the body of his friend, which lay in such a helpless-looking attitude upon the floor. He looked at the body with a feeling of mild curiosity, and wondered what there was about the lines of the figure on the floor that so certainly betokened death rather than sleep, even though the face was turned away from him. He thought, perhaps, it might be the hand with its back to the floor and its palm towards the ceiling; there was a certain look of hopelessness about that. He resolved to investigate the subject some time when he had leisure. Then his thoughts turned towards the subject of murder. It was so easy to kill, he felt no pride in having been able to accomplish that much. But it was not everybody who could escape the consequences of his crime. It required an acute brain to plan after events so that shrewd detectives would be baffled. There was a complacent conceit about Melville Hardlock, which was as much a part of him as his intense selfishness, and this conceit led him to believe that the future path he had outlined for himself would not be followed by justice.