"The story we get is that she killed herself—stabbed herself!"
Forbes gripped his head in his arms and bowed to the thunderbolts crashing about him. At length his distorted face appeared again and he demanded:
"Who was with her when she killed herself?"
"Her husband."
"Then it's a lie. She never—she wouldn't—he killed her! And it's my fault for leaving her with him. I ought to have known better. I was tempted to go back to her. I shouldn't have left her there with that—that—and now she's dead! He butchered her! I'll kill him for it. I will! He wasn't man enough to fight me—he—did you say you were a reporter?"
"Well, I'm a special writer."
Forbes' words began to roar back through his memory. He began to hear them as they would fall on a stranger's ear. Even in his frenzy he realized the danger of his madness. Talking to a reporter was like crying his thoughts aloud in Madison Square Garden. Grief, discretion, remorse, revenge, assailed him from all sides at once.
He seized Hallard by the shoulder and raged at him.
"Look here! This Philippine idea was just a trick, wasn't it, to startle me and make me forget myself? You fooled me, but you can't get away with it."
He saw his big Colt's revolver in his trunk-tray, and he thundered: