She sank into a chair half laughing and yet with an introverted expression—“recueillement d’esprit,” he thought to himself, bitterly. Brushing her hair in passing lightly with his lips, he left the room and presently the house. When she discovered that he had gone without again seeing her, she flew to the telephone and held a long incoherent talk with some one she not infrequently called “Ben, dear,” to whom she confided certain undefined fears about her husband and her future. A suggestion of a trip to Europe from the other end of the telephone met with her unbounded gratitude and enthusiasm. After urging haste, she left the colloquy almost her old smiling self, and went to the library, where she did not continue the reading of Boswell’s “Life of Johnson,” but went thence directly to the reception room—into which Robert had peered before leaving the house—and, stooping, she drew from under the lounge many sheets of paper, and was soon lost in their perusal.
Robert had been forced to wait until he was settled on the train for Washington before he found time to read the note whose possession had caused Helen such perturbation. It was evidently the middle page of a letter, a single sheet, note size, torn from a pad. The handwriting was unquestionably masculine, entirely unfamiliar to Penn, hurried and full of what Helen would have called—temperament.
After one glance, the blood rushed to his head, and his hot eyes devoured again and again these words:
Since our interview yesterday, and in regard to that irresistible scene of the blue stockings, I am not willing to let it drop.
However, I should like to suggest abbreviation, and I fear I shall have to ask you to change the shade to a dull bluish gray. If you will come to my office in the morning, I feel sure we can soon arrange a climax which shall embody your own wishes and mine. As to the effect—the after-effect—of her husband’s death on H. P.’s character, attention will be diverted from that by the previous gossip about——
And there it ended.
The initials, H. P.—Helen Penn—were the tacks that fastened conviction to Robert’s consciousness; conviction of an intrigue of long standing and unspeakable familiarities—all these verbal obscurities were only too sickeningly familiar to him, fresh from the Perry letters—but here was more!
Apparently a coolly plotted murder—one ray of light only his eyes clung to—the “climax” was yet in limine!
In a well-built city house the insertion of a latchkey and opening of a front door between ten and eleven o’clock at night are noises easily covered by the urban roar of even one of the lateral streets of a great city. Robert entered and closed the door with—he assured himself—no greater minimum of noise than is instinctive toward midnight with even a sober married man. Among all the emotions which had seethed through his mind during the past few hours, a reaction was at that moment in possession of him, in favor of his wife, who had been to him a well of sweet water through all those years. If evil was drawing near to her, why push her toward it? Surely a finer thing would be to warn and protect her, to beat down underfoot his own wounded ego and win her back!
The electric light in the hall was burning, and he went directly to the library. Touching an electric button near the door, the room was flooded with light, and there before his weary eyes, hanging over the back of his Morris chair, was—Heaven help him!—a pair of long delft-blue silk stockings! Robert’s agony was black upon him, his mind once more full of crawling, writhing suspicions; his mouth and throat were parched, his pulse beats filled the world.
Then into the silence fell Helen’s laugh from the floor above, a long peal of mirth that spoke clearly of companionship. He had not made a life study of psychic differentiation for nothing—Helen was not alone! From that instant, all pretenses were abandoned, Robert was a sleuthhound on a keen scent.