A woman's debt

by William Le Queux

He marched back into his own room, and Rosabelle went to hers to think over what this action of her uncle’s meant. It was evident he attached considerable significance to that letter which was only to be delivered into Mrs. Morrice’s hands. What was he going to do with it? Well, it did not much matter. He knew enough now, and in a very short time the bolt would fall, according to what Lane had told her.

Morrice had made up his mind what to do with it. Never in his life had he opened correspondence not intended for his perusal; never again, he hoped, would he be forced to resort to such a mean action. But everything was fair now; it was justifiable to meet cunning with cunning, duplicity with corresponding duplicity.

He opened that letter with the sure instinct that it would be of help to him, and he was not deceived. There was no address and no signature. Evidently the handwriting was too well known to Mrs. Morrice to require either. It was very brief; but even if he had not known what he already did, it would have revealed to him a great portion of what he had lately learned.

“A young man has been to see me, says he is not a professional detective, and doesn’t look like one, but very keen. Wanted to get out of me all about your early life. Of course, he got nothing. The worst is he seems to know something about Archie, knows that I brought him up. Be on your guard; I am afraid trouble is brewing.”

He put this damaging missive in his pocket along with the anonymous letter, and presently went up to his wife’s room to await her return to the home which, he had resolved, should no longer shelter a woman who had deceived him so grossly. He guessed at once the writer of this warning note—it could be none other than Alma Buckley, the friend of her youth. The reference to her having brought up the man known as Archie Brookes proved that beyond the possibility of doubt.

How long it seemed before the minutes passed and the door opened to admit the familiar figure! Preoccupied with her own thoughts, Mrs. Morrice hardly looked at her husband as she advanced to give him the perfunctory kiss which is one of the courtesies of a placid and unemotional married life.

But when he drew back with a gesture of something like repugnance from the proffered caress, she noted for the first time the terrible expression on his face, and was overcome with a deadly fear.

“What is the matter? Why are you looking like that?” she gasped in a trembling voice.

Consumed inwardly with fury as Morrice was, he exercised great control over himself. He knew that he would put himself at a disadvantage if he stormed and raged; he must overwhelm this wretched woman with the pitiless logic of the facts he had accumulated. He must act the part of the pitiless judge rather than that of the impassioned advocate.

He advanced to the door and turned the key, then came back to her and pointed to a chair. There was a cold and studied deliberation about his movements that filled her guilty soul with a fearful terror.