Murder in Any Degree Part 16

De Gollyer, looking over his shoulder, exclaimed:

"Quite right. Fifteen thousand, divided by one."

"It will make a difference," said Lightbody slowly. Over his face pa.s.sed an expression such as comes but once in a lifetime; a look defying a.n.a.lysis; a look that sweeps back over the past and challenges the future and always retains the secret of its judgment.

De Gollyer, drawing back slowly, allowed him a moment before saying:

"And no alimony!"

"What?"

"Free and no alimony, my boy!"

"No alimony?" said Lightbody, surprised at this new reasoning.

"A woman who runs away gets no alimony," said De Gollyer loudly. "Not here, not in the effete East!"

"I hadn't thought of that, either," said Lightbody, who, despite himself, could not repress a smile.

De Gollyer, irritated perhaps that he should have been duped into sympathy, ran on with a little vindictiveness.

"Of course that means nothing to you, dear boy. You were happy, _ideally_ happy! You adored her, didn't you?"

He paused and then, receiving no reply, continued:

"But you see, if you hadn't been so devilish lucky, so seraphically happy all these years, you might find a certain humor in the situation, mightn't you? Still, look it in the face, what have you lost, what have you left? There is something in that. Fifteen thousand a year, liberty and no alimony."

The moment had come which could no longer be evaded. Lightbody rose, turned, met the lurking malice in De Gollyer's eyes with the blank indecision screen of his own, and, turning on his heel, went to a little closet in the wall, and bore back a decanter and gla.s.ses.

"This is not what we serve on the table," he said irrelevantly. "It's whisky."

De Gollyer poured out his drink and looked at Lightbody _en connoisseur_.

"You've gone off--old--six years. You were the smartest of the old crowd, too. You certainly have gone off."

Lightbody listened, with his eyes in his gla.s.s.

"Jack, you're middle-aged--you've gone off--badly. It's. .h.i.t you hard."

There was a moment's silence and then Lightbody spoke quietly:

"Jim!"

"What is it, old boy?"

"Do you want to know the truth?"

"Come--out with it!"

Lightbody struggled a moment, all the hesitation showing in his lips.

Then he said, slowly shaking his head, never lifting his eyes, speaking as though to another:

"Jim, I've had a h.e.l.l of a time!"

"Impossible!"

"Yes."

He lifted his gla.s.s until he felt its touch against his lips and gradually set it down. "Why, Jim, in six years I've loved her so that I've never done anything I wanted to do, gone anywhere I wanted to go, drank anything I've wanted to drink, saw anything I wanted to see, wore anything I wanted to wear, smoked anything I wanted to smoke, read anything I wanted to read, or dined any one I wanted to dine! Jim, it certainly has been a _domestic_ time!"

"Good G.o.d! I can't believe it!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed De Gollyer, too astounded to indulge his sense of humor.

All at once a little fury seemed to seize Lightbody. His voice rose and his gestures became indignant.

"Married! I've been married to a policeman. Why, Jim, do you know what I've spent on myself, really spent? Not two thousand, not one thousand, not five hundred dollars a year. I've been poorer than my own clerk. I'd hate to tell you what I paid for cigars and whisky. Everything went to her, everything! And Jim--" he turned suddenly with a significant glance--"such a temper!"

"A temper? No, impossible, not that!"

"Not violent--oh, no--but firm--smiling, you know, but irresistible."

He drew a long breath charged with bitter memories and said between his teeth, rebelling: "I always agreed."

"Can it be? Is it possible?" commented De Gollyer, carefully mastering his expression.

Lightbody, on the new subject of his wrongs, now began to explode with wrath.

"And there's one thing more--one thing that hurts! You know what she eloped in? She eloped in a hat, a big red hat, three white feathers--one hundred and seventy-five dollars. I gave up a winter suit to get it."

He strode over to the grotesquely large hat-box on the slender table, and struck it with his fist.

"Came this morning. Jim, she waited for that hat! Now, that isn't right!

That isn't delicate!"

"No, by Jove, it certainly isn't delicate!"

"Domesticity! Ha!" At the moment, with only the long vision of petty tyranny before him, he could have caught her up in his hands and strangled her. "Domesticity! I've had all I want of domesticity!"

Suddenly the eternal fear awakening in him, he turned and commanded authoritatively:

"Never tell!"

"Never!"

De Gollyer, at forty-two, showed a responsive face, invincibly, gravely sympathetic, patiently awaiting his climax, knowing that nothing is so c.u.mulatively dangerous as confession.

Lightbody took up his gla.s.s and again approached it to his lips, frowning at the thought of what he had revealed. All at once a fresh impulse caught him, he put down his gla.s.s untasted, blurting out:

"Do you want to know one thing more? Do you want to know the truth, the real truth?"