“Forgive me, I pray!” he was fervent. “I repent what I have done to you. I repent, I pray you—see how I pray you!—For mercy’s sake, don’t be angry with me any more! Have pity—have a heart—just tell me where my Tsuya is! That’s all I ask—I pray you!”
“Well, you ought to know; you’ve been through the place. Why ask me?—That’s none of my business.”
“Why this pretending now?—what’s the use? It doesn’t take much wits to see that you are all in on this frame-up to take my girl away somewhere. Now, don’t you see how honest and fair I have been trying to be with you? Didn’t I tell you the first thing I came that I was here after killing Santa? Not that I want to find Tsuya and work any funny idea with her; nor that I want to catch your husband and square my account with him for what he’s done against me. I’m asking you this because I want to—I must—see my Tsuya—just once again while I live—to say a goodbye to her; for, tomorrow I’m going to give myself up to the magistrate. Now, just think of this, will you?—if I have something against you people, you can’t certainly charge any wrong against me. And when this man is asking you the last wish of his life, how can you not do it? Do this for me, and I will give you a man’s word that I will never tell anything to drag you or your husband into trouble no matter what torture I may have to suffer in court.”
“Now, listen, Shin-don! I’ve listened to you how you babbled this about our frame-up, and that about dragging us into trouble, and all that stuff you just seem to know all yourself. Well, show me proof of what you talk about, I ask you! It’s perhaps that you drove yourself out of your head when you killed the man. Whatever Santa may have done is none of my man’s business. You may go on and give up yourself to the officer, or square your account with the boss, or do anything you like about it, for aught I care.”
“If you are so clean and innocent as you make yourself out to be, why won’t you tell me where she is? And where is Seiji-san gone, anyhow?”
The woman had visibly grown emboldened. It was in the attitude of defiant insolence that she faced him, her hands thrust into her bosom. Her voice was charged with icy mockery, as she said: “Where’s my husband, you ask?—He goes out every night, nowadays; you can’t expect me to keep track of him. As for Tsu-chan, she said she was going as far as Hirokoji to a show, when she went out in the early evening, taking the maids along. But seeing that she’s so late, there has happened something wrong, I presume.”
Even the while he listened to this piece of insolence from the woman, Shinsuké’s mind again took a terrible turn. “Bitch! What shall I give you for this?” he cursed her in thought. If there was to be no positive chance to wring out of her the truth, the whereabouts of Tsuya, he should not be hasty to surrender himself to justice, but stay back a month or even half a year, until he should find her. And troubled he was to think whether he could hope for his case to remain buried until such time. One thing looked certain before all else that this woman would be the one to turn in secret information against him—
Such a train of thoughts unrolled before his mind, the while Shinsuké stood there at a pause, uncertain, his eyes fixed upon the half-turned face of the woman who sat below him with one knee pulled sharply up, carelessly puffing away at her pipe, like one brazening it out with a supreme air of self-assurance.
“And is she not the wife of that man, Seiji? If she gives up her ghost for that man, I’ll be safe to take vengeance for whatever wrongs may have been done to Tsuya. That look of the woman—with her chin stuck out, so insolent and proud, so cursedly sure of herself yet not sure at all of her own life about to be ended;—humour! And only a twist round her neck, one pressing on it—and there will be nothing of her but a carcass! All that is extremely funny!”
Instantly, his mind had taken a turn that was even more positive and fierce. In the same silence, he picked up a piece of hemp rope at his feet, and as swiftly twisted it round the neck of the woman. He followed out in practice precisely that which he had conjured up to his mind.
Once the deed completed, he suddenly felt himself fagged out, exhaustion no doubt coming in the wake of all the strain he had had to bear throughout. “I am a criminal of heavy offence”; the
