“I’m goin’ to kill her.”
“I wouldn’t if I were you. Take old Sadness’s advice and thank your stars that you’re rid of her.”
“I’m goin’ to kill her.” He paused and looked at them drowsily. Then, bracing himself up again, he broke out suddenly, “Say, d’ever tell y’ ’bout the ol’ man? He never stole that money. Know he di’n’.”
He threatened to fall asleep now, but the reporter was all alert. He scented a story.
“By Jove!” he exclaimed, “did you hear that? Bet the chap stole it himself and ’s letting the old man suffer for it. Great story, ain’t it? Come, come, wake up here. Three more, Jack. What about your father?”
“Father? Who’s father. Oh, do’ bother me. What?”
“Here, here, tell us about your father and the money. If he didn’t steal it, who did?”
“Who did? Tha’s it, who did? Ol’ man di’n’ steal it, know he di’n’.”
“Oh, let him alone, Skaggsy, he don’t know what he’s saying.”
“Yes, he does, a drunken man tells the truth.”
“In some cases,” said Sadness.
“Oh, let me alone, man. I’ve been trying for years to get a big sensation for my paper, and if this story is one, I’m a made man.”
The drink seemed to revive the young man again, and by bits Skaggs was able to pick out of him the story of his father’s arrest and conviction. At its close he relapsed into stupidity, murmuring, “She throwed me down.”
“Well,” sneered Sadness, “you see drunken men tell the truth, and you don’t seem to get much guilt out of our young friend. You’re disappointed, aren’t you?”
“I confess I am disappointed, but I’ve got an idea, just the same.”
“Oh, you have? Well, don’t handle it carelessly; it might go off.” And Sadness rose. The reporter sat thinking for a time and then followed him, leaving Joe in a drunken sleep at the table. There he lay for more than two hours. When he finally awoke, he started up as if some determination had come to him in his sleep. A part of the helplessness of his intoxication had gone, but his first act was to call for more whiskey. This he gulped down, and followed with another and another. For a while he stood still, brooding silently, his red eyes blinking at the light. Then he turned abruptly and left the club.
It was very late when he reached Hattie’s door, but he opened it with his latchkey, as he had been used to do. He stopped to help himself to a glass of brandy, as he had so often done before. Then he went directly to her room. She was a light sleeper, and his step awakened her.
“Who is it?” she cried in affright.
“It’s me.” His voice was steadier now, but grim.
“What do you want? Didn’t I tell you never to come here again? Get out or I’ll have you taken out.”
She sprang up in bed, glaring angrily at him.
His hands twitched nervously, as if her will were conquering him and he were uneasy, but he held her eye with his own.
“You put me out tonight,” he said.
“Yes, and I’m going to do it again. You’re drunk.”
She started to rise, but he took a step towards her and she paused. He looked as she had never seen him look before. His face was ashen and his eyes like fire and blood. She quailed beneath the look. He took another step towards her.
“You put me out tonight,” he repeated, “like a dog.”
His step was steady and his tone was clear, menacingly clear. She shrank back from him, back to the wall. Still his hands twitched and his eye held her. Still he crept slowly towards her, his lips working and his hands moving convulsively.
“Joe, Joe!” she said hoarsely, “what’s the matter? Oh, don’t look at me like that.”
The gown had fallen away from her breast and showed the convulsive fluttering of her heart.
He broke into a laugh, a dry, murderous laugh, and his hands sought each other while the fingers twitched over one another like coiling serpents.
“You put me out—you—you, and you made me what I am.” The realisation of what he was, of his foulness and degradation, seemed just to have come to him fully. “You made me what I am, and then you sent me away. You let me come back, and now you put me out.”
She gazed at him fascinated. She tried to scream and she could not. This was not Joe. This was not the boy that she had turned and twisted about her little finger. This was a terrible, terrible man or a monster.
He moved a step nearer her. His eyes fell to her throat. For an instant she lost their steady glare and then she found her voice. The scream was checked as it began. His fingers had closed over her throat just where the gown had left it temptingly bare. They gave it the caress of death. She struggled. They held her. Her eyes prayed to his. But his were the fire of hell. She fell back upon her pillow in silence. He had not uttered a word. He held her. Finally he flung her from him like a rag, and sank into a chair. And there the officers found him when Hattie Sterling’s disappearance had become a strange thing.
XV
“Dear, Damned, Delightful Town”
When Joe was taken, there was no spirit or feeling left in him. He moved mechanically, as if without sense or volition. The first impression he gave was that of a man overacting insanity. But this was soon removed by the very indifference with which he met everything concerned with his crime. From the very first he made no effort to exonerate or to vindicate himself. He talked little and only in a dry, stupefied way. He was as one whose soul is dead, and perhaps it was; for all the little soul of him had been wrapped up in the body of this one woman, and the stroke that
