The Fighting Chance

And he went, furtively, heavy-footed, perplexed, inwardly cursing his blunder in stirring up a sleeping lioness whom he had so long mistaken for a dozing cat.

For hours he sat in his room, or paced the four walls, doubtful, chagrined, furious by turns. Once he drew out a memorandum-book and stood under a lighted sconce, studying the figures. His losses at Shotover staggered him, but he had looked to his wife heretofore in such emergencies.

Certainly the time had come for him to do something. But what?--if his wife was going to strike such attitudes in the very face of decency? Certainly a husband in these days was without honour in his own household.

His uneasiness had produced a raging thirst. He punched an electric button with his fleshy thumb, and prowled around, waiting. Nobody came; he punched again, and looked at his watch. It astonished him to find the hour was three o'clock in the morning. That discovery, however, only appeared to increase his thirst. He opened the hall door, prepared to descend into the depths of the house and raid a sideboard; and as he thrust his heavy head out into the lighted corridor his eyes fell upon two figures standing at the open door of a bedroom. One was Siward; that was plain. Who was the girl he had kissed? One of the maids? Somebody's wife? Who?

Every dull pulse began to hammer in Mortimer's head. In his excitement he stepped half-way into the corridor, then skipped nimbly back, closing his door without a sound.

"Sylvia Landis, by all that's holy!" he breathed to himself, and sat down rather suddenly on the edge of the bed.

After a while he rose and crept to the door, opened it, glued his eyes to the crack, in time to catch a glimpse of Siward entering his own corridor alone.

And that night, Mortimer, lying awake in bed, busy with schemes, became conscious of a definite idea. It took shape and matured so suddenly that it actually shocked his moral sense. Then it scared him.

"But--but that is blackmail!" he whispered aloud. "A man can't do that sort of thing. What the devil ever put it into my head? … And there are men I know--women, too--scoundrelly blackguards, who'd use that information somehow; and make it pay, too. The scoundrels!"

He squirmed down among the bedclothes with a sudden shiver; but the night had turned warm.

"Scoundrels!" he said, with milder emphasis. "Blackmailers! Contemptible pups!"

He fell asleep an hour later, muttering something incoherent about scoundrels and blackmail.

And meanwhile, in the darkened house, from all round came the noise of knocking on doors, sounds of people stirring--a low voice here and there, lights breaking out from transoms, the thud of rubber-shod heels, the rattle of cartridges from the echoing gun-room. For the guests at Shotover were awaking, lest the wet sky, whitening behind the east, ring with the whimpering wedges of wild-fowl rushing seaward over empty blinds.