letters, which you had shown me more or less in confidence, and yet I felt a perfect cad for not warning him of his danger. It seemed abominable to have listened to such suspicions against a man, without giving him the chance to clear himself. Fortunately, he abandoned this point.
“What does the fellow want?” he went on. “What’s he think he’s going to find out? The thing’s clear enough, isn’t it?”
“Well,” I said, “to tell you the truth, Lathom, when I came to consider the thing I couldn’t help suspecting—”
“Suspecting! My God, you’ve got your beastly suspicions now. What in the devil’s name do you suspect?”
“I couldn’t help suspecting,” I went on, as steadily as I could, “that old Harrison had found out something and committed suicide.”
“Oh!” said Lathom. “Well, what if he did? The man was a ⸻” (a word which I will spare you). “The best thing he could do was to clear out from a place where he wasn’t wanted. Damn good riddance. A good thing if he did have the sense to see it.”
“That’s a pretty rotten thing to say, Lathom.”
“Don’t be such a damned hypocrite.”
“I mean it,” I said. “You’re behaving like an absolute swine. Harrison was damned decent to you, and you seem to think that just because you can paint better than he could, you are perfectly justified in seducing his wife and then accepting his hospitality and driving him to commit suicide.”
“I hadn’t anything to do with it,” he retorted, “he was all right when I left him. You ask anybody down there who saw him. He was as cheery and friendly as could be. I’m not responsible for what he did behind my back. I was in London all the time. I can prove it.”