HOW THE DEVIL TEMPTED HIM
"There, there," said the doctor; "you will be all right in a few
minutes."
The woman closed her eyes again.
"It was the shock of seeing her dead husband."
The doctor spoke this in a whisper, but the woman heard. She opened her
eyes. She spoke:
"Let me lie like this for half an hour. I shall be all right then. I--I
am subject to fainting fits."
"Certainly. We shall be in that cabin there--there, away where you see
the light. You see it? That's all right. We will leave you now, and when
you feel well enough, come in, and you shall hear all the particulars."
She moved her head. They walked away.
She shifted on her back, and the eyes in the head resting on the pillow
were fixed on the stars. She lay quiet--thinking.
Thinking what to do; or what had happened; how to escape; of the mistake
she had made, and whether it would bear bad fruit.
For the dead man lying in the ship's cabin was not named Depew, nor was
the living woman lying on the ship's deck named that way.
It was a case of lying right through, and she thought to herself that
she had in a measure given the show away.
So she lay thinking. The mantle of night fell gradually and cloaked
things.
Shadows were deep. She might steal off the ship in them unseen.
A boat's lantern hung at each end of the gangway, but there appeared to
be no one watching her.
There was not. It was not supposed that there was the slightest chance
of her running away.
A woman overcome by emotion as she had been does not run away from the
recently discovered body of her dead husband.
So the police argued--argued in the dark--in ignorance of the facts, and
left her in the dark in fancied possession of them.
Should she go to that cabin with the light, brave it out there, and
carry the lie on further?
Or should she steal off in the gradually growing darker night, and
escape home?
Home! Her home more than fifty miles away in the village of Oakville.
She determined to do that. Many reasons prompted her to the act.
Her husband had not been on the boat. Another man bearing his name
filled his berth.
There was trickery somewhere--but that was no novelty where her husband
was concerned. She was unprepared for it, and had made a mistake. Best
rectify it by escape.
She did. Cleared the ship without a soul noticing it.
Reached the railway station, and hid herself in a corner of the ladies'
waiting room till the Oakville train started. In that train she was
carried home.
Her real name? Todd--Susan Todd. Her husband? Josh Todd.
All that was left of the husband was in the cabin of the ship she had
left. It had traveled in two portmanteaus.
His had been a checkered career, but at last he had handed in his
checks.
How did it happen that he masqueraded before Lawyer Loide as George
Depew?
Because he was the right hand of the somewhat illiterate western farmer
who bore that name, or as he would himself have described it, his head
cook and bottle washer.
George Depew could write his name, and his caligraphic talents ended
right there. So he took for assistant Josh Todd.
Josh saw to all the correspondence, opened the letters, read and
answered them. His wife, Susan, was the house help.
Between them, they were paid well, and could have put away for the rainy
day. But providence was a thing unknown to Josh.
He put nothing away, except an excessive quantity of old Rye. On
Saturday nights he went into Oakville, and in the saloon there sat at
the table presided over by Mr. Jack Hamblin.
Jack Hamblin was generally the richer by Josh's visits.
Frequent handling of the cards had made him expert in the dealing
thereof. He usually dealt.
So Josh--as he figuratively put it--had not a feather to fly with. And
he did not like it.
There was farmer George Depew--provident man--putting by a little each
year. Not much, but sufficient for his wife and daughter, Tessie, if he
should suddenly be beckoned into the next world.
Then one day there came a letter from a London lawyer named Loide, to
George Depew.
As usual Josh opened it. He cursed the luck of Depew freely, and then
paused--paused to wonder whether he could not make that luck his own.
Susan had been with the Depews when they paid a visit to England many
years before. So Josh took counsel with the wife of his bosom, and
learned all there was to know about George.
It was a certain thing that on the other side of that wide water--which
the rapidity of our ocean grayhounds has made us come to think so
narrow--not a living soul could remember George Depew.
That determined Josh. And when he had determined he always went on.
His scheme was simplicity itself. But for lawyer Loide's fears he
probably would not have succeeded so well.
Josh told the real George Depew that he had had a little money left him
in Europe, and that his attendance the other side was necessary.
Good-hearted, honest old George congratulated him, and willingly acceded
to the request for a month's holiday.
He went into New York, bought two portmanteaus, had the initials "G. D."
painted on them, and to them transferred the contents of the bags with
which he had left the farm.
A certificate of his employer's birth, a bundle of letters directed to
him, two cables to the lawyer, a passage on the next outgoing steamer,
and he had all the voyage to think of what he could do next.
A shrewd, keen man, he at once saw through the cheating of lawyer
Loide--and handled that limb of the law accordingly.
Fear of detection blinded the lawyer; he failed to make the usual
precautionary inquiries. Conscience doth make cowards of us all.
Susan saw her husband off from New York, and she never saw him again.
She had a cable from him saying which boat he was returning by, and that
he had sent a letter to her to be called for at the New York
post-office.
She went to New York on the day the home coming steamer was to arrive,
and called for the letter sent by the preceding mail. It read:
DEAR OLD GIRL:
All's gone right, and I am as happy as a clam at high water.
There's been two hands at the grab game I've been playing,
but I've raked in the pool. Nineteen thousand English
pounds, old girl. Think of it. Reckon it up, and see what it
comes to in almighty dollars.
The property is all sold, and the proceeds will be mine in a
day or two. The lawyer here is a cute thief, but he found me
cuter. I gave him some chin music he'd never listened to
before in his natural. No bunco steerer can come it over
Josh, and don't you forget it.
I'll be back by the boat arriving on Wednesday the 13th.
I'll cable you certain, so you can come out to meet me.
No more work, old girl. Enjoyment for the future. There's
no chance of anything being found out, but all the same
we'll skip from the farm. I'm just as full of joy as I was
of Old Rye the day you saw me off.
Only one thing troubling me: that blamed old tooth of mine
at the back, that you put the cotton in, is aching like mad.
I'll just get a dentist to yank it out if I can find one to
do it without pain.--So long, old girl, your loving husband,
JOSH.
P.S.--Burn this when you've read it.
Susan did not comply with the request contained in the postscript. She
had read it when she left the post-office, and thrust it into her pocket
as she hurried to the pier.
There, the shock of the discovery that her husband was dead, and the
double shock of relief and joy to find that the dead man was not her
husband, upset her so, that she lost consciousness, and for a time the
subsequent proceedings interested her no more.
She came to herself on deck with the letter still in her pocket.
If she stayed in New York there was going to be trouble. She saw that
plainly. She must go home and wait for another cable from Josh.
So she went home. And the letter was still in her pocket.