Jim put his hand on my shoulder. He knew I was ready to fight.
"Don't, Bupps!"
Suddenly he seemed to straighten into life. From the way he set his
jaw, I knew that the old courage, which had won so many cases in the
court-room, was back on the job.
"You were quite right, Helen. While I imagine your reason for not
wanting a scandal was largely selfish, yet I think that consideration
for my position was partly responsible for your return, and for that I
thank you. When you asked for a divorce the other night, I didn't
realize that your love for me was so entirely dead, or that you had
fallen so completely under this man's influence. Under the
circumstances, I shall give you a divorce, if only to keep you from
taking matters into your own hands. But I shall not do it until I have
satisfied myself that your new love is real, that the man is worthy of
it. If there is anything in Woods' life that does not bear looking
into, I'll find it out; if he has done anything in the past that is
likely to hurt you in the future, I shall know it, and you shall know
it, too, before you take this irrevocable step."
Woods flushed for a moment when Jim spoke of digging into his past, but
he laughed easily and said:
"You're getting a bit melodramatic, aren't you?"
"Better melodrama than tragedy," Jim responded bitterly.
"Helen has told you she doesn't love you, and that she does love me.
This morning she was ready to face the scandal of leaving her husband;
to go to live with me, to live openly with me, unmarried, until you
could get a divorce. That rather answers your first point, doesn't it?"
"It makes me think no better of you, that you should have agreed to
such a sacrifice."
"I never expected to win the husband's love at the same time I won his
wife's," Woods responded evenly.
Never have I seen murder shine out of a man's eyes as it did out of
Jim's at that moment. Each man measured the other across the narrow
space, and I longed that the laws of civilization might be swept aside
so that the two might tear at each other's throats, for the woman they
loved. Both men were powerful, and neither feared the other.
"As to looking up my past," Woods continued, "one might think you were
the father of the lady and I a youthful suitor. While I recognize no
right of yours to meddle in my affairs, the fact that I was sent to
America as the duly accredited agent of the French Government should
have some weight. They are not accustomed over there to hiring thugs
and cutthroats to carry on their business."
"This is all beside the point," Helen broke in. "May I ask, Jim, where
I am going to stay and what I am going to do while you are
investigating Frank's past?"
"You are going to stay here."
"Here? But where will you stay?"
"I am going to stay here with you."
Woods came around the divan. "Look here, Felderson! Can't you see
Helen doesn't love you, that you've lost--?"
"Keep back!" warned Jim huskily.
"She can't stay here with you. She's no more your wife than if she had
never married you. Do you think I'll allow her to stay in this house,
forced to endure your attentions--?"
"Who are you to say what you will or won't allow?" Jim roared, his eyes
blazing. "You came into my house as my guest and stole my most
precious possession. Get out before I kill you!"
Woods' face was white. For one minute I felt sure the two men would
settle matters then and there. Suddenly he turned and said: "Come,
Helen!"
"She stays here!" Jim cried.
Helen had arisen from the divan when the two men came together. Now
she stepped forward.
"I'm going with Frank. We came back here more for your sake than our
own. We tried to give you a chance to do the decent thing, but I might
have known you wouldn't. With all your protestations of love for me,
when I ask you to do the one thing that would show that love, the one
thing that would make me happy, you not only refuse, but you insult the
man who means everything in the world to me. If I had ever loved you
in my life, what you have just said would have made me hate you. As I
never loved you, I despise and loathe you now."
She started to pass him, but he grabbed her by the shoulders. His face
was white and drawn and his eyes were the eyes of a madman. He lifted
her up bodily and almost threw her on the divan, crying, "By God! You
stay here!"
Jim turned just as Woods rushed and with a mighty swing to the side of
the head, sent him crashing into the corner. Dazed as he was, he half
struggled to his feet, and when I saw him reach beneath his coat, I
sprang on him and wrenched the revolver from his hand.
Disheveled and half-stupefied, he rose and glared at us like an angry
bull. Slowly he straightened his tie and brushed back his hair. He
glanced over at Helen, who was sobbing on the sofa.
"Two of you--eh? A frame-up." All the hatred in the world gleamed in
his eyes, as he looked at Jim. "If you don't let Helen come to me,
Felderson, I'll kill you; so help me God, I'll kill you!" Then he
picked up his coat and hat and walked out of the room.
Jim went slowly to the door and into the hall. He looked tired and
old. I heard the outer door slam behind Frank Woods and a motor start.
Then I went out to Jim.