“ ‘You’ll have to tell me a bit more,’ I encouraged her, and bit by bit, a word here and another there, I got the story out of her. It was what I’d begun to expect — blackmail — and for the commonest of reasons where a woman’s concerned.
“ ‘It’s wicked,’ she kept saying, ‘simply wicked that I should be tortured like this, just because I was a fool for a little time.’
“I could see at a glance it wasn’t any good telling her that life doesn’t play a bit fair, and that lots of people are tortured for being a fool for less than an hour. Some of these murderers, for instance, who’re driven half-crazy before they strike. But she wasn’t the type of woman to appreciate a point like that, so I just let it go and asked her to tell me what was wrong. It was an ordinary enough affair. She’d got playing about with some young fellow while her husband was away, and now the chap was making trouble. Well, that’s quite a common position, too, though I knew she wouldn’t believe me if I told her.
“ ‘He’s trying to get money out of me,’ she went on in an incredulous sort of voice, as if she despaired of making me believe in the existence of such a monster. ‘I’ve told him again and again that it’s no good — I haven’t got the money — but he says I can get it out of my husband. Which, of course, is just what I can’t do. As it is, he’s beginning to complain of my extravagance, says I never used to ask for extras like this, and do I think he’s made of money? I’ve sold all my jewelry, and pretended it’s being reset, but I shan’t be able to keep up that pretense for long, and when Harry finds out he’ll start making inquiries, and everything will be ruined.’
“ ‘You haven’t thought of telling your husband?’ I suggested, and I thought she was going to faint dead away.
“ ‘He’d kill me,’ she said simply. ‘And though sometimes I feel I wouldn’t mind being dead, I couldn’t bear to think of him being hanged because I’d been a fool.’ She admitted that quite frankly. This fellow — she referred to him as Gerald — had just been a diversion. She was young and not bad-looking, and like a lot of young pretty women she’d got into a mess as soon as her husband took his eye off her. But she insisted that it was Harry who mattered.
“ ‘He’s real,’ she said. ‘Gerald was only a game. I never meant any harm.’
“I sometimes wonder,” added Field in parentheses, “whether some of these women would do worse if they meant to play the devil generally. Most likely not, seeing the way women are. Well, she’d tried to shake this fellow off, but he was sticking closer than a brother, asking for more and more money.
“ ‘Have you got any of his letters?’ I asked her, and she said she hadn’t, but if I wanted one there were sure to be more and she’d bring one along.
“ ‘He never wrote the other kind,’ she went on, ‘though I used to write pages to him. He’s kept all those, and he’s making me buy them back. The worst — I mean, the ones that Harry would think the worst — are the most expensive. I don’t feel as though there were enough money in the world to pay for them.’
“I was sorry for her, of course, but I don’t mind telling you I was a bit disappointed too. Just at first, when she began, I’d got an idea she might be one of those cases that do a fellow a bit of good. These domestic blackmails don’t get you anywhere. I asked her the usual things — how long had she been giving this Gerald money — and she said: ‘Six months. And I can’t give him any more. But lately he’s begun to torture me in a new way. He follows me when I’m out; he hangs around the house, so that the servants must notice him. The other day, when my husband and I were walking together, he came across the street towards us. I thought he was going to speak to me. I think he just wanted my husband to notice him, to warn me that he would have no mercy. He’s cruel and wicked.’
“I asked her for Gerald’s full name, and she hesitated.
“ ‘I don’t want him to find out I’ve come to you,’ she said.
“ ‘Your best plan will be to suggest a rendezvous next time he asks for money,’ I told her. ‘Meet him there, and we’ll catch him red-handed.’
“She looked horrified. ‘I couldn’t. My husband might find out.’
“I thought that most probable, but she wouldn’t hear of making a clean breast of it. She wasn’t afraid of a divorce — there would be no question of that, she said — but her life would cease to be worth living.
“ ‘It would be just a prison for the rest of my days,’ she assured me. ‘And he would turn our child against me. I will never, never do anything wrong again, but somehow you must frighten this man away without Harry finding out.’
“I couldn’t argue about her husband, of course; there are men like that, taking a pride in cutting off their noses to spite their faces, and go about mutilated forever afterwards.
“ ‘If you won’t tell your husband and you won’t give me this man’s name, what do you expect us to do?’ I wanted to know.
“She said she didn’t really know, but that sometimes she thought she’d kill herself.
“ ‘I shouldn’t do that,’ I warned her. ‘But if you should be in earnest, don’t come and tell the police about it first. It’s a criminal offense, see? And you’d be making me accessory before the fact.’
“But it was easy to see she didn’t care about that. I could be sent to prison for five years and she wouldn’t even notice it. Any more than she wanted to proceed formally against this chap who was bleeding her white.
“ ‘You ought to think of the community,’ I told her. ‘Why, he may be sucking another lady’s blood at this minute.’
“She tossed her head. ‘That’s nothing to do with me. And, anyway, he isn’t. Because he’s been following me about ever since I left my house this morning. That’s why I came in here, because I thought it was the one place where he wouldn’t dare show his face. Even he wouldn’t be brazen enough to storm a police station.’
“Outside the door someone whistled, and then a very tall man, dark and clean-shaven, walked in; he had those deep blue eyes you see in some Irish families, and when he saw the lady he began to laugh.
“ ‘So this is where you got to,’ he said. ‘I must hand it to you for nerve. Putting your head into the lion’s mouth and trusting to his British chivalry not to snap.’
“She stood up; she was a tiny little thing, really, and for a minute I thought she was going to faint. She leaned against my shoulder and one hand clutched my arm. But when I said I’d fetch her a glass of water, she said No, it was all right, she didn’t want anything, I wasn’t to go.
“ ‘I’ve been telling the police about you,’ she told the newcomer defiantly.
“He only laughed again. ‘Tell me,’ he urged. ‘I always like to learn.’
“ ‘The officer says you could get seven years.’
“I gasped a bit, because I hadn’t said that, though it might be true. It depends on the judge.
“The man threw back his head and roared with laughter. ‘That’s a good one,’ he said, ‘but you always were fine at telling the tale. All right, Sergeant, go ahead. Make your arrest. Incidentally, you might let me know the charge. That is, if you know it yourself.’
“I said in a wooden sort of voice: ‘This lady wishes to charge you with blackmail,’ and instead of laughing again he turned to my companion and remarked in a soft sort of voice: ‘So I’m a blackmailer, am I? I will say, Fanny, you do think up good stories. How much have I had off you?’
“I was beginning to feel uncommonly foolish; if this lady had been hazing me it might put me a long way back with my superiors if the truth came out, but before I could speak the woman he called Fanny went on in indignant tones: ‘You can’t deny you’ve been following me about all the morning...’