Mary sat staring at him with a look of terror.  He seemed to her like the indifferent, implacable emissary of some dark, formless power.

“But Mr. Elwell’s lawyers apparently did not take your view, since I suppose the suit was withdrawn by their advice.”

“Oh, yes, they knew he hadn’t a leg to stand on, technically.  It was when they advised him to withdraw the suit that he got desperate.  You see, he’d borrowed most of the money he lost in the Blue Star, and he was up a tree.  That’s why he shot himself when they told him he had no show.”

The horror was sweeping over Mary in great, deafening waves.

“He shot himself?  He killed himself because of that?”

“Well, he didn’t kill himself, exactly.  He dragged on two months before he died.”  Parvis emitted the statement as unemotionally as a gramophone grinding out its “record.”

“You mean that he tried to kill himself, and failed?  And tried again?”

“Oh, he didn’t have to try again,” said Parvis, grimly.

They sat opposite each other in silence, he swinging his eye-glass thoughtfully about his finger, she, motionless, her arms stretched along her knees in an attitude of rigid tension.

“But if you knew all this,” she began at length, hardly able to force her voice above a whisper, “how is it that when I wrote you at the time of my husband’s disappearance you said you didn’t understand his letter?”

Parvis received this without perceptible discomfiture.  “Why, I didn’t understand it—­strictly speaking.  And it wasn’t the time to talk about it, if I had.  The Elwell business was settled when the suit was withdrawn.  Nothing I could have told you would have helped you to find your husband.”

Mary continued to scrutinize him.  “Then why are you telling me now?”

Still Parvis did not hesitate.  “Well, to begin with, I supposed you knew more than you appear to—­I mean about the circumstances of Elwell’s death.  And then people are talking of it now; the whole matter’s been raked up again.  And I thought, if you didn’t know, you ought to.”

She remained silent, and he continued:  “You see, it’s only come out lately what a bad state Elwell’s affairs were in.  His wife’s a proud woman, and she fought on as long as she could, going out to work, and taking sewing at home, when she got too sick—­something with the heart, I believe.  But she had his bedridden mother to look after, and the children, and she broke down under it, and finally had to ask for help.  That attracted attention to the case, and the papers took it up, and a subscription was started.  Everybody out there liked Bob Elwell, and most of the prominent names in the place are down on the list, and people began to wonder why—­”

Parvis broke off to fumble in an inner pocket.  “Here,” he continued, “here’s an account of the whole thing from the ’Sentinel’—­a little sensational, of course.  But I guess you’d better look it over.”