“A letter—­for Peter God—­from Josephine McCloud?” he gasped, and held out his hands.

An hour later they sat facing each other—­Peter God and Curtis.  The beginning of the scourge betrayed itself in the red flush of Peter God’s face, and the fever in his eyes.  But he was calm.  For many minutes he had spoken in a quiet, even voice, and Philip Curtis sat with scarcely a breath and a heart that at times had risen in his throat to choke him.  In his hand Peter God held the pages of the letter he had read.

Now he went on: 

“So I’m going to tell it all to you, Curtis—­because I know that you are a man.  Josephine has left nothing out.  She has told me of your love, and of the reward she has promised you—­if Peter God sends back a certain word.  She says frankly that she does not love you, but that she honors you above all men—­except her father, and one other.  That other, Curtis, is myself.  Years ago the woman you love—­was my wife.”

Peter God put a hand to his head, as if to cool the fire that was beginning to burn him up.

“Her name wasn’t Mrs. Peter God,” he went on, and a smile fought grimly on his lips.  “That’s the one thing I won’t tell you, Curtis—­my name.  The story itself will be enough.

“Perhaps there were two other people in the world happier than we.  I doubt it.  I got into politics.  I made an enemy, a deadly enemy.  He was a blackmailer, a thief, the head of a political ring that lived on graft.  Through my efforts he was exposed, And then he laid for me—­and he got me.

“I must give him credit for doing it cleverly and completely.  He set a trap for me, and a woman helped him.  I won’t go into details.  The trap sprung, and it caught me.  Even Josephine could not be made to believe in my innocence; so cleverly was the trap set that my best friends among the newspapers could find no excuse for me.

“I have never blamed Josephine for what she did after that.  To all the world, and most of all to her, I was caught red-handed.  I knew that she loved me even as she was divorcing me.  On the day the divorce was given to her, my brain went bad.  The world turned red, and then black, and then red again.  And I—­”

Peter God paused again, with a hand to his head.

“You came up here,” said Philip, in a low voice.

“Not—­until I had seen the man who ruined me,” replied Peter God quietly.  “We were alone in his office.  I gave him a fair chance to redeem himself—­to confess what he had done.  He laughed at me, exulted over my fall, taunted me.  And so—­I killed him.”

He rose from his chair and stood swaying.  He was not excited.

“In his office, with his dead body at my feet, I wrote a note to Josephine,” he finished.  “I told her what I had done, and again I swore my innocence.  I wrote her that some day she might hear from me, but not under my right name, as the law would always be watching for me.  It was ironic that on that human cobra’s desk there lay an open Bible, open at the Book of Peter, and involuntarily I wrote the words to Josephine—­Peter god.  She has kept my secret, while the law has hunted for me.  And this—­”