“Or was it that you once served a term—­a very short term, cut short by a successful attempt at escape in a Minnesota prison?”

“Insults!” broke from those set lips and nothing more.

“Mr. Steele, I practised law in that state for a period of three years.  All the records of the office and of the prison register are open to me.  Over which of them should I waste my time?”

Then the tiger broke loose in the man who from the aggressor had become the attacked, and he cried: 

“I shall never answer; the devil has whispered his own suggestions in your ear; the devil and nothing else.”

But the mayor, satisfied that he made his point, smiled calmly, saying: 

“No, not the devil, but yourself.  You, even the you of seven years back, would not have lived in any country town if necessity, or let us say, safety, had not demanded it.  You, with your looks and your ambitions,—­to marry at twenty-five a girl from the kitchen! any girl, even if she had the making of an Olympia Packard, if you did not know that it was in your power to shake her off when you got ready to assert yourself, or better prospects offered?  The cipher and the desirability you expressed of a means of communication unreadable save by you two,—­all this was enough to start the suspicion; your own manner has done the rest.  Mr. Steele, you are both a villain and a bastard, and have no right in law to this woman.  Contradict me if you dare.”

“I dare, but will not,” was the violent reply.  “I shall not give you even that satisfaction.  This woman who has gone through the ceremony of marriage with both of us shall never know to which of us she is the legal wife.  Perhaps it is as good a revenge as the other.  It certainly will interfere as much with her peace.”

“Oh, oh, not that!  I can not bear that!” leaped in anguish from her lips.  “I am a pure woman, let no such torture be inflicted upon me.  Speak! tell the truth as you are the son of a woman you would have us believe honest.”

A smile then, cold but alive with gloating triumph, altered the straight line of his lips for an instant as he advanced toward the door.  “A woman over the possession of whom it is an honor to quarrel!” were his words as he passed the mayor with a bow.

I looked to see the mayor spring and grasp him by the throat, but that was left for another hand.  As the secretary bent to touch the door it suddenly flew violently open and Nixon, quivering in every limb and with his face afire, sprang in and seized upon the other with a violence of passion which would have been deadly had there been any strength behind it.

It was but child’s play for so strong a man as Mr. Steele to shake off so futile a grasp, and he did so with a rasping laugh.  But the next moment he was tottering, blanched and helpless, and while struggling to right himself and escape, yielded more and more to a sudden weakness sapping his life-vigor, till he fell prone and apparently lifeless on the lounge toward which, with a final effort, he had thrown himself.