lips stirred, but he held his temperate
note. "If you mean to imply that the job was not a nice one, you lay
yourself open to the retort that you proposed it. But for my part
I've never seen, I never shall see, any reason for not publishing the
letters."

"That's just it!"

"What--?"

"The certainty of your not seeing was what made me go to you. When
a man's got stolen goods to pawn he doesn't take them to the
police-station."

"Stolen?" Flamel echoed. "The letters were stolen?"

Glennard burst into a coarse laugh. "How much longer to you expect me to
keep up that pretence about the letters? You knew well enough they were
written to me."

Flamel looked at him in silence. "Were they?" he said at length. "I
didn't know it."

"And didn't suspect it, I suppose," Glennard sneered.

The other was again silent; then he said, "I may remind you that,
supposing I had felt any curiosity about the matter, I had no way of
finding out that the letters were written to you. You never showed me
the originals."

"What does that prove? There were fifty ways of finding out. It's the
kind of thing one can easily do."

Flamel glanced at him with contempt. "Our ideas probably differ as to
what a man can easily do. It would not have been easy for me."

Glennard's anger vented itself in the words uppermost in his thought.
"It may, then, interest you to hear that my wife DOES know about the
letters--has known for some months...."

"Ah," said the other, slowly. Glennard saw that, in his blind clutch at
a weapon, he had seized the one most apt to wound. Flamel's muscles were
under control, but his face showed the undefinable change produced
by the slow infiltration of poison. Every implication that the words
contained had reached its mark; but Glennard felt that their obvious
intention was lost in the anguish of what they suggested. He was sure
now that Flamel would never have betrayed him; but the inference only
made a wider outlet for his anger. He paused breathlessly for Flamel to
speak.

"If she knows, it's not through me." It was what Glennard had waited
for.

"Through you, by God? Who said it was through you? Do you suppose I
leave it to you, or to anybody else, for that matter, to keep my wife
informed of my actions? I didn't suppose even such egregious conceit as
yours could delude a man to that degree!" Struggling for a foothold in
the small landslide of his dignity, he added, in a steadier tone, "My
wife learned the