poet.

"Yes; your secrets are like your situations--you can't keep them long.
My poor poet, I pity you--betwixt the devil and the deep sea."

"They're a pair of harpies, each holding over me the Damocles sword of
an arrest for bigamy. Neither loves me."

"I should think they would come in very useful to you. You plant one in
my house to tell my secrets to Wimp, and you plant one in Wimp's house
to tell Wimp's secrets to me, I suppose. Out with some, then."

"Upon my honor you wrong me. Jane brought me here, not I Jane. As for
Kitty, I never had such a shock in my life as at finding her installed
in Wimp's house."

"She thought it safer to have the law handy for your arrest. Besides,
she probably desired to occupy a parallel position to Jane's. She must
do something for a living; you wouldn't do anything for hers. And so you
couldn't go anywhere without meeting a wife! Ha! ha! ha! Serve you
right, my polygamous poet."

"But why should you arrest me?"

"Revenge, Denzil. I have been the best friend you ever had in this cold,
prosaic world. You have eaten my bread, drunk my claret, written my
book, smoked my cigars, and pocketed my money. And yet, when you have an
important piece of information bearing on a mystery about which I am
thinking day and night, you calmly go and sell it to Wimp."

"I did-didn't," stammered Denzil.

"Liar! Do you think Kitty has any secrets from me? As soon as I
discovered your two marriages I determined to have you arrested
for--your treachery. But when I found you had, as I thought, put Wimp on
the wrong scent, when I felt sure that by arresting Mortlake he was
going to make a greater ass of himself than even nature had been able to
do, then I forgave you. I let you walk about the earth--and
drink--freely. Now it is Wimp who crows--everybody pats him on the
back--they call him the mystery man of the Scotland-Yard tribe. Poor Tom
Mortlake will be hanged, and all through your telling Wimp about Jessie
Dymond!"

"It was you yourself," said Denzil sullenly. "Everybody was giving it
up. But you said 'Let us find out all that Arthur Constant did in the
last few months of his life.' Wimp couldn't miss stumbling on Jessie
sooner or later. I'd have throttled Constant, if I had known he'd
touched her," he wound up with irrelevant indignation.

Grodman winced at the idea that he himself had worked _ad majorem
gloriam_ of Wimp. And yet, had not Mrs. Wimp let out as much at the
Christmas dinner