'I know that there are things I should do, and never think twice about, which would make you feel disgraced if you did them–such as giving any one who grossly insulted me a black eye, or swearing violently when I barked my shin in a dark room. And now you are calmly recommending me to bluff Marlowe by means of a tacit threat which I don't mean; a thing which hell's most abandoned fiend did never, in the drunkenness of guilt–well, anyhow, I won't do it.' He resumed his writing, and the lady, with an indulgent smile, returned to playing very softly.
In a few minutes more, Trent said: 'At last I am his faithfully. Do you want to see it?' She ran across the twilight room, and turned on a reading lamp beside the escritoire. Then, leaning on his shoulder, she read what follows:—
Dear Mr. Marlowe,–You will perhaps remember that we met, under unhappy circumstances, in June of last year at Marlstone.
On that occasion it was my duty, as representing a newspaper, to make an independent investigation of the circumstances of the death of the late Sigsbee
