FullReads

He went out and posted his note at a pillar-box in a quiet street with his own hand. The postman had just finished clearing when John came to thrust in the letter to Miriam Gale. The envelope slid into an empty receiver as the postman clicked the key. He turned to John with a look which said–“Too late that time, sir!” But John never so much as noticed that there was a postman by his side, who shouldered his bags with an air of official detachment. John Arniston went back to his room, and while he waited for a book of reference (for articles must be written so long as the pillars of the firmament stand) he lifted an evening paper which lay on the table. He ran his eye by instinct over the displayed cross headings. His eye caught a name. “Found Drowned at Battersea Bridge–Reginald Gale.”

“Reginald Gale,” said John to himself–“where did I hear that name?”

Like a flash, every word that Miriam had told him about her worthless husband–his treatment of her, his desertion within a few days of her marriage–stood plain before him as if he had been reading the thing in proof…. Miriam Gale was a free woman.

And his pitiable lying letter? It was posted–lurking in the pillar-box round the corner, waiting to speed on its way to break the heart of the girl, who had been willing to risk all, and count the world well lost for the sake of him.

He seized his hat and ran down-stairs, taking the steps half a dozen at a time. He met the boy coming up with the book. He passed as if he had stepped over the top of him. The boy turned and gazed open-mouthed. The gentlemen at the office were all of them funny upon occasion, but John Arniston had never had the symptoms before.

“He’s got a crisis!” said the boy to himself, clutching at an explanation he had heard once given in the sub-editor’s room.

For an hour John Arniston paced to and fro before that pillar-box, timing the passing policeman, praying that the postman who came to clear it might prove corruptible.

Would he never come? It appeared upon the white enamelled plate that the box was to be cleared in an hour. But he seemed to have waited seven hours in hell already. The policeman gazed at him suspiciously. A long row of jewellers’ shops was just round the corner, and he might be a professional man of standing–in spite of the fur-collar of his coat–with an immediate interest in jewellery.

The postman came at last. He was a young, alert, beardless man, who whistled as he came. John Arniston was instantly beside him as he stooped to unlock the little iron door.

“See here,” he said eagerly, in a low voice, “I have made a mistake in posting a letter. Two lives depend on it. I’ll give you twenty pounds in notes into your hand now, if you let me take back the letter at the bottom of that pillar!”

“Sorry–can’t do it, sir–more than my place is worth. Besides, how do I know that you put in that letter? It may be a jewel letter from one of them coves over there!”

And he jerked his thumb over his shoulder.

John Arniston could meet that argument.

“You can feel it,” he said; “try if there is anything in it, coin or jewels–you could tell, couldn’t you?”

The man laughed.

“Might be notes, sir, like them in your hand–couldn’t do it, indeed, sir.”

The devil leaped in the hot Scots blood of John Arniston.

He caught the kneeling servant of Her Majesty’s noblest monopoly by the throat, as he paused smiling with the door of the pillar-box open and the light of the street-lamp falling on the single letter which lay within. The clutch was no light one, and the man’s life gurgled in his throat.

John Arniston snatched the letter, glanced once at the address. It was his own. There was, indeed, no other. Hurriedly he thrust the four notes into the hand of the half-choked postman. Then he turned and ran, for the windows of many tall houses were spying upon him. He dived here and there among archways and passages, manoeuvred through the purlieus of the market, and so back into the offices of his paper.