Читать книгу Joe Leslie's Wife; or, a Skeleton in the Closet онлайн

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One thing seemed certain—he did not appear to know that his pretty wife had been in this very room less than five minutes before.

Believing this, the detective considered it a peculiar freak of fate that these two should visit him on the same day and almost the same hour, each without the knowledge of the other.

At length Joe had recruited his energies to equal the occasion.

He looked up.

The detective was leaning back in his chair and calmly observing him, wreaths of blue white smoke curling up from his Havana.

“Eric, you never met my wife?” he said.

The other did not by any start betray himself.

“That is your fault, old man. You were married in Chicago, and after settling down here you never invited us old bachelors to visit you,” he replied, quietly.

“Forgive me. But see, here is her photograph. Take a look at the girl who captured the man who used to laugh at all Benedicts.”

Darrell took the picture.

It was the same face he had so recently sat vis-a-vis with in this very office, with one particular difference—the photograph was of a happy, loving girl, while the other had been the face of an anxious woman.