Читать книгу The Carcellini Emerald, With Other Tales онлайн

44 страница из 51

“You are very brave and sagacious, my little wife,” said her husband, when she told him later on of her interview; “but you are playing an unequal game. That fellow, if my instinct is not at fault, will stop at nothing. And the key to the present overture to you, my dear, is that he’s afraid of me!”

“What can you have done to him, Arden, dear, besides scowling most unbecomingly whenever he has been near?”

“I stand, in a way, behind Elizabeth Ellison, who, if she changes her mind—and women have been known to do so—and takes my advice, will run a very good chance of recovering the Carcellini emerald.”

“Arden! What do you mean? It isn’t possible you think—”

“Never mind what I think. Even to you, dearest, I am not prepared to say it in plain words. But this visit of his to-night, and his proposition to put us under obligation through this matter of Tom’s, is the most impudent bluff I ever heard of. To-morrow I wire for Tom. He will reach here in the course of the week, probably; and we shall go together to that newspaper office and force a withdrawal of their threatened revelation. Depend on it, the matter of Mr. Ashton Carmichael will not rest upon this evening’s work. The Carcellini emerald scandal is about to assume a new and interesting phase.”