of Brady and Harris as the game progressed, but his enjoyment encouraged him to remain too long after the departure of the others.  Harris was cowed and frightened and seemed almost ready to break into tears, but Brady assumed an attitude which fitted him singularly well.  It was not dismay, it was not chagrin—­he was angry to the point of bursting.  To Brady the one sin more flagrant than all others in the category of crime was failure, and in order to relieve his own conscience from the pollution of having failed he saw fit to attribute the entire responsibility to Covington.

“You damned skunk!” he cried, “you’ve sold us out after promisin’ not to, that’s what you’ve done!  But I’ll get back at you if it costs me ten years in Sing Sing!”

Covington for a second time went directly from Brady’s office to his own, but the former complacency was replaced by a vague apprehension.  A threat from Brady was worthy of consideration.  Among the personal mail which he found upon his desk was a plain envelope, which, for some unknown reason, attracted his attention enough to cause him to open it before the one which lay on top.  The signature interested him even more, particularly at the present moment, with his thoughts filled with what had recently passed.  It is a precaution of the experienced mariner to inspect his lifeboats with especial care as he passes by a dangerous reef.  The letter read: 

“The divorce papers prove to be shockingly irregular, and there are developments in the early life.  Please call at your convenience.”

Covington crushed the paper in his hand and turned toward his desk with a changed expression.  He smiled as he looked forward into space—­the first smile which had lighted up his face for several days.  Then he brought his clenched fist down hard on the desk for no apparent reason and muttered something to himself.

XV

As evidenced in the message received by Covington, Levy had not been neglectful of the case which had been intrusted to him by his new client.  Without much difficulty Buckner was located in New Orleans, and identified as the proprietor of a low dive which had become the rendezvous for the most vicious outcasts of the city.  Drink and debauchery had long since destroyed the physical advantages he had possessed over other men at the time of his marriage.  The death of his child, to whom he had given as much affection as his nature possessed, the stern arraignment of the neighbor who helped him to his ranch and later brought him the tragic news, and the consciousness of his own responsibility in the accident, all combined to drive him almost immediately away from the scenes which reminded him of it; and as time passed the bitterness turned to resentment against his wife.  If she had not left the ranch that day, he argued to himself, the accident would never have happened.  She had loathed him for months before the final separation, and he had resented the disgust which she made no effort to conceal.  There had been enough manhood left in him then to feel it and to resent it.