I made an enemy, a deadly enemy. He was a
blackmailer, a thief, the head of a political ring that lived on graft.
Through my efforts he was exposed, And then he laid for me--and he got
me.
"I must give him credit for doing it cleverly and completely. He set a
trap for me, and a woman helped him. I won't go into details. The trap
sprung, and it caught me. Even Josephine could not be made to believe in
my innocence; so cleverly was the trap set that my best friends among the
newspapers could find no excuse for me.
"I have never blamed Josephine for what she did after that. To all the
world, and most of all to her, I was caught red-handed. I knew that she
loved me even as she was divorcing me. On the day the divorce was given
to her, my brain went bad. The world turned red, and then black, and then
red again. And I--"
Peter God paused again, with a hand to his head.
"You came up here," said Philip, in a low voice.
"Not--until I had seen the man who ruined me," replied Peter God quietly.
"We were alone in his office. I gave him a fair chance to redeem
himself--to confess what he had done. He laughed at me, exulted over my
fall, taunted me. And so--I killed him."
He rose from his chair and stood swaying. He was not excited.
"In his office, with his dead body at my feet, I wrote a note to
Josephine," he finished. "I told her what I had done, and again I swore
my innocence.
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