Free Watchfires by Louis Auchincloss

his napkin with an angry snort. "In a duel? Thanks for that 'we.' Perhaps you don't know that Bleeker's a first-class shot. He fires his first bullet between the wife's legs and his second between the husband's eyes. Don't you give a damn about me, Dexter?"
    Dexter asked himself with a sigh if he would ever come to the end of human vulgarity. "Of course, there'll be no duel," he retorted. "For what do you take me? Gentlemen don't duel in New York, and if they did they wouldn't duel with the likes of Bleeker. No, I mean destroy him financially and socially. I'll close every pocketbook and every front door in New York to him!"
    "How?"
    "You'll see, my boy," Dexter answered grimly, and then they heard the doorbell. He hurriedly conducted his cousin to the side door through the kitchen, to avoid a confrontation, and told Bridey to usher Mr. Bleeker into his study. When he arrived there he found the large, black-garbed figure of his detested visitor examining the Kensett seascape that Annie had admired six years before.
    Bleeker turned to present his big features and florid countenance to his host with a smile as cheerful as if they were about to "go on" to some club dinner or convivial bachelors' occasion.
    "Ah, there you are, Fairchild. I've been admiring your Kensett. Such a subtlety of coloring. It's hard to tell where the sea stops and the horizon begins. I can see why people speak of your tastes as advanced. While the rest of us are buying Italian peasant scenes and Turkish marketplaces, you're putting up your money for something as good as this. Congratulations!"
    Dexter responded in the iciest tone he could muster. "Never mind the compliments, Bleeker. May we get right down to business?"
    Bleeker nodded briskly, adapting himself at once and without the least apparent surprise to the quick change of atmosphere. "I'm at your service. I assume that you prefer to remain standing?"
    "Much."
    "Very well. Excuse me." Bleeker strode across the room to crush out his cigar in a bowl. "Let us eliminate the last traces of conviviality."
    But Dexter would not deign to notice the least attempt to place things on a humorous basis. "You are aware that your correspondence with Mrs. Charles Fairchild has been discovered?"
    "Do you imply that it was concealed?"
    "I certainly do. Your letter was delivered clandestinely."
    "It was delivered through a servant. Let me ask you something, Fairchild. Whom do you represent in this matter?"
    "The family, of course. The outraged family."
    "I see. But do you represent Annie?"
    "Do you refer to Mrs. Charles Fairchild? I do indeed.
And
her husband."
    "You mean you are speaking to me this morning with Mrs. Fairchild's authority?"
    "That's a bit of a shock to you, isn't it, Bleeker? Yes, I am speaking to you with her authority. I received it at her father's, just before she returned to her own house last night."
    "Where she is residing, I gather, as the virtual prisoner of her husband. He had better remember there is such a thing as habeas corpus in this country!"
    "Can it be invoked by the would-be seducers of married women?"
    Bleeker took a threatening step towards his host. "It should be invokable by any man who champions the cause of a poor woman shackled to a swine like your cousin!"
    Dexter held his ground without flinching. "I suppose we had better avoid epithets. Are you prepared to give me some assurance that you will have no further communication with Mrs. Fairchild?"
    "Does
she
ask that?"
    "She has placed her case in my hands."
    "Then what assurance can you give me that she will be allowed to live a life free from the constant apprehension of violent abuse and drunken threats?"
    "Do you presume to treat with me, sir?"
    "And why not? Have I not enjoyed Mrs. Fairchild's confidence? Do I not have letters from her? Do you think that you are living in Turkey, where women are put in sacks and thrown in the river if they are disobedient? Let me disillusion you. The days are past when a married woman can