Page:Dale - A Marriage Below Zero.djvu/205

Rh great disorder, Elsie," he had said. "You had better not venture into them." And my laughing rejoinder had been, "I believe you're a Bluebeard, Arthur, and that the bodies of a dozen preceding Mrs. Ravener's lie festering in that room." I opened the oak desk. It was filled with neatly arranged papers. I examined them all carefully. Alas; they were fearfully uninteresting. Old letters from his parents—I did not read them; literary efforts with the "returned with thanks," marked in tell-tale prominence; bills paid and unpaid, and similar documents of an equally useless description, as far as I was concerned. I went through them all with trembling fingers, dreading and hoping to find some incriminating papers. I was just about to leave the desk, when it suddenly occurred to me that I had missed opening one of the little drawers. I returned to my task, opened the drawer, and came across a little file of receipted bills. I had discovered so many already that I saw no use in examining them. Something prompted me however to glance at them.

They were monthly rent receipts. I read: