Page:Edgar Wallace - The Green Rust.djvu/173

Rh oversight I was never unfrocked, and I am still legally a priest of the Church of England."

"Heavens!" gasped Beale, "then this marriage is legal!"

"It's as legal as it can possibly be," said Parson Homo complacently.

N a sense," said Lawyer Kitson, "it is a tragedy. In a sense it is a comedy. The most fatal comedy of errors that could be imagined."

Stanford Beale sat on a low chair, his head in his hands, the picture of dejection.

"I don't mind your kicks," he said, without looking up; "you can't say anything worse about me than I am saying about myself. Oh, I've been a fool, an arrogant mad fool."

Kitson, his hands clasped behind his back under his tail coat, his gold-rimmed pince-nez perched on his nose, looked down at the young man.

"I am not going to tell you that I was against the idea from the beginning, because that is unnecessary. I ought to have put my foot down and stopped it. I heard you were pretty clever with a gun, Stanford. Why didn't you sail in and rescue the girl as soon as you found where she was?"

"I don't think there would have been a ghost of a chance," said the other, looking up. "I am not finding excuses, but I am telling you what I know. There were four or five men in the house and they were all pretty tough citizens—I doubt if I would have made it that way."

"You think he would have married her?"