Gaudy Night by Dorothy L. Sayers Page A

he likes arsenic in his soup. What did you give him to get you off? ” it inquired disagreeably.
    “God, what muck!” said he, bitterly. “So that’s what I’m letting you in for I might have known it. I could hardly hope that it wasn’t so. But you said nothing, so I allowed myself to be selfish.”
    “It doesn’t matter. It’s just part of the consequences. You can’t do anything about it.”
    “I might have the consideration not to expose you to it. Heaven knows you’ve tried hard enough to get rid of me. In fact, I think you’ve used every possible lever to dislodge me, except that one.”
    “Well, I knew you would hate it so. I didn’t want to hurt you.”
    “Didn’t want to hurt me?”
    She realised that this, to him, must sound completely lunatic.
    “I mean that, Peter. I know I’ve said about every damnable thing to you that I could think of. But I have my limits.” A sudden wave of anger surged up in her. “My God, do you really think that of me? Do you suppose there’s no meanness I wouldn’t stoop to?”
    “You’d have been perfectly justified in telling me that I was making things more difficult for you by hanging round.”
    “Should I? Did you expect me to tell you that you were compromising my reputation, when I had none to compromise? To point out that you’d saved me from the gallows, thank you very much, but left me in the pillory? To say, my name’s mud, but kindly treat it as lilies? I’m not quite such a hypocrite as that.”
    “I see. The plain fact is, that I am doing nothing but make life a little bitterer for you. It was generous of you not to say so.”
    “Why did you insist on seeing that thing?”
    “Because,” he said, striking a match and holding the flame to a corner of the postcard, “while I am quite ready to take flight from plug-uglies with guns, I prefer to look other kinds of trouble in the face.” He dropped the burning paper on to the tray and crushed the ashes together, and she was again reminded of the message she had found in her sleeve. “You have nothing to reproach yourself with—you didn’t tell me this; I found it out for myself. I will admit defeat and say good-bye. Shall I?”
    The club waiter set down the brandies. Harriet, with her eyes on her own hands, sat plaiting her fingers together. Peter watched her for some minutes, and then said gently:
    “Don’t look so tragic about it. The coffee’s getting cold. After all, you know, I have the consolation that ‘not you but Fate has vanquished me’. I shall emerge with my vanity intact, and that’s something.”
    “Peter. I’m afraid I’m not very consistent. I came here tonight with the firm intention of telling you to chuck it. But I’d rather fight my own battles. I—I—” she looked up and went on rather quaveringly—“I’m damned if I’ll have you wiped out by plug-uglies or anonymous letter writers!”
    He sat up sharply, so that his exclamation of pleasure turned half-way into an anguished grunt.
    “Oh curse this sticking-plaster!... Harriet, you have got guts, haven’t you? Give me your hand, and we’ll fight on until we drop. Here! none of that. You can’t cry in this club. It’s never been done, and if you disgrace me like this, I shall get into a row with the Committee. They’ll probably close the Ladies’ Rooms altogether.”
    “I’m sorry, Peter.”
    “And don’t put sugar in my coffee.”
     
    Later in the evening, having lent a strong arm to extricate him, swearing loudly, from the difficult depths of the couch, and dispatched him to such rest as he might reasonably look for between the pains of love and sticking-plaster she had leisure to reflect that if fate had vanquished either of them it was not Peter Wimsey. He knew too well the wrestler’s trick of letting the adversary’s own strength defeat itself. Yet she knew with certainty that if, when he had said, “Shall I go?” she had replied with firm kindness, “I’m sorry, but I think it would