Now the K. C.'s brain took the other side of the chess-board. He played the queen against himself; played her to the stalemate of "manslaughter." That would be Cavendish's gambit; a reduction of the charge. But could Cavendish succeed? For a long time Hector Brunton sat motionless, brooding; a cruel figure in the green glare of the desk-light. Then he drew the proof of Maggie Peterson's evidence from the paper pile; and, recasting it word by word, saw the rope tighten, tighten round his victim's neck, saw her drop feet first through the sliding floor. God! but it would be good--good to know Cavendish beaten; to know him as incapable of defending this woman as of defending that other. And at that, abruptly, the K.C.'s concentration snapped. The Furies were on him again, lashing at his loins, lashing him to blood-frenzy. He sprang to his feet; and his chair crashed backward as he sprang. This woman, this Lucy Towers, must hang. Hang! Between him and his enemy, between him and the man whose body possessed Aliette, she, the Messalina of the slums, stood for a symbol. Destroying the one, he would destroy all three. This was his chance; his chance for revenge. Vengeance at last! Too long Aliette and Cavendish had eluded him--eluded the torturer. God! If only he could torture Aliette; torture her, not as he would torture this other woman when she stood before him in the witness-box, but physically. Of what avail was the law--the law that had reprieved Hilda Cairns from the rope, that left Aliette to revel unpunished in the arms of her paramour--the law that gave him, the wronged husband, no remedy for his wrongs save to set the woman who had wronged him free--free to marry her paramour, to flaunt herself as her paramour's wife before an uncensorious world? The Furies were howling at him: "Don't set her free, Hector Brunton. Don't set her free! Get her back, Hector Brunton! Make her come back to you! Make her submit--submit her cold unyielding body to your hot desires. Make her your slave, your puppet--as the armless man was puppet of the woman you have sworn to hang." With a great shock of self-disgust, of self-realization, Aliette's husband controlled his distraught brain. But his loins still quivered to memory of the lash; sweat beaded his forehead; his hands, as he lifted the overset chair, felt hot and clammy on the polished rail. For months he had succeeded in forgetfulness; in chasing the Furies from his mind. Work had helped him to forget--and Renée, Renée with her red and riotous hair, her facile, faithless sensuality. Other women too--facile, unfastidious. Christ! but he was tired of it all. Tired! Work and women, women and work--month after month, the same eternal treadmill! Now he was weary; wearied alike of his work and his women. Remained in him only the one desire; the desire for vengeance. That desire he would satisfy. And after that?