The Mystery of Crocksands by Fred M. White

Wrath strode across the hall into the small dining-room, where his unhappy wife was awaiting him. It was well into the dead of night now, and the house was strangely silent. Lady Wrath looked at her husband with a certain dumb docility in her eyes.

"Now, listen here," he said. "I have been talking to Miss Marchant. She knows all about it--she knows the story of the swindle from A to Z. I was an infernal fool ever to have had her down here, but I didn't think a pretty girl like herself would have any real business head. Still, she will be out of the house in the course of the day, and she can go back to old Melrose, for all I care. Now, listen. I am in a devil of a mess. If I stay here I shall be arrested. The fact of the matter is I have been too clever. Clapstone and myself put up a very pretty swindle, and it would have gone all right if one of our subordinates had not opened his mouth too wide. It was a racing lottery, and the proceeds are in the house at the present moment. About thirty thousand, in notes and orders. But a man named Goss got into trouble, and he was the man we picked out as the ostensible winner of the big prize. He is in gaol now, and he would have had five hundred pounds when he came out, but he took somebody into his confidence, and that somebody went to the police. And now you know all about it. You stay here for a day or two, and at the end of the week pack up all your traps and go to the house off Russell-square where we used to hang out. I will send you some money in a few days, and you had better lie up there for a month or two and then join me in my hiding-place. So far as Crocksands Abbey is concerned, the game is up. I shall never come back here again, and neither will you. If those people find anything out they will understand why--but never mind that."