Revenge!

Revenge!, by Robert Barr

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Title: Revenge!
Author: Robert Barr
Release Date: August, 2005 [EBook #8668] [This file was first posted
on July 31, 2003]
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Language: English
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REVENGE!
BY
ROBERT BARR

TO
JAMES SAMSON, M.D.
[Illustration: "I HAD THE SAFE BLOWN OPEN"]

CONTENTS.
AN ALPINE DIVORCE WHICH WAS THE MURDERER? A
DYNAMITE EXPLOSION AN ELECTRICAL SLIP THE
VENGEANCE OF THE DEAD OVER THE STELVIO PASS THE
HOUR AND THE MAN "AND THE RIGOUR OF THE GAME" THE
BROMLEY GIBBERTS STORY NOT ACCORDING TO THE CODE
A MODERN SAMSON A DEAL ON CHANGE
TRANSFORMATION THE SHADOW OF THE GREENBACK THE
UNDERSTUDY "OUT OF THUN" A DRAMATIC POINT TWO
FLORENTINE BALCONIES THE EXPOSURE OF LORD

STANSFORD PURIFICATION

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
"I HAD THE SAFE BLOWN OPEN" THE CORD DANGLED
ABOUT A FOOT ABOVE THE POLICEMAN'S HEAD DUPRÉ
LAUNCHED HIS BOMB OUT INTO THE NIGHT "DO NOT
PROCEED FURTHER WITH EXECUTION" HIS FIRST ACT WAS
TO DISCHARGE EVERY SERVANT "WHEN YOU PRESS THE
IVORY BUTTON, I FIRE" WIPING ITS BLADE ON THE
CLOTHES OF THE PROSTRATE MAN "I WILL DRAW A PLAN"
HE THREW ASIDE BUSHES, BRAMBLES AND LOGS "WHAT
HAS HAPPENED?" SAM LOOKED SAVAGELY AROUND HIM
"MY GOD, YOU WERE RIGHT AFTER ALL!"

REVENGE!
AN ALPINE DIVORCE.
In some natures there are no half-tones; nothing but raw primary
colours. John Bodman was a man who was always at one extreme or
the other. This probably would have mattered little had he not married
a wife whose nature was an exact duplicate of his own.
Doubtless there exists in this world precisely the right woman for any
given man to marry and vice versâ; but when you consider that a
human being has the opportunity of being acquainted with only a few
hundred people, and out of the few hundred that there are but a dozen
or less whom he knows intimately, and out of the dozen, one or two
friends at most, it will easily be seen, when we remember the number
of millions who inhabit this world, that probably, since the earth was
created, the right man has never yet met the right woman. The
mathematical chances are all against such a meeting, and this is the
reason that divorce courts exist. Marriage at best is but a compromise,
and if two people happen to be united who are of an uncompromising

nature there is trouble.
In the lives of these two young people there was no middle distance.
The result was bound to be either love or hate, and in the case of Mr.
and Mrs. Bodman it was hate of the most bitter and arrogant kind.
In some parts of the world incompatibility of temper is considered a
just cause for obtaining a divorce, but in England no such subtle
distinction is made, and so until the wife became criminal, or the man
became both criminal and cruel, these two were linked together by a
bond that only death could sever. Nothing can be worse than this state
of things, and the matter was only made the more hopeless by the fact
that Mrs. Bodman lived a blameless life, and her husband was no worse,
but rather better, than the majority of men. Perhaps, however, that
statement held only up to a certain point, for John Bodman had reached
a state of mind in which he resolved to get rid of his wife at all hazards.
If he had been a poor man he would probably have deserted her, but he
was rich, and a man cannot freely leave a prospering business because
his domestic life happens not to be happy.
When a man's mind dwells too much on any one subject,