But his crude common
sense quickly dismissed that suggestion of his wife's complicity with
Van Loo. But had she seen him passing through the hotel that night, and
had sought to draw from him some knowledge of his early intercourse with
the child, and confessed everything, and even produced the paper with
his signature as a proof of identity? Women had been known to do such
desperate things. Perhaps she disbelieved her son's aversion to her, and
was trying to sound Van Loo. As for the forged words by Van Loo, and the
use he had put them to, he cared little. He believed the man was capable
of forgery; indeed, he suddenly remembered that in the old days his
son had spoken innocently, but admiringly, of Van Loo's wonderful
chirographical powers and his faculty of imitating the writings of
others, and how he had even offered to teach him. A new and exasperating
thought came into his feverish consciousness. What if Van Loo, in
teaching the boy, had even made use of him as an innocent accomplice to
cover up his own tricks! The suggestion was no question of moral ethics
to Steptoe, nor of his son's possible contamination, although since the
night of the big strike he had held different views; it was simply a
fierce, selfish jealousy that ANOTHER might have profited by the lad's
helplessness and inexperience. He had been tormented by this jealousy
before in his son's liking for Van Loo.
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