But that night, for whatever reason, my husband was strangely gentle, and for once asked me about the boy’s fever. It didn’t make me happy. I felt instead a kind of premonition of something terrible, and cold chills ran up and down my spine. I couldn’t think of anything to say, so I lay there in silence. For a while there was no other sound but my husband’s furious panting.

Then there came from the front entrance the thin voice of a woman, “Is anyone at home?” I shuddered all over as if icy water had been poured over me.

“Are you at home, Mr. Otani?” This time there was a somewhat sharp inflection to her voice. She slid the door open and called in a definitely angry voice, “Mr. Otani. Why don’t you answer?”

My husband at last went to the door. “Well, what is it?” he asked in a frightened, stupid tone.

“You know perfectly well what it is,” the woman said, lowering her voice. “What makes you steal other people’s money when you’ve got a nice home like this? Stop your inhuman joking and give it back. If you don’t, I’m going straight to the police.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. I won’t stand for your insults. You’ve got no business coming here. Get out! If you don’t get out, I’ll be the one to call the police.”

There came the voice of another man, “I must say, you’ve got your nerve, Mr. Otani. What do you mean we have no business coming here? You really dumbfound me. This time is serious. It’s going beyond the limits of a joke when you steal other people’s money. Heaven only knows all my wife and I have suffered on account of you. And on top of everything else you do something as low as you did tonight. Mr. Otani, I misjudged you.”

“It’s blackmail,” my husband angrily exclaimed in a shaking voice. “It’s extortion. Get out! If you’ve got any complaints I’ll listen to them tomorrow.”

“What a revolting thing to say. You really are an out-and-out scoundrel. I have no alternative but to call the police.”

There was in his words a hatred so terrible that I went gooseflesh all over.

“Go to hell,” my husband shouted, but his voice had already weakened and sounded hollow.

I got up, threw a wrap over my nightgown, and went to the front hall. I bowed to the two visitors. A round-faced man of about fifty wearing a knee-length overcoat asked, “Is this your wife?” and, without a trace of a smile, faintly inclined his head in my direction as if he were nodding.

The woman was a thin, small person of about forty, neatly dressed. She loosened her shawl and, also unsmiling, returned my bow with the words, “Excuse us for breaking in this way in the middle of the night.”

My husband suddenly slipped on his sandals and made for the door. The man grabbed his arm and the two of them struggled for a moment. “Let go or I’ll stab you!” my husband shouted, a jackknife flashing in his right hand. The knife was a pet possession of his, and I remembered that he usually kept it in his desk drawer. When he got home he must have been expecting trouble, and the knife was what he had been searching for.