I don't think he will bother the Double A again--after he hears of it!" But Sanderson merely smirked mirthlessly; he saw no reason for being joyful over the lie he had told.

He was getting deeper and deeper into the mire of deceit and prevarication, and there seemed to be no escape.
And now, when he had committed himself, he realized that he might have evaded it all, this last lie at least, by telling Mary that he had picked the note up on the desert, or anywhere, for that matter, and she would have been forced to believe him.
He kept her away from him, fending off her caresses with a pretense of slight indisposition until suddenly panic-stricken over insistence, he told her he was going to bed, bolted into the room, locked the door behind him, and sat long in the darkness and the heat, filling the room with a profane appreciation of himself as a double-dyed fool who could not even lie intelligently..