Detective Fiction Weekly. Vol. 36, No. 4, October 20, 1928

“If he is still opposed — well, that is his misfortune as well as ours. If he tries to punish you by withholding anything that belongs to you by inheritance — why, I have enough for both of us. And—”

She sensed the beginning of a threat in his words; but he ended: “And that’s that!”

Lascelles came back from his round of landlord visits in none too good a temper. As he came into the house he saw from the way the domestics lingered on the staircase that something more engrossing than housework was keeping them there.

“Where is Miss Eva?” he demanded.

“In the living room.” Mrs. Marsh, the housekeeper, was the only one who dared to tell him, and her manner told him more than her words.

He strode to the living room and threw open the door. His sister was so startled that she seemed to her brother the embodiment of guilt. Whereas her lover faced him with a self-possession that made Lascelles lose his own.

He had left the door open through impetuosity. Now he went to it by design. He wanted the servants on the staircase to hear.

“You are a filthy fortune-hunter, sir! I have forbidden you the house. You have chosen to come here in spite of me. Your choice now is — get out or be thrown out!”

“Edmund,” pleaded his sister. “Please!”

George Manners had just managed to put a curb on himself at Lascelles’s words; but now the man’s complete disregard of Eva was too much for the man who loved her.

He went to the open door, but he stopped in front of Lascelles.

“You’ve just said something about fortune hunting.” His deliberation affected the other man worse than a blow. “For once I will admit that I have been hunting for Eva’s fortune. Something told me that it was going fast and that you had much to do with its going.

“I have tried to keep the news from her — just as you have. Though for somewhat different reasons. Now I’ll be interested to know — Eva, you may want to hear it, too — what you have to say to my charge that you have been converting much of her share to yourself!”

A Thrilling Drama

A cry from Eva shocked him with its pain. The man she loved had called her brother a thief, and the woman between them got the full brunt of the situation.

She sank into a chair, her hands pressed over her eyes to shut out the unbearable, and her cry had something stricken in it.

It shook George Manners to the heart. The servants on the stairs sensed in his voice a last desperate effort to make peace for the sake of their mistress.

“Lascelles,” they heard Manners say, “I am holding out to you the hand of friendship. Will you give me yours?”

They heard their master cry out with fury:

“In ten seconds you’ll get not my hand, but my boot!”

George Manners laughed softly.

“I think you will find it an interesting adventure.” Then his tone changed. “I am serving you notice that Eva and I are to-be married within the month. I still ask your hand in amity. But if you don’t give me your hand — my God, before I get through with you, you’ll give it to me whether you want to or not!”

There was such passion in him now that the servants on the stairs thrilled with the drama of it. But for the time their show was over. Apparently afraid to trust himself any further, Manners rushed out of the house.

A Call for Help

A little later the servants saw their master leave the house too. His face was livid. In his hand was a riding-crop, and in the failing twilight he looked an ugly figure to encounter as he hurried out of the grounds.

The mood of George Manners as he swung off toward the town was not much different from Lascelles’s. His jaws and his fist were clenched, and now that the curb of Eva’s presence was off he was muttering to himself the things he thought of her brother.

Easily there was murder in the young man’s heart, and the realization of it finally sobered him. He did not want to be seen in town in the grip of such a passion. Already he had passed several of his townsmen without a greeting, and they looked curiously at him.

He decided to walk it off, and, turning, struck out for the open country. By the time night had fallen, bringing with it a light rain, George Manners felt cooled off enough to turn back.

Whatever moonlight there might otherwise have been was blanketed by rain clouds, and the road along which lie hurried toward the town was flanked by farmland and showed not a light. Manners was guided largely by the feel of the middle of the road.

Suddenly he tripped and sprawled in the road. Something lay under him, the feel of which brought him scrambling to his feet again. The road had been wet by the rain, but he must have fallen into a puddle. For his hands, face and clothing were mired.

But he was too shocked to realize this. What had tripped him was an inert body in the road. Manners fumbled for matches, but his wet hands and the rain made it impossible to strike a light.

He kneeled and, groping for the shoulders, shook the man lying there so limply. Then Manners rose, and at the top of his voice sent a call into the night. “Help!”