Flynn’s Weekly Detective Fiction. Vol. 27, No. 2, September 24, 1927

“I’ll sell for five shillings each,” he said. “That’s a fair profit for me, and an immense profit for you. The shares stand at nearly par now.”

Chapter XII For the Crime

Smith shook his head. The enemy had committed the blunder of giving a little. The banners of weakness were waving over the opposing forces. Smith drove home his blow.

“In three minutes,” he said coolly, “there’ll be no question of buying — only of a deed of gift.”

Bordington looked up at him quickly.

“I mean it,” said Smith. “I’m not here for my health, and my time’s money — your money. That, I guess, is what was meant by the fellow who first coined the phrase.”

Bordington’s fingers rapped nervously on the tabletop. With a gesture, Smith had reversed the positions. Bordington had not foreseen this display of resource. He reckoned that Smith would give up the fight when he found that he was balked on Che Fiangs. Instead, Smith had merely joined the battle more closely, and looked like boring through to victory.

“I shan’t take two shillings,” he said.

“All right.” Smith stubbed the ash of his cigar on to the carpet. “You’ll take nothing. I don’t care. Only you don’t want to be such a fool; that’s all.”

“Suppose I defy you?” asked Bordington quickly.

“I shall be surprised at you,” replied Smith. “I just now paid you a compliment. Don’t make me reverse it. See here, you can get out of this business slightly on the right side. Why the devil you want to be obstinate and make a fuss, God only knows. I’m putting up a fair proposition. In sixty seconds it ceases to hold good. Now then — two bob or nothing? What is it to be?”

As he asked the question, muffled by the closed windows, he heard a crack. There was the crashing splinter of broken glass behind him. Something went under his elbow — for his right arm was lifted in the act of conveying the cigar to his lips — went so close to his side that it touched his jacket.

Bordington suddenly stiffened, his hand gone to his chest, his face rigid, surprised, agonized.

He dropped flat at Smith’s feet, and when Smith went to his knees beside him and lifted him, he found that he had been shot through the chest in the region of the heart.

Bordington’s face twisted into a ghastly semblance of a grin. His last words were: “Smith — I think it’s — nothing! I hold Che Fiangs now — eh?”

His head fell back.

Smith straightened himself. The Che Fiang deal was definitely off. Just when he had won, just when the cards seemed to be running all his way, the hand of death had stacked the pack against him and the jackpot was scooped into all eternity.

Further, there was danger. He was Bill Smith, of The Fellowship. The police knew him, but could fasten nothing on him. He now stood above a dead man, a famous man, murdered in his library. There were running feet in the corridor beyond the door. The whole vast house was waking to clamorous life.

Murder!

The word suddenly leaped at Smith. Murder — and the ultimate punishment under law.

It would be ironic if he went to the gallows for a crime he had never committed. He had an almost irresistible inclination toward panic. Unconsciously, he had bitten through his cigar, and the glowing section lay on the carpet. He ground it with his heel.

He wanted to run away. While he knew it was foolish — for all the house was aware of his presence — the impulse was almost uncontrollable. He actually turned toward the broken window through which the bullet had come.

With that movement he stopped dead.

A young man was pelting across the tennis courts, taking the nets in fine style, like a hurdler.

Behind him, twinkling, Smith had a vision of a pair of exquisitely silk-sheathed legs, decked by rosetted garters. He saw the owner of those self-same adornments as the young man’s running carried him out of the line of direct vision, and he caught his breath.

For this was his new partner — Kitty Willis. Smith waited for her to come.

Chapter XIII Life Calls in Its Debts

In the few seconds during which he waited for the arrival of his somewhat astonishing and apparently ubiquitous partner, Bill Smith reviewed his own position with lightning speed. He repeated that he was of The Fellowship, known to the police, but immune from their more distressing attentions only because they were unable to prove anything against him.

That was one vital point. The second — and to be taken into account with it — was the fact that murder had been done in his presence. Those were points against him.

There was a point for him. He had been in the room. The whole household could swear to that. Whereas the broken glass clearly indicated that the shot had been fired from outside. Also, medical evidence would attest wounding from a distance.