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

Smith stood up. His manner was casual. He might almost have been recapitulating the principal points of an ordinary business arrangement. Bordington seemed hardly to have heard him. He was still walking about the room. He turned to Smith.

“Damn you,” he said, quietly, “I refuse. Do you hear?”

“Think about it,” smiled Smith. “Forty-eight hours. And don’t forget — if you try to blab — that old newspaper wall still come out with the glad news. Pinch me, and you cut your own throat. I’d advise you to be sensible. Allow me.”

He preceded Bordington to the door and opened it. His eyes were more ingenuous than they had been all through the interview. His smile was almost pleasing.

And then his face changed. Bordington, for the first time, realized that the man could be disturbed, shocked, perhaps almost frightened. Reaching the doorway, beside Smith, Bordington was conscious of a curious odor, as though some outlandish tobacco had been smoked in. the corridor outside the room.

Then Smith laughed. The laugh was short, caught at quickly, without mirth.

“That’s damn funny,” he said. “I’ve not smelled that for a long time. Pink took to smoking — just before the end — and, like lots of folk who wait a long time before doing a thing like that, he had strange tastes. He got the stuff from a Boer farmer near Bloomfontein. But still—”

He lost his attitude of tension. His old smile came back. “Good night, my lord. Forty-eight hours.”

Bordington walked down the corridor. He was hardly conscious of his going. In his head were thundering a thousand phrases, a thousand defiances, which he might have hurled at Smith. He wondered if he had taken it all lying down; if his silence had been the paralyzed silence of absolute terror; if his lack of outward emotional display had impressed Smith with a sense of indifference toward the fate of the treaty and his trust. He was filled with a reeling despair. He walked blindly.

He turned the corner at the broad, quiet, dimlit landing, and went toward the elevator. Near the decorated iron gates a man, who was waiting, saw him and turned swiftly away. He was a little, slim fellow, and he walked with a pronounced limp. But Bordington did not see him. He had eyes only for the figures of his own thoughts.

While Bordington went down in the lift, the cripple limped downstairs.

Chapter III “Don’t Sell!”

Kathleen — she called herself Kitty — Willis had dark brown hair, very wavy, bobbed and delicious, brown eyes, very deep and wide and laughing, and lips so lusciously red that they were certainly made more for kissing than for anything else. In addition, the some hundred and twelve pounds of her were lithe, slimly and beautifully fashioned, and specially designed by nature for the wearing effectively of modern feminine garments.

All of this sounds somewhat highly colored, but it is a true and faithful account of the thoughts of Jim Lansdale as he lay back in a punt and watched her movements as she poled the placid craft through the still, slow waters of the Bord.

They had met about ten days previous. Kitty had arrived in Bordington on a walking tour; had met Jim, who was secretary to the lord of the manor — Lord Bordington — in the way that pretty girls have of meeting presentable young men; and the walking tour seemed to have come to an abrupt and altogether satisfactory conclusion.

“Well,” said Kitty, looking down at Jim. “I’ll give you a penny for them.”

“They’re worth more than that,” said Jim.

“Are they? Or are you afraid to confess that you were feeling ashamed to lie and watch me do all the work.”

“I’ll do it. I’d rather. Only you made me lie down here. Let me have a go.”

“You lie still. Did the old man come back this morning?”

“Yes, unfortunately. Very early. Caught a train from London about one o’clock. In a devilish temper, too. Went straight to his study and began messing about with papers from his private safe.”

“Kept you up, eh? Which accounts for the attack of laziness to-day?”

“No. He got me up. He always does. But he sent me back to bed again. I’m never allowed to see what’s in the private safe. It’s the big brown safe which is my pigeon. The other contains all the state secrets and the names of the crowned heads of Europe. The only folk in whose presence it’s opened are potentates from the seat of government.”

“How perfectly thrilling. By the way, does he know I went to tea in your quarters yesterday and that you showed me round the castle?”

“No. He probably wouldn’t mind, anyhow. But I’d rather he didn’t know. He seems worried lately, and I’ve got an idea that there are big things on — somewhere. He’s neglected all the various work attached to the estate, and I’ve had very little to deal with except departmental routine stuff, which he never sees.”