“Not yet. Not quite yet,” he said. “By the way, Dudley. Heard anything of Geoffry lately?”
The tone was easy—smiling—but it struck a chill to the parson’s heart. He glanced up quickly at his interlocutor’s face, his own white with deadly fear. His lips parted, but he was powerless to articulate. The other stood immovable—smilingly enjoying his apprehension, but the smile was that of a fiend.
“Not heard anything of him?” he said, slowly, while like the hellish hiss of red-hot irons in quivering flesh there passed through his mind the recollection of his cousin’s defiant sneers over the successful intrigue that had robbed him of his patrimony, there in that same room, whose very walls seemed to echo their refrain even now. “Not heard anything of him? Well I’m not surprised, for—he’s dead.”
“Dead?” echoed Mr Vallance blankly, as though in a dream.
“As the proverbial door-nail.”
“Murderer!” gasped the wretched man, spasmodically clutching the air with his fingers, and gazing at his tormentor as through a far-off mist.
“Oh, no. You are under a delusion,” was the cool reply. “It’s odd that it should devolve on me—on me above all people—to give you the latest news of him. He died at an Indian stake.”
Even the pitiless, revengeful heart of the man who stood there smilingly unfolding his horrible news was hardly prepared for the awful metamorphosis that came over the smug, smooth-tongued, purring parson at those words. With a scream that rang through the house from top to bottom, and froze the blood of all who heard it, the miserable man leaped at his tormentor’s throat like a wild cat at bay. But he might as well have leaped at a rock. The powerful arm was raised, and the mere shock of the recoil sent the poor wretch sprawling. He lay—his livid features working in mania—the foam flying from his lips in flakes.
The other glanced at him a moment, then opened the door.
“You, James?” he said, coolly, to the trembling flunkey, who had not been many yards from the door during the interview. “You, James? Your boss is taken bad, I guess. Better see after him. Tell him, when he comes round, I’ll call again by-and-bye, and give him further particulars.”