“For your sister.”
“My sister! Confound you! how dare you speak of her! She is nothing to you!”
“She is a splendid girl, and it is a shame she has such a scoundrel for a brother.”
Chester leaped up, seizing a paper-weight from the table, and swung it backward to hurl it at Dick.
“You won’t throw it,” said Merriwell, with the utmost coolness, making no move to dodge or to protect himself, but looking his enemy straight in the eyes.
Chester was quivering with excitement, and his lips were drawn back from his handsome white teeth.
“Blazes take you, Merriwell!” panted Chester. “Some time I’ll kill you!”
“Perhaps you may try it. It would be like you. Put down that paper-weight.”
Dick was watching his enemy so closely that he did not see the slight movement of some curtains which hid an alcove, did not see them slightly parted, and did not observe a pair of beady black eyes that peered out at him. Some one besides Arlington and Merriwell was in that room and had been there all the time.
Chester hesitated, but Dick’s dark eyes seemed to have some magnetic power over him, for he suddenly lowered his hand and tossed the paper-weight with a thud upon the table.