“I was going to ask you.”
“Then that’s settled. Good-night. I’ll put matters in train for the investment.”
“Thanks, do; you see I am in earnest.”
“It takes some thinking out,” said Saul, as he walked slowly toward the station, cigar in mouth, “but it’s worth working for. Poor miserable idiot! And he believes he’s cleverness refined.”
“I don’t quite see through Master Saul’s game,” said the object of his thoughts, as he lit a fresh cigar, and after walking up and down the path a few times, went into the study, where he threw himself upon a couch, and lay looking through the soft wreaths of smoke.
“He’s as jealous as a Turk, and he’d do anything to come between me and little Gertie. But, poor little lass, she’s caught—limed. That’s safe enough. The brute! He led me on and on that night, over that bad champagne, and hardly touched it himself. Wanted to show me up here; and it only made the little darling fonder of me. He’s plotting, but he’s a shallow-brained ass, and one of these days I shall come down upon him a crusher. Now, what does he mean about that money. I don’t want to lose two thousand, but would with pleasure to get him out of the way, for he’s like a lion in one’s path, and I never feel sure. Next heir, eh? Next heir. And my coming kept him out of the cake.”
“Well, Master Saul Harrington,” he said, after a pause, “you may be very clever, but one gets one’s brains edged up a bit out in the West, and if you mean mischief over that money, pray, for your own sake, be careful, for two can play at that game.”
He rose slowly and marched across to the cabinet, one of whose drawers he unlocked; and as he stood with his back to the window, a dimly-seen face appeared at a short distance from one of the panes, and was made more indistinct by a tuft of the evergreen which grew at the side, and half behind which the owner of the face was concealed.
The watcher gazed eagerly in, but was unable to make out whether the occupant of the room was examining letters or counting over money—the latter suggested itself as correct.
But he was wrong, for the possessor of The Mynns was slowly and carefully thrusting cartridge after cartridge into the chambers of a large revolver, one which had been his companion far away in the West.