As the silk drapery fell behind her, the self-control dropped from Austen Ware's face, and a hell of hatred sprang into it. Chance had given Phil the one card that spelled disaster, and chance had prompted him to play it. In Barbara's mind Daunt stood absolved! He saw the castle he had been building tottering to its fall. He turned on his brother a countenance convulsed with a fury of passion from which Phil shrank startled.
"Come," he said in a muffled voice. "We can't talk here." He led the way through the hall and across the foot-bridge to the hillside, gloomy now, for the incandescents in the trees had been extinguished.
Phil followed, his face gone white. A rack stood at the outer door, and his fingers, slipping along it as he passed, closed on a riding-crop.
On the shrubberied slope Ware turned. One twitching hand dropped on his brother's shoulder; the other pointed down the path.
"Go, damn you!" he said, "and never show your face to me again! Not one cent shall you have from me! Now nor hereafter—I have taken care of that!"
Phil lifted the crop and struck him across the head—two savage, heavy blows. Ware staggered and fell backward down the steep declivity, his weight crashing through the bushes with a dull, sickening sound.
There was a silence in which Phil did not breathe. The stars seemed suddenly very bright. From an open window came a woman's shrill, careless laugh, threading the hushed roar of the water below. The lighted shoji across the river seemed to be drifting nearer. He could see the glow of a forge in a native smithy, like an angry, red-lidded eye. The crop fell from his grasp. He leaned over, staring into the dark.
"Austen!" he whispered hoarsely. "Austen!"
There was no response. As he gazed fearfully into the shadow, the rising moon, peeping through a bank of cloud, deluged the landscape with a misty gossamer. The light fell on the phonograph. Phil recoiled, for its long metal trumpet seemed a rigid arm stretched to seize him. With a low cry he turned and fled.
He skirted the hill to the hotel stables, where Bersonin's huge motor-car stood silent. The Japanese chauffeur was curled up in the tonneau, fast asleep.