"None of your business," he replied, and lapsed into unconsciousness.
IV.
Entirely unaware of this latest attempt on the life of the broker, Hutchinson Hatch steadily pursued his investigations. They finally led him to an intimate friend of Regnault Cabell. The young Southerner had apartments on the fourth floor of the big house off Commonwealth Avenue, directly over those Henley occupied, but two flights higher up. This friend was a figure in the social set of the Back Bay. He talked to Hatch freely of Cabell.
"He's a good fellow," he explained, "one of the best I ever met, and comes of one of the best families Virginia ever had--a true F. F. V. He's pretty quick tempered and all that, but an excellent chap, and everywhere he has gone here he has made friends."
"He used to be in love with Miss Lipscomb of Virginia, didn't he?" asked Hatch, casually.
"Used to be?" the other repeated with a laugh. "He is in love with her. But recently he understood that she was engaged to Weldon Henley, a broker--you may have heard of him?--and that, I suppose, has dampened his ardor considerably. As a matter of fact, Cabell took the thing to heart. He used to know Miss Lipscomb in Virginia--she comes from another famous family there--and he seemed to think he had a prior claim on her."
Hatch heard all these things as any man might listen to gossip, but each additional fact was sinking into his mind, and each additional fact led his suspicions on deeper into the channel they had chosen.
"Cabell is pretty well to do," his informant went on, "not rich as we count riches in the North, but pretty well to do, and I believe he came to Boston because Miss Lipscomb spent so much of her time here. She is a beautiful young woman of twenty-two and extremely popular in the social world everywhere, particularly in Boston. Then there was the additional fact that Henley was here."
"No chance at all for Cabell?" Hatch suggested.
"Not the slightest," was the reply. "Yet despite the heartbreak he had, he was the first to congratulate Henley on winning her love. And he meant it, too."