“Don’t call me Aunt Agatha.”
“Then——”
“Nor that, either.”
The man shrugged.
“Very well, O Nameless One,” he said with calculated insolence. “Remember this, Nameless One, that I have taken a lot of money from you, but now I want something that money cannot buy. And you will give it to me. . . . Otherwise—but you dare not be stupid!”
Miss Girton still looked at him with those deep-set eyes of hate.
“I don’t know,” she said slowly. “For years you’ve made my life a misery. I’ve a mind to end it. And putting you where you belong might make them forget some of the things they know about me. The busies are always kind to squeakers.”
The man was silent for a short space; then he put up his hand and pulled his hat a little further over his eyes. He turned his head, but he could only have seen her feet.
“I am not like the busies,” he returned in a voice that was cold and flat and hard like a sheet of ice. “Don’t talk like that—or I might be tempted to put you where you will have no power to threaten me.”
He stood up and walked to the door, his hands in the side-pockets of his coat and his shoulders hunched up. He turned the key and pulled the door open quickly and silently. Leaning out, he glanced up and down the hall, then half pulled the door to while he spoke to Miss Girton.