“Now we are close to the heart of the mystery. Nancy is not your daughter! She is my daughter!”
Marten leaned back in his chair, and glowered at the self-possessed man who had uttered these extraordinary words so calmly. His voice was tinged with sadness, it is true, but otherwise wholly devoid of emotion.
“Do you realize what you are saying?” demanded the older man, and the words came thickly, as though he spoke with difficulty.
“Yes.”
“But such raving is not argument. I thought you remarked that you were here to convince me of the error of my ways.”
Power produced an envelop, and extracted some papers. “Read!” he said, leaning forward and thrusting the folded sheets before Marten. “The letters quoted there are not in original, of course. I have left those in safe-keeping, and they will be burnt on the day I know for certain that my daughter is married to the man she loves. Read! Note the dates! I need not say another word. I have supplied such brief explanatory passages as are required. I was not aware that Mowlem & Son had tendered other evidence. Though slight, it is helpful.”
And Marten read, and his face, dark and lowering as he began, soon faded to the tint of old ivory. For his hawk’s eyes were perusing the story of his own and Willard’s perfidy, and of his wife’s revolt, and love, and final surrender. It was soon told. Nancy’s pitiful scrawl, left in the hut by the lake, Willard’s letter to Mrs. Power, the two cablegrams, and Nancy’s two letters from London—these, with Power’s notes, giving chapter and verse for his arrival at Newport, his flight with Nancy into the Adirondacks, and her departure with Willard, made up a document hard to disbelieve, almost impossible to gainsay. Some dry and faded strands of white heather had fallen from among the papers to the table, and Marten gave no heed to them at first. Now he knew he was gazing at the remnants of Nancy’s bridal bouquet.
The husband whom she loathed and had deserted, who was so detestable in her sight that she died rather than remain his wife, did not attempt to deny the truth of that overwhelming indictment. Indeed, its opening passages, laying bare his own scheming, must have convinced him of the accuracy of the remainder. With the painstaking care of one to whom the written word was all-important, he read and reread each letter, particularly Nancy’s pathetic farewell. Then, darting one wolfish glance at Power, he thrust his right hand suddenly toward a drawer. Power was prepared for some such movement, and leaped with a lightning spring born of many a critical adventure in wild lands, when a fraction of a second of delay meant all the difference between life and death. Marten was not a weakling; but he was no match for the younger man’s well-trained muscles. After a brief struggle the automatic pistol he had taken from its hiding-place was wrested from his grasp.
“You may shoot, if you like, when I have finished with you, but not before,” said Power, when his breathless adversary seemed to be in a fit condition to follow what he was saying. “I am prepared to die, and by your hand if you think fit to be my executioner; but first you must know the penalty. If I do not return to my friend’s house before a fixed hour, an exact copy of all that you have read will be sent to the father and uncle of that detestable blackguard you have chosen to marry my daughter. It seems that Italians are blessed with fine-drawn scruples in such matters, and the revelation of a blot in Nancy’s parentage will be fatal to your precious project. Copies will also be given to Nancy herself, and to Philip Lindsay. If I know anything of men, I fancy that he, at any rate, will not flout her because of her mother’s sin. In the event of my death, she becomes my heiress; so she will be quite independent of your bounty, and, after the first shock and horror of comprehension has passed, I think she has enough of her mother’s spirit, and of my fairly strong will, to defy any legal rights you may try to enforce as her reputed father. I am talking with brutal plainness, Marten, because you’ve got to understand that you are beaten to your knees. Now I’ll repeat my terms. Dismiss an unspeakable cad from your house—not forcibly, of course, but with sufficient conviction that he cannot refuse to go—agree to Nancy’s marriage with the man of her choice—and she should wait another year, at least, whether or not Lindsay be the man—and I burn everything, copies and originals, on her wedding day. Refuse, and you know the sure outcome. There is your pistol. It should do its work well at this short range. Shoot, if you must! I am ready!”