Something in his attitude and expression made Hal stare at him in wonder, as he said, “What is it, Ken, that you seem so savage, as if you had come to eat me?”
“I haven’t come to eat you, but to kill you!” Kenneth replied, producing a revolver and holding it within a few feet of Harry, who staggered back into his chair, sure that Kenneth was mad.
“Kill me!” he gasped. “For what?”
“For bigamy,” Kenneth answered. “For blighting the life of the sweetest girl that ever lived, and degrading another.”
He was certainly mad, and Harry moved a little out of the range of the pistol, which followed and covered him.
“Ken,” he began, “you are crazy. I am no bigamist. I have never married but one girl, and that is Kitty.”
“It’s a lie,” Kenneth roared, while there began to steal into his mind a ray of hope that either there was a mistake or Harry was not the man. “What about Connie Elliott, whom you married in Interlaken? Have you forgotten her so soon?”
Harry drew a deep breath of relief and tried to become his old easy self. But it was hard work. There was a good deal that was crooked to explain, and the revolver was dangerously near to him.
“Does Connie think that of me?” he asked; and Kenneth replied, “She thinks you a villain.”
“I am a villain, double dyed, but not so bad as that,” Harry said. “Take a chair, Ken; take two chairs, if you like, but drop that murderous thing you are holding under my nose, I can’t talk with it in front of me. It might go off, you know.”