"Why don't you shoot, Henry?"
"I want those notes," said Henry Holbrook. "You lied to me about them. They were to have been destroyed. I want them now, to-night."
"If you shoot me you will undoubtedly get them much easier," said Arthur; and he lounged away toward the wall, half turning his back, while the point of the pistol followed him. "But the fact is, I never had them; Gillespie kept them."
Threats cool quickly, and I really had not much fear that Henry Holbrook meant to kill his brother; and Arthur's indifference to his danger was having its disconcerting effect on Henry. The pistol-barrel wavered; but Henry steadied himself and his clutch tightened on the butt. I again turned toward the door, but the girl's hand held me back.
"Wait," she whispered again. "That man is a coward. He will not shoot."
The canoe-maker had been calmly talking, discussing the disagreeable consequences of murder in a tone of half-banter, and he now stood directly under the foils. Then in a flash he snatched one of them, flung it up with an accustomed hand, and snapped it across his brother's knuckles. At the window we heard the slim steel hiss through the air, followed by the rattle of the revolver as it struck the ground. The canoe-maker's foot was on it instantly; he still held the foil.
"Henry," he said in the tone of one rebuking a child, "you are bad enough, but I do not intend that you shall be a murderer. And now I want you to go; I will not treat with you; I want nothing more to do with you! I repeat that I haven't got the notes."
He pointed to the door with the foil. The blood surged angrily in his face; but his voice was in complete control as he went on.
"Your visit has awakened me to a sense of neglected duty, Henry. I have allowed you to persecute our sister without raising a hand; I have no other business now but to protect her. Go back to your stupid sailor and tell him that if I catch him in any mischief on the lake or here I shall certainly kill him."
I lost any further words that passed between them, as Henry, crazily threatening, walked out upon the deck to his boat; then from the creek came the threshing of oars that died away in a moment. When I gazed into the room again Arthur Holbrook was blowing out the lights.