“Then, just what have you been doing here, Mr. Bowden?” he said slowly, and gradually, with his eyes on the other, his feet crept over the rug. All at once he saw red, caught the young man as he turned to escape, and, his hands at his throat, bent him backward over the table as though he had been a straw. Louise, even at such a moment with the dread of society before her eyes, was shrieking:
“Don’t kill him; don’t kill him, Dan!”
Bowden’s eyes began to bulge and his face to go purple. He made a frantic sign of surrender and fell choking to the floor.
“Well?” said Garford.
“I will—anything—anything!”
“Within forty-eight hours after my name is freed, you marry this woman! What she does from then on will be on your name—not mine.” He looked a moment, even with a fierce leap of triumph, at the cringing body of the man who had humiliated him in his secret pride. “I’m not going to take any promises from you—but I think you understand now what I will do if my orders are not carried out to the hour!” And as Bowden made no answer, he put out his foot in a crowning insult and stirred the abject body. “Do you?”
“Yes; yes!”
“Good!” He turned to the woman, who had waited this outcome in stubborn terror. “I have made certain investigations. Would you like your future husband to know what I know?”
“Quite unnecessary,” she said, looking down.
“That means you will do exactly as I say.”