“I have no idea of what you mean,” he cried. “I will not be questioned. If I shoot, it is self-defense. You understand that. Nor will any one be the wiser. She is not my daughter. I know nothing of her.”
“You know everything,” I cried, as anger made me reckless. “ It will not pay you to flourish that weapon. Listen!”
“Some one else coming!” he whispered.
“Yes,” I shouted. “You have seen him before. It is young Estabrook.”
The wizened creature immediately hid the revolver under the folds of the blanket and began to play nervously with the chessmen. Both of us waited, listening to the approach of the footsteps which came so cautiously behind the pendant canvas.
To see at last that I was right, that the newcomer was Estabrook, was a relief.
“Well,” said the young man, appearing suddenly around the corner. “I came. I thought I heard your voice, Doctor. You were talking?”
I pointed.
The worn, colorless face of the other man gazed up at us pathetically; his body had relaxed into the hollows of his disordered cot. Against the scene of regal gardens which was luminous as if the painted sky itself bathed all in the soft light of a spring evening, the man and his face were ridiculous and incongruous. His presence in that half-real setting seemed a satire upon the beauties achieved by man and God.
“Who?” asked Estabrook involuntarily.