"If you think you can you are perfectly welcome to try, but I tell you frankly that you have not enough money in your possession to tempt me to lift a finger against Leonie Cuyler."
"And you dare to tell me this? You, the betrothed husband of my daughter!"
"I dare do anything that my conscience and my duty may dictate, Mr. Chandler, regardless of other considerations."
"Then I tell you, sir, that you shall never enter my doors again! Remember that. If you presume to call, the servants will have instructions to throw you out. And as for that Cuyler girl, I am all the more determined that she shall be forced to tell all she knows, if my entire fortune must be spent upon it. Good-morning, Mr. Pyne. I am afraid that you will discover before you are through with it that this morning's work is liable to cost you dear!"
He banged the door behind him, and for many minutes Lynde Pyne stood there looking at it intently, then he turned suddenly, with a short, mirthless laugh.
"I am afraid I have played the dickens!" he muttered. "But there seemed to be nothing else for it. He will leave no stone unturned to force this story from Leonie; she will emphatically refuse to answer, and then—well, God knows what will come after the 'and then!' There is nothing to think of now but burying that man, and getting at the bottom of these facts that threaten such danger to Leonie."
"Mr. Davidge is here to see you, sir!" said the office-boy, at his elbow.
"Tell him that I am out! That I have gone over to the courtroom about a case that I have on. Tell him anything that comes into your head, but don't let me be interrupted again to-day. Do you understand?"
"Yes, sir."
The boy had scarcely closed the door behind him than Pyne leaped to his feet.