Gordon Gray glanced keenly at the old rector with his shrewd dark eyes and shrugged his shoulders.
“Homfray, you are a fool?” he declared. “Why can’t we arrange matters? I came here to put a little proposition to you—that I should join your son in that mining concession he is obtaining from the Moorish Government.”
“Join my son!” shrieked the old man. “I would rather that Roddy grasped hands with Satan himself than with you! I—I—”
And his face became crimson as he gasped for breath, and suddenly clutched wildly at his throat.
“I—I—”
But he uttered no further intelligible word. Next second a seizure, due to the violent excitement, held him rigid, and a few seconds later he sank into the arm-chair and expired in the presence of his enemy, thus carrying with him to the grave the secret of Hugh Willard’s tragic end.
Gordon Gray stood there in silence and watching with interest, amused rather than otherwise, realising that Nature herself had, by a strange freak, effected still another coup in his own interests.
The one enemy he feared had been swept from his path! Of Roddy he took no heed.
The road to fortune and to Elma was now rendered clear for him.