'Yes. I - I do.'
'Are you worried because you think Bruce doesn't love you?'
'It's not that,' she said, unsteadily.
Timothy laughed reassuringly.
'After all,' he pointed out, 'there's plenty of time for both of you romantic young colts to make up your minds. Bruce has only been home three months since his - er - trip.'
'That's just it,' Edith cried out. The flush had faded from her cheeks.
They were pale now. 'Is he really Bruce? Oh, uncle, I'm so unhappy!'
TIMOTHY sat up stiffly. He sounded incredulous.
'Are you suggesting that you think Bruce Dixon is an impostor?'
'I don't know what to think,' she whispered.
'I'm afraid I don't either. First you tell me that Bruce loves you and that you love him. Then you say in the next breath that you think he's a faker.
Why? You've known Bruce ever since he was a child - long before he left home after that unfortunate quarrel with his father. You grew up with Bruce.'
'He seems so different,' she said, faintly. 'When he was a growing boy, he
was mean, selfish, with a nasty temper. We two, as children, used to fight like
cats and dogs. Then he went away. He was gone for nearly ten years. And when he
came back home, three months ago -'
'Is he so different from the Bruce you used to know?'
'Yes. He's kinder, more thoughtful. It seems a hateful thing to say, but he's been so - so sweet to me and to his father that I - I can't believe he's the same son. Then, suddenly, he changed again. For the last week or two, he's seemed terribly uneasy. He's broken three dates with me. He - he says he loves me, asks me to be patient and he'll explain later. Uncle, could he be a fraud?'
William Timothy laughed. The tension left his shrewd old face. He patted Edith's smooth hand with a gentle, protective gesture.
'You can take my word, he's the genuine Bruce Dixon,' he said. 'He might have fooled his father. But no fake could have misled me or Charles, the butler. Naturally, we were both suspicious when Bruce returned so ably after years of being away. So we made tests - adequate tests that no impostor could have passed successfully.'
His voice hardened.
'We made him strip, examined him physically. And we put him through a memory test - Charles and I and his father - that no one but the real Bruce could possibly have passed. He even remembered things we had overlooked.
Pointed them out to us when we forgot to ask.
'No, my dear, you're being hysterical and imaginative. If Bruce is different - better, finer - it's simply because he's been tempered by life.
He's lost his ugly qualities by those years of rubbing against experience all ever the world.'
Edith nodded. The haunted look left her blue eyes.
'You're right, uncle,' she said, finally. 'I'm glad I came to you. What I really wanted was to talk with you and be reassured. You've done that. I - I feel ashamed of myself!'
'Forget about it,' Timothy advised. 'If Bruce is worried and breaking dates with a pretty girl like you, there must be a reason. It's probably something trivial. I'll talk to him as deftly as I can approach the subject, and perhaps I can find out what's the matter. After all, I'm not a bad lawyer.'
Edith cleaned forward, kissed him impulsively.
'You're a dear! I must be going now. Be very careful what you say to Bruce. I couldn't bear it if anything came between us, now!'
'Try breaking a date or two yourself. Maybe that will bring the boy to his
senses.'
TIMOTHY sat for a long time after Edith had left. There was a puzzled frown on his forehead. He hadn't told Edith of the peculiar visits to Dixon's mansion of Hooley and Snaper. Could Bruce actually be in league with them?
Timothy lifted his bowed head.
Instantly, his eyes rounded with terror. He became very still in the wide-armed chair. He was staring at the dull muzzle of a pistol projecting from
the curtains of the rear doorway The gun was in a gloved hand and the face above
the hand and gun was rigid with menace.
The gunman was Joe Snaper.
'One yelp out of you, mister,' Snaper breathed, in an ugly undertone,
'and
you'll get it without any noise, see?'
Timothy shuddered as he saw the gun was equipped with a silencer.
Snaper advanced cautiously with noiseless steps. Behind him came another man. Bert Hooley. Both were tense with a sullen rage that made their ordinarily
pasty faces as white as waxen masks.
'Don't kill me!' Timothy begged. 'Take anything you want - but don't kill me.'
'You dirty rat!' Snaper growled. 'Don t try to pull that innocent stuff!
We're not burglars and you know it! Why did you try to kill us in the Brentwood
Hotel?'
'I - I don't know what you're talking about!'
'No? You thought you were smart, didn't you? Had a bell hop dope our drinks. Let yourself in with a duplicate key when we were so dazed we couldn't hold you off. Tied us up with ropes and lit your damned sulphur candle. Left us
to croak from the fumes before anybody in the hotel got wise and broke down the
door. No - you don't know anything!'
Sweat appeared in drops on the pale forehead of the lawyer.
'Gentlemen, you're mistaken! I made no attempt to kill you. Are you actually claiming that you saw me in your hotel room?'
'You bet! You had a fake brown beard on. You were wise enough not to do any talking. But we know it was you. It couldn't have been any one else. Dixon put you up to it. As his lawyer, you had to keep the whole thing quiet; you didn't dare to go to the cops and spill the old man's secret.
'So you paste on that damned brown beard - the same disguise you had on when you almost killed us the night before outside Dixon's library window -
and
you figure you'll make a clean, quiet murder of it at the hotel!'
Timothy tried to make his laughter sound amused, but it was strident. A thin bleat of fear.
'I couldn't have been the man in the brown beard,' he pointed out, tremulously. 'Look at my bandaged foot. Gentlemen, it would be agony for me to try to walk, let alone attack you in a hotel room and murder you. I've got arthritis. My foot is so swollen that I can hardly place it on the floor without excruciating pain.'
JOE SNAPER'S reply was immediate. He kicked viciously at the bandaged ankle. Timothy screamed, fell from the chair. He lay there, writhing, his face twisted with pain.
'It's an act,' Snaper scowled. 'Rip off that bandage, Bert. Take a look at
it.'
Hooley nodded. While Snaper watched the doorway to make sure that no one had heard Timothy's cry of pain, his partner unwound the bandage with brutal haste.
The flesh was exposed. Hooley cursed as he looked at it. Snaper muttered a
disappointed snarl. There was no farce about the lawyer's alibi. The skin was stretched tight over the pink, swollen flesh of Timothy's foot and ankle. It was obvious, even to the suspicious crooks, that he had spoken the truth.
