“ ‘Ah!’ he said. ‘I was quite forgetting. I’ve got another visitor coming to see me tonight. As you seem to have mixed yourself up in my affairs, the least I can do is to invite you to be present at this interview also. Get behind that curtain again, and I think I can promise you an interesting quarter of an hour.’
“Well, I hesitated, while the footsteps began to cross the hall, till he caught me by the arm and sort of snarled, ‘Get out of sight, you fool. Can’t you see you’ll make it ten times worse for her by letting her see you?’
“Even then I didn’t realise what he meant, but I saw that there was something in what he said, and just managed to get behind the curtain in time. You can imagine what I felt like when the door opened and I saw Barbara come into the room.”
“Ghastly!” Roger exclaimed with feeling.
“Ghastly! That’s putting it mildly. Well, I’m not going to tell you the details of what happened then, because there’s really no need to and it’s only giving people away unnecessarily. All I need say is that Stanworth had got hold of some information about—well, about Mrs. Shannon. I don’t even know what it was. He ostentatiously pulled a revolver out of his desk, opened the safe, and showed her two or three pieces of paper, holding them so that she could read them without taking them into her hands. Then he told her to sit down on the settee to talk things over, keeping the revolver in front of him on the desk all the time. Well, Barbara sat down, looking very white and frightened, poor kid, but still not knowing in the least what Stanworth was getting at. He didn’t keep her in ignorance long. He just leaned back in his chair, informed her calmly that if she didn’t fall in with his wishes he’d make the information he’s just shown her public property and calmly proceeded to state his terms.
“Lord, Roger, old man, I had some difficulty in holding myself in. What do you think he wanted? He told her absolutely plainly that what he was after was money, and went on to say that he knew quite well that she herself hadn’t got enough to satisfy him. Therefore she’d got to marry me within a month, so that she would be able to pay the very moderate sums which he would from time to time require. She could either tell me or not, as she saw fit; it didn’t matter to him in the least. If she refused, he was very much afraid she and her mother would have to take the consequences.
“Of course you see what he was getting at. Me! He was practically saying to me that if I didn’t marry her and pay his blackmail, he would disgrace and ruin the mother of the girl I loved. Very neat sort of trap, wasn’t it? Incidentally, he went on to point out, also for my benefit, that it wasn’t the least use trying to do him any sort of bodily harm, because that would only bring things to a head in the way you know, and he never opened the safe without a loaded revolver in his hand, which he wouldn’t hesitate for a second to use if it became necessary.
“Well, Barbara behaved like an absolute thoroughbred. In fact, she told him, in so many words, to go to the devil; she wouldn’t dream of involving me in the affair, and as for her and her mother, they’d have to take what was coming to them if he chose to behave in such a damnable way, but they’d take it alone. Great Scott, she was wonderful! She practically defied him to do his worst, and said that she was going to break off her engagement to me the very next morning. Then she sailed out of the room with her head in the air, leaving him sitting there. No tears, no entreaties; simply the most overwhelming contempt. Roger, she was just marvellous!”
“I can believe you,” Roger said simply. “What happened then?”
“I came out again. I think I meant to kill Stanworth then if I got a chance to do so without making a worse mess of things. Remember, I knew already to what lengths he was ready to push the wretched women that he had in his clutches, and though Barbara would certainly never give way to him an inch, I wasn’t so sure about Mrs. Shannon. Well, there was the safe still open, and there was Stanworth sitting in his chair with the revolver in his hand. He looked at me with a grin as I appeared, and said he hoped I hadn’t been too bored. I walked straight up to him without a word (I was beyond talking by then), and I suppose he could see from my face what I had in mind. Anyhow, when I was only a few feet away he whipped up the revolver and fired. Luckily he missed, and I heard the vase shatter behind me. I lunged forward, grabbed his wrist and used all my strength to twist it round
