MR. J. G. REEDER SERIES: 5 Mystery Novels & 4 Detective Stories. Edgar Wallace

Legge waved aside the invitation.

      “No, thanks. I’ve got out of the habit – you do in fifteen years. You can get into some, too. Fifteen years is a long time out of a life.”

      So Emanuel had come to make trouble, and had chosen his day well. Peter took up the challenge.

      “The man you shot would have been glad of a few – he died two years after,” he said curtly, and all the pent fury of his sometime comrade flamed in his eyes.

      “I hope he’s in hell,” he hissed, “the dirty flattie!” With an effort he mastered himself. “You’ve had a real good time, Peter? Nice house, that wasn’t bought for nothing. Servants and whatnot and motoring through the moor! You’re clever!”

      “I admit it.”

      The little man’s hands were trembling, his thin lips twitched convulsively.

      “Leave your pal in the lurch and get away yourself, eh? Every man for himself – well, that’s the law of nature, ain’t it? And if you think he’s going to squeak, send a line to the busies in charge of the case and drop a few hundred to ’em and there you are!” He paused, but no reply came. “That’s how it’s done, ain’t it, Peter?”

      Kane shrugged his shoulders indifferently.

      “I don’t know – I’m never too old to learn.”

      “But that’s the way it’s done?” insisted the man, showing his teeth again. “That’s the way you keep out of boob, ain’t it?”

      Peter looked at his tormentor, outwardly untroubled.

      “I won’t argue with you,” he said.

      “You can’t,” said the other. “I’m logical.” He gazed around. “This house cost a bit of money. What’s half of two hundred thousand? I’m a bad counter!” Peter did not accept the opening. “It’s a hundred thousand, ain’t it? I got sixty thousand – you owe me forty.”

      “We got less than a hundred and twenty thousand pounds, if you’re talking about the ship job. You got sixty thousand, which was more than your share. I paid it into your bank the day you went down.”

      Legge smiled sceptically.

      “The newspapers said a million dollars,” he murmured.

      “You don’t believe what you read in the newspapers, do you? Emanuel, you’re getting childish.” Then suddenly: “Are you trying to put the ‘black’ on me?”

      “Blackmail?” Emanuel was shocked. “There’s honour amongst – friends surely, Peter. I only want what’s right and fair.”

      Peter laughed softly, amusedly.

      “Comic, is it? You can afford to laugh at a poor old fellow who’s been in ‘stir’ for fifteen years.”

      The master of Manor Hill snapped round on him.

      “If you’d been in hell for fifty I should still laugh.”

      Emanuel was sorry for himself. That was ever a weakness of his; he said as much.

      “You wouldn’t, would you? You’ve got a daughter, haven’t you? Young? Married to-day, wasn’t she?

      “Yes.”

      “Married money – a swell?”

      “Yes. She married a good man.”

      “He doesn’t know what you are, Peter?” Emanuel asked the question carelessly, and his host fixed him with a steely glance.

      “No. What’s the idea? Do you think you’ll get forty thousand that way?”

      “I’ve got a boy. You’ve never sat in a damp cell with the mists of the moor hanging on the walls and thought and thought till your heart ached? You can get people through their children.” He paused. “I could get you that way.”

      In a second Peter Kane was towering above him, an ominous figure.

      “The day my heart ached,” he said slowly, “yours would not beat! You’re an old man, and you’re afraid of death! I can see it in your eyes. I am afraid of nothing. I’d kill you!”

      Before the ferocity of voice and mien, Legge shrank farther into his chair.

      “What’s all this talk about killing? I only want what’s fair. Fond of her, ain’t you, Peter? I’ll bet you are. They say that you’re crazy about her. Is she pretty? I don’t suppose she takes after you. Young Johnny Gray was sweet on her too. Peter, I’ll get you through her—”

      So far he got, and then a hand like a steel clamp fell on his neck, and he was jerked from his chair.

      Peter spoke no word but, dragging the squirming figure behind him, as if it had neither weight nor resistance, he strode up the narrow pathway by the side of the house, across the strip of garden, through the gate and into the road. A jerk of his arm, and Emanuel Legge was floundering in the dusty road.

      “Don’t come back, Emanuel,” he said, and did not stop to listen to the reply.

      John Gray passed out of sight and hearing of the two men, being neither curious to know Legge’s business nor anxious to renew a prison acquaintance.

      Below the box hedge were three broad terraces, blazing with colour, blanketed with the subtle fragrance of flowers. Beyond that, a sloping meadow leading to a little river. Peter had bought his property wisely. A great cedar of Lebanon stood at the garden’s edge; to the right, massed bushes were patched with purple and heliotrope blooms.

      He sat down on a marble seat, glad of the solitude which he shared only with a noisy thrush and a lark invisible in the blue above him.

      Marney was married. That was the beginning and the end of him. But happy. He recognised his very human vanity in the instant doubt that she could be happy with anybody but him.

      How dear she was! And then a voice came to him, a shrill, hateful voice. It was Legge’s – he was threatening the girl, and Johnny’s blood went cold. Here was the vulnerable point in Peter Kane’s armour; the crevice through which he could be hurt.

      He started to his feet and went up the broad steps of the terrace, three at a time. The garden was empty, save for Barney setting a table. Kane and his guest had disappeared. He was crossing the lawn when he saw something white shining in the gloom beyond the open French windows of a room. Something that took glorious shape. A girl in bridal white, and her hands were outstretched to him. So ethereal, so unearthly was her beauty, that at first he did not recognise her.

      “Johnny!”

      A soldierly figure was at her side, Peter Kane was behind her, but he had no eyes for any but Marney.

      She came flying toward him, both his hands were clasped in her warm palm.

      “Oh, Johnny… Johnny!”

      Then he looked up into the smiling face of the bridegroom, that fine, straight man to whom Peter had entrusted his beloved girl. For a second their eyes met, the debonair Major Floyd and his. Not by a flicker of eyelash did Johnny Gray betray himself.

      The husband of the woman he loved was Jeff Legge, forger and traitor, the man sworn with his father to break the heart of Peter Kane.

Chapter IV

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      Had he betrayed himself, he wondered? All his willpower was exercised to prevent such a betrayal. Though a tornado of fury swept through and through him, though he saw the face of the man distorted and blurred, and brute instinct urged his limbs to savage action, he remained outwardly unmoved. It was impossible for the beholder to be sure whether