PADDY THE BRICK INTERVENES
"I could not believe your voice." The heavy tones jarred across the
quiet. "I could not believe that it was actually true!"
"Do you accept my offer?" Echo's voice was without a tremor; it held
the same hard quality that controlled her features.
"Accept!" He came toward her--would have taken her hands, but that she
drew back. "Do you remember what I told you that day in your garden, a
year ago--that nothing counted, nothing but you? For you I would
barter every ambition I have ever known. I would sell the world, if I
had it!"
"When you told me that," she said steadily, "I answered that I did not
love you. I have not changed in that regard, nor shall I ever change.
I can bring you no love, but I can--can marry you."
He laughed harshly. "Very well; I would not have it different, after
all. I am not made on the pattern of other men: I would rather take
you against your will--you will be all the more mine! I love even that
fine disdain of yours! For it shall not last--I swear that! You shall
love me in the end, as I have loved you!"
"Loved!" she repeated, with an accent of chill and wondering scorn.
"Yes, loved!" The words were almost a cry: they held fierce protest,
even anger, yet there was in them a kind of appeal that lent them a
sombre and tragic dignity. "But you despised me! You had stood first
of all things. But if you could be nothing to me, then the game I
played stood second. I played, as always, to win. The cards fell
oddly--your father's letters, no matter how, came into my hands. They
were to my purpose, and I would have used them. Why should I hold
back? Out of regard for him? I regard no man!"
"Yet he is my father. And you profess--ah, if this is love, I had
rather you hated me! I know nothing of a love that is neither brave
nor compassionate, that strikes at the aged and defenceless and that is
without--honour!"
He had not taken his eyes from her face, and now there grew in them a
strange, haggard fire. Relentless and unscrupulous as was that love of
his, Harry could have pitied him at that moment. "Honour?" he said.
"It is an empty word to me! What is honour, what is anything, to me
without you--Echo, Echo!"
"If you love me so--and now, indeed, I will believe it--give me the
letters!" She took a step toward him, her hands clasped together. "Be
as chivalrous as you are strong! Do not do this ignoble thing to break
my life! I may be your friend, if not--that other. Surely you cannot
want to take me at such a price! Do this and all my life long I will
be grateful! Oh, I would ask you on my knees! Give me the letters!"
He looked at her where she stood breathlessly, with arms extended, her
face bent and pleading, and the sight opened wide within him an abyss
that thronged thick with evil passions. The gentler purpose that for a
heart-beat had fluttered white wings above the chasm dropped
plummet-like into the depths. Give her up? Now, when she came to him
with her offer? Resign her--to that tippling _dilettante_, that
flamboyant fop and fool who had drowned his success in a bottle? Not
he! A savage elation sprang up in him.
"When you are my wife!" he said.
She straightened, withdrawing her arms with a little gesture of despair
and relinquishment. "Where are the letters?"
He pointed to the safe. "They are there."
"When will you give them to me?"
"To-night--the same hour you marry me. You shall burn them if you
like, here--in this very room--with your own hands."
"You swear?"
"I do. And whatever else men may say of me, there is no man living who
can say I have ever lied."
There was an instant's silence and when Craig spoke again all feeling
had vanished from his voice. He was once more the deliberate and
incisive man of action. He snapped the lid of his watch.
"It is very late," he said, "but it can be managed. It shall be at the
hotel--you can rest there while I make the necessary arrangements. My
chauffeur is off-duty to-night, but it is only a block away,
fortunately. Shall you mind walking?"
"No," she said, apathetically.
Harry was holding himself hard. They were going. He saw clearly his
course of action. His two partners in that sorry escapade might have
what they had come for--he could compound with them, could take the
letters to the hotel and put them into Echo's hands. She would never
need to know how he had gained them--that drunken episode, whose very
memory must bring a shaming flush to his cheek, should be buried
forever! The letters would not have come to her from Craig, and she
would stand absolved of her promise. But even as this ran through his
mind, fate thrust its hidden hand from the cloud.
"One moment," said Craig. "When I came in, it was beginning to rain.
You will need a cloak of some sort." He turned abruptly to the
curtained alcove.
The pressure on Harry's temple relaxed. The black mask thrust forward,
the man with the sand-coloured hair parted the hangings--his
outstretched arm shot out toward the advancing figure. Harry's gaze
saw something red leap up from Craig's temple, even before the
terrifying concussion rocked the room--a sound threaded by Echo's
scream.
There was a rush, a curse and a scramble, flying feet and a dismayed
shout from the hall--then a shocked quiet in which he stood
disconcerted and appalled, staring between the shielding curtains,
through pungent smoke-wreaths, at a girl, her hand over her eyes, who
shrank in overmastering terror from a massive form that lay collapsed
on the rug before her--Cameron Craig, inert and still, blind and deaf
now to sight and sound, the brain empty of scheming, the full cup of
his ambition dashed from his lips by the crashing bullet of a slinking
house-breaker.