The Hunt Ball Mystery Part 30

"I did not expect to find you here, Miss Morriston."

The words came sharply and wrathfully, when the man had found his glib tongue.

Gifford answered. "Miss Morriston and I have been enjoying the view and the air of the pines."

The commonplace remark naturally, as it was intended, went for nothing.

Henshaw affected not to notice it.

"I am glad I have come across you, Miss Morriston," he said, with an evident curbing of his chagrin, "as I have something rather important to say to you."

"I am afraid I cannot hear it now, Mr. Henshaw," the girl returned coldly.

Henshaw's face darkened. "I really must ask you to grant me an interview without delay," he retorted insistently, as though secure in his sense of power over the girl. "I am sure Mr. Gifford will permit--"

"Mr. Gifford will do nothing of the sort," came the bold and rather startling reply from the person alluded to. "As a friend of Miss Morriston's I do not intend to allow you to hold any more private conversations with her."

No doubt with his knowledge of the world and of his own advantage Henshaw put down Gifford's resolute speech to mere bluff. And Gervase Henshaw was too old a legal pract.i.tioner to be bluffed. "I do not for a moment admit your right to interfere," he retorted with an a.s.sumption of calm superiority. "I am addressing myself to Miss Morriston, who does not, I hope, approve of your somewhat singular manners."

Gifford took a step out of the summerhouse and sternly faced Henshaw. "I am sure Miss Morriston will endorse anything I choose to say to a man who has const.i.tuted himself her cowardly persecutor," he said. "Now we don't want to have a dispute in a lady's presence," he added as Henshaw began an angry rejoinder. "You have got, unless you wish very unpleasant consequences to follow, to render an account to me, as Miss Morriston's friend, of your abominable conduct towards her. But not here. You had better come to my room at the hotel at three o'clock this afternoon and hear what I shall have to say. And in the meantime you will address Miss Morriston only at the risk of a horsewhipping."

Henshaw was looking at him steadfastly through eyes that blazed with hate. "I wonder if you quite know whom and what you are trying to champion," he snarled.

"Perfectly," was the cool reply. "A much wronged and cruelly persecuted lady. You had better postpone what you have to say till this afternoon, when we will come to an understanding as to your conduct. Now, as you are on private land, you had better take the nearest way to the public road."

Henshaw looked as though he would have liked to bring the dispute to the issue of a physical encounter, had but the coward in him dared. "I am here by permission," he returned, standing his ground.

"Which has been rescinded by the vile use to which you have chosen to put it," Gifford rejoined. "I have Miss Morriston's authority to treat you as a trespa.s.ser, and to order you off her brother's land."

Henshaw fell back a step. "Very well, Mr. Gifford," he returned with an ugly sneer. "You talk with great confidence now, but we shall see. You will be wiser by this time tomorrow."

With that he turned and walked off; Gifford, after watching him for a while, went back to the summer-house.

"I have put things in the right train there," he remarked with a confident laugh. "I hope to be able to tell you this evening that Mr.

Henshaw is a thing of the past."

"You are very sanguine," she said, a little doubtfully. "I am afraid you do not know the man."

"I'm afraid I do," he replied. "He is obviously not an easy person to deal with. But I think I see my way. Tell me. He has threatened you in order to induce you to elope with him?"

"Yes. He has found evidence among his brother's correspondence of the hold he had over me and of his persecution. That would afford a sufficient motive for my killing him; and how could I prove that I did not strike the blow?"

"It might be difficult," Gifford answered thoughtfully. "But I may be able to do it. Of course he knows you to be an heiress."

"I am sure of that from something he once let slip. It has been my inheritance which has brought all this trouble upon me, at any rate its persistency."

"Yes. This man must be something of an adventurer, as his brother was. We shall see," Gifford said with a grim touch. "Now, I must not keep you any longer. I am so grateful for the confidence you have given me. May I call later on and tell you the result?"

Her eyes were on him in an almost piteous searching for hope in his resolute face. "Of course," she responded. "I shall be so terribly anxious to know."

Chivalrously avoiding any suggestion of tenderness, he shook hands and went off towards the town.

CHAPTER XXVI

ISSUE JOINED

Punctually at the appointed time Gervase Henshaw was shown into Gifford's room. Kelson had received from his friend a hint of what was afoot and had naturally offered his services to back Gifford up, but they were refused.

"It is very kind of you, Harry," Gifford had said, "and just what one would have expected from you. But, as you shall hear later, this is not a business in which you or any one could usefully intervene. In fact it would be dangerous for me, considering the man I am dealing with, to say what I have to say before a third person."

So Kelson went off to spend the afternoon at the Tredworths'.

When Henshaw came in his expression bore no indication of the terms on which he and Gifford had lately parted. The keen face was unruffled and almost genial; but Gifford was not the man to be deceived by that outward seeming. Henshaw bowed and took the chair the other indicated. There was a short pause as though each waited for the other to begin. In the end it was Gifford who spoke first.

"I should like to come to an understanding with you, Mr. Henshaw, with regard to a very serious annoyance, not to say persecution, to which Miss Morriston has been subjected at your hands." Henshaw drew back his thin lips in a smile. "I have to tell you," Gifford continued, "once and for all that it must cease."

"Miss Morriston authorizes you to tell me that?" The question was put with something like a sneer.

"I should hope it requires no authority," Gifford retorted. "Having cognizance of what has been going on, it is my plain duty--"

"Why yours?" Henshaw interrupted coolly.

"For a very good reason," Gifford replied; "one which I may have to tell you presently."

He saw Henshaw flush and dart a glance of hate at him. It was plain he had misinterpreted the reply. But the exhibition was only momentary.

"Admitting in the meantime your right to interfere," Henshaw said, now with perfect coolness, "allow me to tell you that you are taking a very foolish course."

"I shall be glad to know how."

"The reason is, that if you have any regard, as you suggest, for Miss Morriston, you are going the right way to do her a terrible injury."

Gifford rose and stood by the fire-place. "To come to the point at once without further preliminary fencing," he said quietly, "you mean, I take it, that I am forcing you to denounce her as being guilty of your brother's death."

For an instant Henshaw seemed taken aback by the other's directness.

"There can be no doubt, holding the evidence I do, that she was guilty of it," he retorted uncompromisingly.

"I beg your pardon, Mr. Henshaw," Gifford objected with decision, "there can be, and is, a very great deal more than a doubt of it."

Henshaw shot a searching glance at the man who spoke so confidently, as though trying to probe what, if anything, was behind his words.

"Perhaps you know then," he returned with his sneering smile, "how otherwise, if the lady had no hand in it, my brother came by his death?"

"I do," was the quiet answer.

"Then," still the smile of sneering incredulity, "it is clearly your duty to make it known."