The Fighting Chance

She hung up the receiver and turned to Mortimer: "He's coming up at once. Did I say anything to scare him particularly?"

"One thing's sure as preaching," said Mortimer; "he's a coward, and I'm dammed glad of it," he added naively, relighting his cigar, which had gone out.

"If he comes up in his motor he'll be here in a few minutes," she said. "Suppose you take your hat and go out. I don't want him to think what he will think if he walks into the room and finds you waiting. You have your key, Leroy. Walk down the block; and when you see him come in, give him five minutes."

Her voice had become a little breathless, and her colour was high. Mortimer, too, seemed apprehensive. Things had suddenly begun to work themselves out too swiftly.

"Do you think that's best?" he faltered, looking about for his hat. "Tell Merkle that nobody has been here, if Quarrier should ask him. Do you think we're doing it in the best way, Lydia? By God, it smells of a put-up job to me! But I guess it's all right. It's better for me to just happen in, isn't it? Don't forget to put Merkle wise."

He descended the stairs hastily. Merkle, of the invisible eyes, held his hat and gloves and opened the door for him.

Once on the dark street, his impulse was to flee--get out, get away from the whole business. A sullen shame was pumping the hot blood up into his neck and cheeks. He strove to find an inoffensive name for what he was proposing to do, but ugly terms, synonym after synonym, crowded in to characterise the impending procedure, and he walked on angrily, half frightened, looking back from moment to moment at the house he had just left.

On the corner he halted, breathing spasmodically, for he had struck a smarter pace than he had been aware of.

Few people passed him. Once he caught a glimmer of a policeman's buttons along the park wall, and an unpleasant shiver passed over him. At the same moment an electric hansom flew noiselessly past him. He shrank back into the shadow of a porte-cochere. The hansom halted before the limestone basement house. A tall figure left it, stood a moment in the middle of the sidewalk, then walked quickly to the front door. It opened, and the man vanished.

The hansom still waited at the door. Mortimer, his hands shaking, looked at his watch by the light of the electric bulbs flanking the gateway under which he stood.

There was not much time in which to make up his mind, yet his fright was increasing to a pitch which began to enrage him with that coward's courage which it is impossible to reckon with.