Part 9 (1/2)

”Oh, no, don't say that. Have a highball; you will find everything on the table. What can I give you? This Scotch is excellent.”

”No,” said Gard sternly. ”Excuse me; I am here for one purpose.”

Mahr was chagrined, but switched on the electric lights above the canvas occupying the place of honor on the crowded wall. The portrait stood revealed, a jewel of color, rich as a ruby, mysterious as an autumn night, vivid in its humanity, divine in its art, palpitating with life, yet remote as death itself. The marvelous canvas glowed before them--a thing to quell anger, to stifle love, to still hate itself in an impulse of admiration.

Suddenly Marcus Gard began to laugh, as he had laughed that day long ago, at his own discomfiture.

”What is it?” stuttered Mahr, amazed. ”Don't you think it genuine?”

There was panic in his tone.

Gard laughed again, then broke off as suddenly as he had begun; and pa.s.sion thrilled in his voice as he turned fierce eyes upon his enemy.

”I am laughing at the singular role this painting has played in my life.

We have met before--the Heim Vand.y.k.e and I. If Fate chooses to turn painter, we must grind his colors, I suppose. But what I intend to grind first, is you, Victor Mahr! You--you cowardly hound! No--stand where you are; don't go near that bell. It's hard enough for me to keep my hands off you as it is!”

The attack had been so unexpected that Mahr was honestly at a loss to account for it. He looked anxiously toward the door, remembered the absence of his secretary and gasped in fear. He was at the mercy of the madman. With an effort he mastered his terror.

”Don't be angry,” he stammered. ”Don't be annoyed with me; it's all a mistake, you know. Are you--are you feeling quite well? Do let me give you something--a--a gla.s.s of champagne, perhaps. I'll call a servant.”

Gard's smile was so cruel that Mahr's worst fears were confirmed. But the torrent of accusation that burst from Gard's lips bore him down with the consciousness of the other's knowledge.

”You scoundrel!” roared the enraged man. ”You squirming, poisonous snake! You would strike at a woman through her daughter, would you! You would send anonymous letters to a child about her mother! You would hire sneaks for your sneaking vileness!--coward, brute that you are! Well, I know it all--_all_, I say. And as true as I live, if ever you make one move in that direction again, I shall find it out, and I will kill you!

But first I'll go to your boy, Victor Mahr, and I shall tell him: 'Your father is a criminal--a bigamist. Your mother never was his wife. Sneak and beast from first to last, he found it easier to desert and deceive.

You are the nameless child of an outcast father, the whelp of a cur.'

I'll say in your own words, Victor Mahr: 'Obscurity is best, perhaps, even exile.' Do you remember those words? Well, never forget them again as long as you live, or, by G.o.d, you'll have no time on earth to make your peace!”

Mahr's face was gray; his hands trembled. He looked at that moment as if the death the other threatened was already come upon him. There was a moment of silence, intense, charged with the electricity of emotions--a silence more sinister than the noise of battles. Twice Mahr attempted to speak, but no sound came from his contracted throat. Slowly he pulled himself together. A look awful, inhuman, flashed over his convulsed features. Words came at last, high, cackling and cracked, like the voice of senility.

”It's you--it's _you_!” he quavered. ”So she told you everything, did she? So you and she--”

The sentence ended in a hoa.r.s.e gasp, as Mahr launched himself at Gard with the spring of an animal goaded beyond endurance.

Gard was the larger man, and his wrath had been long demanding expression. They closed with a jar that rocked the electric lamp on the desk. There was a second of straining and uncertainty. Then with a jerk Gard lifted his adversary clear off his feet, and shook him, shook him with the fury of a bulldog, and as relentlessly. Then, as if the temptation to murder was more than he could longer resist, he flung him from him.

Mahr fell full length upon the heavy rug, limp and inert, yet conscious.

Gard stooped, picked up his hat and gloves from where they had fallen and turned upon his heel.

At that moment the outside door of the secretary's office opened and closed, and footsteps sounded in the room beyond.

”Get up,” said Gard quietly, ”unless you care to have them see you there.”

The sound had acted like magic upon the prostrate man. He did not need the admonition. He had already dragged his shaking body to an upright position, ere he slowly sank down into the embrace of one of the huge armchairs.

A quick knock was followed by the appearance of Teddy Mahr. The room was in darkness save for the light on the table and the cl.u.s.tered radiance concentrated upon the glowing portrait, that had smiled down remote and serene upon the scene just enacted, as it had doubtless gazed upon many another as strange.

”Father!” exclaimed the boy, and as he came within the ring of light, his face showed pale and anxious.