Part 56 (2/2)

'Sixty seconds. What they call the Birmingham Mystery will now be solved.'

'My lord, don't ring that bell.'

He caught me by the arm.

'Remove your arm.'

'You shall have the bill.'

'Give it me.'

He began to fumble with a pocket-book. 'My lord, I do ask you to listen to reason! I'm sure you don't want----'

'If you say another word I ring.'

He handed me a slip of blue paper. It was a bill, dated some sixteen years back, promising to pay thirty thousand pounds three months after date. It was signed 'Sherrington.' An endors.e.m.e.nt was scrawled across it--'Twickenham.' That endors.e.m.e.nt was the little accident which had sent my double to San Francisco.

When I had gathered the purport of the doc.u.ment I looked at Mr.

Acrodato. Murder was in his eyes.

'What are you going to give me for it?'

'Your life.'

'You cursed thief?'

I didn't like the words, nor the way in which he said them. There are occasions on which the devil enters into me. That was one.

I was a much smaller man than he, but I have physical strength altogether beyond what the average stranger suspects, and a curious mastery of what we will call certain tricks.

On a sudden I took him by the throat, beneath his beard, and with a twist which I have reason to know almost broke his neck, I jerked him back upon a chair. Driving his head against the back of it, I all but choked the life right out of him. It was only when I felt it slipping through my fingers that I thought it time to stop.

'Mr. Fraser, I'm afraid that one day I shall have to kill you. I've a mind to do it now; only it would be difficult to explain your corpse.'

I never saw a man cut a more ludicrous figure. The pain he had had to bear was no small thing. I shouldn't be surprised if for days his neck was conscious of the twist I had given it. But his amazement eclipsed his suffering. Not until that moment had he realised what a change had taken place in his lords.h.i.+p's character, and in his lords.h.i.+p's methods. For some seconds he gasped for breath--as was only natural. When he shambled to his feet he shrank from me like some panic-stricken, half-witted fool. While he was still staring at me, as if I had been some uncanny thing, the door opened and Mr. Smith came in.

'Surely it is Douglas Howarth! My dear Douglas, I am very glad to see you. This is Mr. Acrodato. He tells me that some injurious reports have been current with reference to a bill which my father backed at my request. Here is the bill. He has undertaken, in future, to give any such reports which may reach his ears the fullest contradiction.

Mr. Acrodato, you may go.'

He went--and, I believe, was glad to go, even though he left both his bill and his money behind him.

CHAPTER XXVI

THE SCALES OF JUSTICE

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