Room 13 Read Online Free PDF Page A

for nothing. Servants and what not and motoring through the moor! You’re clever!”
    “I admit it.”
    The little man’s hands were trembling, his thin lips twitched convulsively.
    “Leave your pal in the lurch and get away yourself eh? Every man for himself – well, that’s the law of nature, ain’t it? And if you think he’s going to squeak, send a line to the busies in charge of the case and drop a few hundred to ’em and there you are!” He paused, but no reply came. “That’s how it’s done, ain’t it, Peter?”
    Kane shrugged his shoulders indifferently.
    “I don’t know – I’m never too old to learn.”
    “But that’s the way it’s done?” insisted the man, showing his teeth again. “That’s the way you keep out of boob, ain’t it?”
    Peter looked at his tormentor, outwardly untroubled.
    “I won’t argue with you,” he said.
    “You can’t,” said the other. “I’m logical.” He gazed around. “This house cost a bit of money. What’s half of two hundred thousand? I’m a bad counter!” Peter did not accept the opening. “It’s a hundred thousand, ain’t it? I got sixty thousand – you owe me forty.”
    “We got less than a hundred and twenty thousand pounds, if you’re talking about the ship job. You got sixty thousand, which was more than your share. I paid it into your bank the day you went down.”
    Legge smiled sceptically.
    “The newspapers said a million dollars,” he murmured.
    “You don’t believe what you read in the newspapers, do you? Emanuel, you’re getting childish.” Then suddenly: “Are you trying to put the black on me?”
    “Blackmail?” Emanuel was shocked. “There’s honour amongst – friends surely, Peter. I only want what’s right and fair.”
    Peter laughed softly, amusedly.
    “Comic, is it? You can afford to laugh at a poor old fellow – who’s been in ‘stir’ for fifteen years.”
    The master of Manor Hill snapped round on him.
    “If you’d been in hell for fifty I should still laugh.”
    Emanuel was sorry for himself. That was ever a weakness of his; he said as much.
    “You wouldn’t, would you? You’ve got a daughter, haven’t you? Young? Married today, wasn’t she?”
    “Yes.”
    “Married money – a swell?”
    “Yes. She married a good man.”
    “He doesn’t know what you are, Peter?” Emanuel asked the question carelessly, and his host fixed him with a steely glance.
    “No. What’s the idea? Do you think you’ll get forty thousand that way?”
    “I’ve got a boy. You’ve never sat in a damp cell with the mists of the moor hanging on the walls and thought and thought till your heart ached? You can get people through their children.” He paused. “I could get you that way.”
    In a second Peter Kane was towering above him, an ominous figure.
    “The day my heart ached,” he said slowly, “yours would not beat! You’re an old man, and you’re afraid of death! I can see it in your eyes. I am afraid of nothing. I’d kill you!”
    Before the ferocity of voice and mien, Legge shrank farther into his chair.
    “What’s all this talk about killing? I only want what’s fair. Fond of her, ain’t you, Peter? I’ll bet you are. They say that you’re crazy about her. Is she pretty? I don’t suppose she takes after you. Young Johnny Gray was sweet on her too. Peter, I’ll get you through her–”
    So far he got, and then a hand like a steel damp fell on his neck, and he was jerked from his chair.
    Peter spoke no word but, dragging the squirming figure behind him, as if it had neither weight nor resistance, he strode up the narrow pathway by the side of the house, across the strip of garden, through the gate and into the road. A jerk of his arm, and Emanuel Legge was floundering in the dusty road.
    “Don’t come back, Emanuel,” he said, and did not stop to listen to the reply.
     
    John Gray passed out of sight and hearing of the two men, being neither curious to know Legge’s business nor anxious to